Genius Sports - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by. My name is Celine, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Genius Sports First Quarter 2025 Earnings Results. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Genius Sports. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20F filed with the SEC on March 14, 2025. During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius Sports's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius Sports's financial results prepared in accordance with US GAAP.

A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable US GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniussports.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mark Locke.

Mark Locke (CEO)

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today as we begin another year on a positive note. Throughout the first quarter, we are tracking exactly in line with the guidance that we set in March, highlighting the predictability of our business model. On today's call, I'll provide a quick summary of our results and cover four other key topics. First, I'm excited to share an update on our expanded NCAA partnership. Next, I'd like to highlight a few new products that we've launched since our last call. Then, I'd like to share how these products' launches are creating a powerful flywheel effect for the business. I'd like to conclude by sharing my thoughts on the stability and the resiliency of our business model. First, on the results. Our first quarter group revenue increased by 20% year-on-year to $144 million.

This group revenue growth contributed to our group-adjusted EBITDA at a 53% incremental margin, once again demonstrating the operating leverage of our business model. This resulted in a group-adjusted EBITDA of $20 million in the quarter, nearly tripling from the $7 million reported last year. This has also translated to 800 basis points of year-on-year margin expansion to 14%. Nick will cover the numbers in more detail shortly. In the meantime, I'll quickly touch on the other topics for today's call. First, the most exciting business update came after the quarter end as we expanded our NCAA partnership through 2032. This is a perfect example of why our tech relationships with leagues are so important. For context, our NCAA relationship began in 2018 purely as a technology agreement with no sports betting component or official data rights.

After six years of building technology solutions, which is now relied upon for over 70,000 NCAA games per year across all major sports, we've now secured exclusive data rights for March Madness and all post-season tournaments at no out-of-pocket cost to Genius. This is the clearest demonstration of our strategic execution with leagues. We've leveraged our technology position to obtain exclusive data rights, again at no out-of-pocket cost, making this a significant and notable deal for us. We are now positioned to provide exclusive NCAA data and marks and logos to license sports books and ultimately drive greater revenue without any rights fees. We're also expanding our technology solutions for NCAA with Genius IQ, our next-generation AI platform, which will unlock future opportunities across broadcast, augmented advertising, coaching insights, and other immersive fan experiences, creating the powerful flywheel effect, which I'll come back to shortly.

This generates new incremental revenue for Genius, creates more value across the entire NCAA ecosystem, and helps solidify our long-term position. You should keep this strategy in mind as I move to the next topic, which is our product development, beginning with SAOT. After several weeks of testing, we are proud to announce the English Premier League has officially gone live with our Semi-Automated Offside Technology, or SAOT for short. This is a milestone achievement for Genius Sports and offers a scalable solution for a universal challenge in global soccer. Why is it so important? First, this supported the growth of our sports tech revenue in the last two quarters. Second, it reinforces our stickiness with one of the most important sports organizations in the world. Third, it opens doors to other leagues and federations who also view this as an opportunity.

Fourth, and most importantly, it allows us to install our Genius IQ technology in hundreds of stadiums worldwide. The technology that enables SAOT is the same technology that drives other products like broadcast augmentations, BetVision, augmented advertising, player tracking, and so much more, meaning technology distribution is key to our strategy. The deal with U.K. football and the NCAA are clear examples of what is possible when leagues rely on our technology and as we execute on our strategy. As an example, one newly launched product is called Performance Studio, which is being utilized by individual teams in the Premier League. Performance Studio is a new tool that lets coaches or analysts review key moments of a match in a three-dimensional format from different points of view, which you can see on slide eight.

This is just another example of the type of product that is built on GeniusIQ and empowers teams to improve the quality of sport. Sticking with soccer, we've also just announced the expansion of BetVision for soccer, representing another milestone achievement for Genius. BetVision has proven to be a highly engaging platform, so we are thrilled to launch this product for a high-volume sport like soccer. This expansion marks a significant step forward as we aim to make this interface ubiquitous in sports betting. Lastly, as it relates to fan engagement, it's worth reminding you that we're not only creating new types of engaging experiences for fans, but also helping to integrate brands as part of these new experiences. This is exactly how we gain momentum with our FANHub platform.

After announcing the launch of FANHub late last year, we have already won many customers, including Deep Blue, an ad agency focused on women's sports, and Echo Point Media, a renewed partnership to promote ticket sales for the Indy 500 after we exceeded last year's targets. We have a robust and growing customer pipeline as these conversations continue to evolve, and we believe this is shaping up to be one of the most exciting opportunities for our business and for the entire sports advertising ecosystem over the next several years. Each of these products I've described are interesting in isolation and are independently generating revenue today. However, what excites us most is how these are each linked to one another and can scale even faster when offered by one company on a single platform, creating a powerful flywheel for the business.

Allow me to illustrate this using the products I've just described as examples of this flywheel, which you can follow on slide 10. Starting from the top, leagues and teams depend on our technology for a wide range of opportunities. SAOT is a perfect example. This allows us to install our technology in venues and capture next-generation data. This next-generation data then powers new types of sports betting or viewing experiences, such as BetVision or alternative broadcasts of live sports that you've heard us highlight in prior quarters. BetVision is powerful because it is now becoming the destination for millions of fans to fully immerse themselves in live sports content, creating a highly engaged audience. As a next step, FANHub then becomes the platform where brands can reach this captive sports audience.

In this example, BetVision gives us a real-time view of the audience and how they are engaging with live sport. In fact, BetVision itself can be a potential source of proprietary ad inventory, allowing brands to integrate directly into the video player and be part of the experience. Many of these brands are also official sponsors of the leagues and teams. As we provide more optionality, brands get more value out of their official sponsorships, which flows back to the leagues and teams where the flywheel started. You can understand how we are creating value across the entire sports ecosystem. As the world of sports, betting, media, broadcast, and advertising converge, our GeniusIQ technology remains at the center of this flywheel. The reason I highlight this is because I wanted to share the strategic context for everything we do.

As we continue to announce new products, technology agreements with leagues, alternative viewing experiences with broadcasters, expansion of BetVision, or new FANHub partnerships, you should understand how they each fit together strategically. The strategy is working, and it makes Genius an indispensable part of the sports ecosystem. As a final topic, I'd like to take a moment to reiterate our confidence in the business and our financial outlook. To be absolutely clear, we are largely unaffected by current macroeconomic conditions because of our unique and differentiated business model, and we have almost no exposure to these near-term external risks, such as global trade, which has caused market volatility over the last several weeks. First, we believe online sports betting is currently one of the most resilient components within consumer spending, and we expect the industry should continue to grow in any economic environment.

In fact, historical data provides this was true in markets like the U.K. and Europe throughout the 2008 global financial crisis. More importantly, most of our revenue and a large proportion of our costs are highly predictable, so our commercial model is structured to protect our downside and reduce any outside risk. This is why we remain confident in generating at least $620 million in group revenue and $125 million in group-adjusted EBITDA this year, representing 21% revenue growth, over 300 basis points of margin expansion to 20%, increased cash flow compared to last year, and a meaningful step closer to our long-term target of at least 30% group-adjusted EBITDA margin. As we continue to increase our cash flow in 2025 and beyond, we are sharpening our focus on capital allocation, which is why today we announced the authorization of a share repurchase program up to $100 million.

To be very clear, our capital allocation strategy is primarily focused on tech investment and M&A, since we see several opportunities to drive growth and accelerate our long-term profitability targets. That said, we believe implementing a repurchase program is just good housekeeping, and this provides us with the ability to be opportunistic, especially in a volatile market as we have seen. This program rounds out our capital allocation strategy and adds a complementary tool to deliver strong shareholder returns. Again, this program is underpinned by a durable business model and predictable cash flow outlook. With this in mind, I will now turn the call to Nick to discuss financial results in more detail.

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Thank you, Mark. The first quarter was fairly straightforward as we continued to demonstrate consistent revenue growth and margin expansion.

Our group revenue growth of 20% in the quarter was predominantly driven by our betting business, which increased 44% year-on-year to $107 million. This was as a result of our successful contract renewals with sportsbook customers last fall, and we're continuing to benefit from higher pricing, increased in-play betting, and additional value-add products and services. Growth in our betting revenue was well-balanced in the quarter. Our revenue from revenue share agreements increased 65% year-on-year, marking the highest rate of growth since winning the NFL four years ago, and our more predictable betting revenue from contractual minimums increased by 36% year-on-year, also marking one of our strongest quarters in the last four years. At the group level, our revenue growth was also well-balanced geographically, as Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world achieved growth of 16%, 23%, and 39% respectively, once again demonstrating our global reach.

Our sports tech revenue also increased 12% year-on-year, driven by the innovative products built on GeniusIQ technology. As Mark briefly described earlier, this includes products like SAOT, player tracking technology, performance platforms, and broadcast augmentations as just a few examples. You have heard why this technology is crucially important to our strategic objectives, but we are also generating incremental revenue from this in the meantime as well. Lastly, we generated $26 million of media revenue this quarter compared to $35 million last year. You may recall our media revenue increased by 63% in Q1 2024, marking an outstanding quarter, but of course setting a high bar for year-on-year comparison. Moving forward, we expect the evolution of FANHub will support growth in media revenues towards the back half of this year, likely resulting in low to mid-teens growth for the full year 2025.

This quarter also demonstrated our cost control and operating leverage across the business. First, our gross margins have more than doubled from 11% last year to 24% this year. Similarly, our group-adjusted EBITDA margins also more than doubled from 6% last year to 14% this year. Lastly, on cash, we have historically seen cash outflows in the first half of the year, followed by cash inflows in the second half of the year, and we expect the pattern this year will look similar. As part of our guidance for the year, we still expect our full-year cash flow to be positive and meaningfully higher than our cash net inflow in 2024.

To close, we are tracking right in line with our guidance set out in March, and we remain incredibly well-positioned, given our largely fixed cost base, durable revenue growth drivers, and multitude of opportunities still ahead as we continue our tech distribution, product adoption, and commercial execution. With that, we now conclude our prepared remarks and open the line to Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin our Q&A session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask a question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question.

Your first question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens. Please go ahead.

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. Mark, maybe to start where you ended your prepared remarks, the debt facility in place, share repurchases, producing for cash flow, I'm not positioning the question, you know, are you going to go do M&A, but what are the top priorities with the ample cash on the balance sheet and the outlook for that to only improve from here?

Mark Locke (CEO)

Obviously, you know, we're expecting decent positive cash flow this year. I think putting our priorities in order of capital allocation, I think we're spending enough money at the moment in our R&D and our software development, so we're reasonably happy with the level that that's going at, which, you know, we should, as a percentage of revenue, you know, should decrease over time.

I think M&A is obviously a big focus, but, you know, we have to be very careful about what we're buying, and, you know, you kiss a lot of frogs, I think is the phrase, and, you know, we're doing a lot of kissing, but we, you know, we expect some of them will turn into princesses at some point. Just having a share buyback, having a share buyback thing is really, you know, good housekeeping for us. It's, you know, it allows us to be opportunistic, and there's obviously a lot of volatility in the market, you know, there's obviously sometimes a, you know, a little lack of clarity that's coming to the market from, from in terms of macro policy, and it just gives us an opportunity to be flexible and really have the right facilities in place should the opportunities arise.

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. And then just switching gears, on the NCAA, you know, they've been pretty open about their desire to protect student athletes, notably the push to get player prop bans broadly, even though there isn't any out-of-pocket costs. Can you talk about the balance between your need to grow revenue, yet also balance the potential limitations on your data if the restrictions tighten?

Mark Locke (CEO)

Yeah, it's a really good question because we actually see this as symbiotic. It's quite interesting that, you know, it's often pitched or the narrative is often that, you know, what the NCAA want to do is counter to what's best for the sports betting industry, and I strongly disagree with that sentiment. You know, our view is, you know, is fundamentally you've got to start with responsible gaming, responsible gambling.

I mean, you know, we've seen mistakes in other countries where they haven't put that as the number one priority, and there's been heavy crackdown on the government. You know, there's a good history and, you know, good evidence in other markets, you know, in the U.K., of the sportsbooks taking this really responsibly and working with the leagues to make sure that the types of bets that are being offered are the right types of bets. You know, I think when you look at this deal, what it's doing is it's allowing the NCAA to, you know, have real visibility on where the data is going. It allows the integrity of the sport to be improved and be protected.

Ultimately, you know, I don't think you're going to see disagreement from any of the sports books about the way that the NCAA wants to protect their players and protect the types of bets that are being offered. Because in the end, as an industry, as an ecosystem, it's in all our interests to make gambling responsible. It's in all our interests to make sure the integrity is protected and that the players are protected because long-term, that's how we as an industry continue to grow.

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great.Thanks, everyone.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, good day, guys. I want to start on the ad tech revenue. How much of that decline in the quarter was expected versus softer spend?

Is that timing, or is there a change in expectations from what you're hearing from your sports book customers, or I guess, you know, potentially even market share changes?

Mark Locke (CEO)

Sorry, Ryan, could you just repeat the question? We missed the second part of that.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, just curious for more context around the, the media segment decline is a bit weaker than maybe where I was expecting. I know you have a tough comp, but just curious for reasons there, if it's a timing in spend or if it's a change in expectations from your sportsbook customers for the year overall?

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Yeah, hey, Ryan, it's Nick. Yeah, I mean, it's broadly in line with what we expected.

As you know, media revenue is always a little bit less predictable and can swing on whether someone spends on the 31st of March or the 1st of April, particularly obviously with March Madness at that time of year. No, it's broadly exactly how we anticipated it to be. I think as we said in the prepared remarks, it was comping against a big quarter. I think it was 63% up year-on-year in 2024. What I can say, and I think I said it in prepared remarks again, is that we're anticipating media to be double-digit, low teens growth year-on-year, and therefore we'll return to growth through Q2, Q3, and Q4.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks, Nick. For my second question, just on BetVision, you expanded with several soccer leagues or football leagues that aren't Genius Sports betting data customers or contracts.

Curious how you think about the ability to monetize your technology beyond existing relationships and then how that may or may not impact future data rights deals with your existing sportsbook leagues, but also the other ones you're partnering with from a technology standpoint?

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Sure. Okay, so I mean, just to give a bit of context on this, we launched, you know, we launched BetVision for NFL a while ago, and we were running around, you know, call it 270 games a year for that. The launch of soccer is a really big deal for us. We've, you know, not only is it new sport, but it's a much, much higher volume sport.

We're, you know, we'll be putting something like 18,000 games through that, and we're doing, obviously doing that in partnership with Infront, which means that that data is going to be highly, you know, and very, very widely distributed to the sports books, which is obviously very good for us. Again, coming back to sort of the principle of in-play is it's high margin betting. You know, the margins that we're generating from in-play, you know, three times what we're generating from the rest of the market. We're, you know, we're seeing enormous growth in that space. We're seeing huge numbers, millions and millions of people adopting that BetVision product and engaging with it. You know, we see it as a key driver to growth over the coming period.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks, guys. Good luck.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Breny McTurnin with NEDA. Please go ahead.

Breny McTurnin (Analyst)

Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just to start on media, understand the guidance of low to mid-teens growth for 2025 and the difficult comparisons you had in the first quarter of this year. As we trend through the year and we're thinking about the year-over-year growth, how much of it is just, you know, maybe existing contracts with sports books, maybe in the US versus FANHub really gaining traction here is embedded in that low to mid-teens guidance for growth?

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Hey, Breny. I mean, essentially what's in the guide today is predominantly managed programmatic service for sports books and non-sports books. You know, as we redid the contracts back in last fall, as we've always had, there was minimum spend in that.

Obviously we increased in spend getting customers from non-sports books as well. You know, that's been a trend over the last really three years. That is predominantly what's in the guide. I think as Mark has said, possibly the last quarter, look, we're very excited about FANHub, and we can talk about that in more detail as through the rest of the Q&A. From a financial perspective, there's very little built into this guide really in relation to FANHub. That has always been, I anticipate where there's any upside in our $620 million of revenue that we've guided to, and it'll have a much more significant financial impact in 2026.

Breny McTurnin (Analyst)

On BetVision for soccer, can you just talk about the different opportunity sets of BetVision in the U.S. versus Europe?

Because I think in the U.S., you know, part of the benefits of BetVision was to increase in-play betting. In over in Europe, you know, we've heard that in-play betting is already, you know, 70-80% of handle. So, you know, maybe just thinking about the different monetization strategy of or the opportunity set in Europe versus the U.S. Thank you.

Mark Locke (CEO)

Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. I mean, look, your assessment of the value of BetVision in the U.S. is right. Obviously soccer has benefit in the U.S. Again, next quarter with the launch of basketball, that will become even more relevant. I think in Europe, you know, it's about continuing to innovate. You know, we're innovating products, increasing, you know, things like stickiness, giving additional inventory to us.

I think the really exciting part is the evolution of the bet types. I mean, if you look back for the last 20, 20, 30 years, or the time I've been kicking around this industry, it's always basically been the same sort of product sets. What we're seeing now is with the distribution of Genius IQ into the leagues, we're getting much more, many different types of data. You know, you're able to, you know, have information on things like the speed of the ball or height of the jump, different type of bet types. Also on top of that, your data is instantaneous. The fact that it's instantaneous reduces things like bet delays with sports books.

The combination of all of the benefits of automated data collection through the product sets that we're rolling out, the conversion of them into new bet types is going to give a whole new lease of life to some of the in-play betting in the European markets. Again, you've got to think of this in volume terms. You know, we're talking about, you know, hundreds of thousands of games over the next couple of years being pushed through BetVision of, you know, soccer, NFL, basketball, potentially other sports as well. That becoming a completely new viewing experience for the sports fan. It's something that we think is going to make a fundamental difference to the way that in-play betting and sports betting is engaged with.

Breny McTurnin (Analyst)

Great. Thank you both.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Ben Miller with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Ben Miller (VP - Global Investment Research)

Great. Thanks so much for taking the questions. The NCAA deal seems to be another example of how product and value-added services are becoming more important in the league and sports book relationships and negotiations. Could you provide any color on what product adoption or attach rates look like today among league partners and sports book customers and how that might differ across customer partner cohorts in terms of size or importance to Genius? Can you hear me?

Mark Locke (CEO)

Yeah, sorry, I didn't catch the end of your question again, but I think you're asking what does the shape of the NCAA deal look like within the schools? Is that right?

Ben Miller (VP - Global Investment Research)

Just in terms of the product and attach rates for the various products among sports books and league partners, what does that look like today and where is there white space to maybe drive more of that into negotiations going forward?

Mark Locke (CEO)

Specifically with the sports books, historically we did not have the betting rights for the NCAA. The NCAA deal that we have had in place, you know, since 2018, I think it is, has been a deal where we have distributed our technology into pretty much all the colleges to collect the vast majority of the data that they use to run their own infrastructure. Our ability and our right to use that in betting, you know, has not been in place.

As part of this new deal and this long-term extension, you know, not only is there an additional adoption of further technology that we're going to be providing to them, it's giving us the ability under the new rights that we've been assigned to distribute that to the sportsbooks. Again, what that means is that the sports books will be able to have additional new product. It'll be done in a licensed and regulated way. Obviously the best part of that is, you know, we're using technology as the currency and our ability to trade with the NCAA. We're hoping that, you know, the NCAA and us together are able to push a new, you know, era of sports betting on college sports.

As I said in my previous answer, done in a responsible way where there is great visibility back to the schools, back to the colleges, and, you know, that benefits the industry generally.

Ben Miller (VP - Global Investment Research)

Great. Nick, just on the reiterated 2025 guide, you have made a lot of progress on sportsbook renegotiations over the past few quarters. How should we think about what might still be outstanding there, especially internationally, and what is contemplated in the guide around that?

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Yeah, hey, Ben. I mean, we have said before, renegotiation of sportsbooks is something we do on a daily basis. We had the slightly strange situation in 2024 where we ended up renegotiating all of the U.S. deals at the same time. I think as we said at the time, they will be staggered over the next coming years. None of them are one-year deals.

We're not renegotiating any with the major U.S. sports books this fall. There are some other international sports books that naturally we would do and renegotiate through 2025. We've taken a reasonable view given the fact we've now got a lot of track history, both now in the U.S., but particularly in Europe, of what those re-negotiations look like. We've built any sensible upside, both in terms of product and price within the 2025 guide.

Ben Miller (VP - Global Investment Research)

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Ted Kelly with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Ted Kelly (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hey, great. Thanks for taking my question. You know, nice announcement on the NCAA. Can you talk about how that potentially allows you to, you know, potentially get the college football contracts with the SEC, Big 10, some of the other leagues and where you are there?

Interesting on the replay technology, you know, I think the pain point for sports fans here in the U.S. is just the amount of time replay reviews take. Is there an ability to sort of grow your sports tech revenue by introducing your replay technology more with the other Big Four sports banks?

Mark Locke (CEO)

Hey, thanks, Mike. Yeah, on the NCAA, obviously we can't comment on any individual conferences, but I mean, suffice to say that our technology is distributed in pretty much all of those conferences and all of those leagues. It is the data and the technology stack that collects the data from those conferences from each of those games and is used to distribute on an official basis. That is a fact.

Therefore we are clearly in an extremely strong position as the colleges evolve their thinking and decide how they'd like to move forward in the space. In terms of the replay stuff, I mean, it's quite interesting having a sort of mainly American-based investor base because the product that we put out, you know, semi-automated offside tracking, SAOT, is in sort of European terms a massive step forward. It's a huge deal in terms of, you know, EPL and the way that the game's played. The adoption has been fantastic. The actual feedback on the product and how it's sped up the game, reduced error rates. I think it's fair to say that the Premier League and, you know, where it's being used, it's been incredibly well received.

We're probably, there's quite a lot of press even coming out today that we've seen about this. You know, taking that approach and taking that level of expertise that we have and applying it to U.S. sports is absolutely something that is available to us and something that we obviously think a lot about. You know, the key to us being able to do that is the deployment of our technology within the stadiums, within the grounds. We focus on volume. We focus on soccer. We focus on basketball. Again, all of these relationships, the likes of the relationship with the NCAA and other U.S. sports that we work with gives us a stronger position and are able to be able to leverage the technology that we've got out there and provide those services to those sports.

Ted Kelly (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

How much are you cutting the review time down by?

Mark Locke (CEO)

It depends on the review, but I mean, you know, down from say three or four minutes is probably not an unreasonable statement.

Ted Kelly (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

All right. Good job and thanks.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Clark Lampen with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Clark Lampen (Managing Director and Digital Gaming Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thank you very much for taking the questions. I have two. Mark, I wanted to start by following up, I guess, on sort of first-party technology. It sounds like there's a lot of really interesting extension opportunities that stem from having, you know, the newest, I guess, sort of, you know, state-of-the-art first-party tech in stadiums.

Hopefully this makes sense, but in instances where you do not have that in place, does it in any way limit the opportunity to capitalize on augmentations or some of the other, you know, sort of value drivers that stem from having a better capture? The second question for either Mark or Josh, momentum on the FANHub side certainly seems to be picking up. I know you guys are hosting a new front later this week. I am curious if you could give us a sense for where you are seeing the most traction with the pitch right now? I know macro impacts were downplayed, but I am curious if there has been any pause in client interest or delays or sort of elongation of the sales cycle as a result of the current macro backdrop. Thank you.

Mark Locke (CEO)

Yeah. Okay. There is quite a lot in that. Okay.

To go to your first question, the first-party technology. Look, the way that we have always run our business, the principles of it is we just sort of do not believe in these big bangs. We do not believe in, you know, having to have all the technology, all the product rolled out before we make incremental revenue. You know, the distribution of GeniusIQ, or as we, you know, some people know it as Dragon, that distribution and using it as a first-party technology, as you call it, in the stadiums is a critical part of our long-term strategy.

It is not the initial necessary requirement for us to be able to generate revenues because, you know, our augmentation product that we launched and the very first versions of that that provide us with the ability to, you know, highlight and augment broadcast as well as providing advertising imagery on it as well, that is able to be done off of third-party TV streams. That is something that we have proven now, you know, fairly concisely, you know, conclusively in lots of areas. The distribution of GeniusIQ into the stadiums, this first-party technology, really what that allows us to do is to go to the next stage of evolution. It allows us to create the virtual recreations of the events. It allows us to put the mesh product out there where we have got 10,000 points on a human body 200 times a second.

It allows us to get that incredibly granular detail. It creates auto-eventing products the way we're collecting the data on the events in an automatic fashion, which again, SAOT that I was just mentioning that has come from, but also, you know, our own data collection, what we can use that data for in terms of new bet types, in terms of how we improve visualization and things like BetVision. All of those things come from that product rollout. Our product rollout has always been about how do we roll out in a considered manner? How do we do that so that we're generating incremental revenue, incremental profitability, generating, you know, improved shareholder returns from every pound of investment or dollar of investment that we're making in our software set? That philosophy hasn't changed.

It's just that we're now getting to probably the most exciting time I've ever known in Genius where, you know, we're actually getting real traction, real clients. We're getting these new products that are launching on a very, very regular basis now. You've seen an awful lot of product come out of this business in the last six to nine months. And that product adoption is really good. You know, we're really, really starting to get the flywheel that I sort of mentioned in the earnings script really spinning. We're feeling extremely positive about our product set. In fact, honestly, I couldn't be more excited about it. From the ad tech side, I mean, to tackle the first question, have we seen a slowdown or a pause?

I think there's been a couple of conversations when those sort of tariffs came in that gave a bit of pause for thought with some of the advertisers. I think it's sort of noise. I mean, this is going to be passing. As Nick said earlier, we've been extremely cautious with our assessment of the contribution from FANHub this year. It's only a few million dollars in the numbers that we've put out. That's something that we see an awful lot of upside in. You know, just from a numbers point of view, we're tracking pretty much exactly as we thought we would. You know, the augmented ads, the BetVision, the live data from sports, all of those things are coming together to provide us with ways of augmenting and advertising on unique inventory that we're creating.

So unique inventory in BetVision, in the partnerships that we're doing with our sports leagues, all of the product that we're starting to put out in the market allows us to leverage all of those parts of our ecosystem, all of the data we have to provide a really solid advertising solution for this sort of next generation of, you know, evolution in the ad tech space. We're feeling really good about it.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Nichols with DRLE. Please go ahead.

Josh Nichols (Analyst)

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Just one question for me. Just wanted to dive into BetVision a little bit more. You've had a lot of success with the NFL, and now you're expanding soccer, a very high-volume sport, of course. Like two things.

One, is there much in the guide for this BetVision expansion into soccer, or is that more an optionality? Secondly, if you could just dive a little bit into what you think the longer-term opportunity is, given the traction you've seen with the NFL over the past couple of seasons?

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Yeah, hey, Josh, I'll take the one specifically on the guide, and I'll hand over to Mark to talk about the long-term strategy and positioning of BetVision. Yeah, I mean, the majority of it is built into the guide. Like all of these things, Josh, there's always upside. You know us in terms of our relatively conservative guide position. Yeah, we do have a base. We're aware that this was obviously launching when we gave the guide. We have a base in there.As always, if we're able to accelerate this commercially, then there might well be some upside for 2025. I'll hand over to Mark to talk about the longer-term vision.

Mark Locke (CEO)

Yeah, so the longer-term vision of BetVision, not the easiest statement, is really to, you know, get it to become as ubiquitous as possible. We want to, you know, we cover an awful lot of sports. Again, you know, we're sort of up in, you know, somewhere around 90,000 soccer games a year, probably 60,000 basketball games a year. We see BetVision as a great distribution for that. Again, our strategy is kind of working exactly as we said. We said that we'd roll out soccer, you know, in this quarter. We have, you know, 18,000 games in that. We've got basketball coming next quarter.

It's about making that distribution real, making sure that we're getting it out there, making sure that we're adding additional product to BetVision, you know, whether that's the way that we're augmenting those broadcasts or whether it's functionality in terms of betting or whether it's frankly additional betting markets that we're able to offer. All of those things are coming. You know, it's about doubling down on this strategy. We're feeling really, really positive about it. The eyeballs on this product are very, very significant. We've got an awful lot of users, you know, engaging with it. We're feeling really good about that.

Josh Nichols (Analyst)

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Chad Beynon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Morning. Thanks for taking my question.

Mark, I wanted to ask about your views on the predictive markets, which have crept up more in this quarter. Do you view that as a threat against, you know, some of your partners and kind of the growth of the business, an opportunity, or, you know, would you rather leave that to kind of the regulatory groups to determine how this fits into, you know, sports betting engagement and overall wagering markets going forward? Thanks.

Mark Locke (CEO)

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty interesting, isn't it? I mean, pretty fast-moving as well. You know, we're really right in the middle of this. There's obviously a lot of, I mean, you know, you read the press every day. There's, you know, various different evolutions of it. I mean, you know, if you take it to a higher level, we see this as pretty positive, to be honest with you.

It's additional opportunity for us, additional product for us, additional partners for us. You know, we think that that's quite, you know, there's opportunities for us. You know, there are, you know, there's some sort of, you know, questions around how far this is going to go. Again, I have some views, but, you know, from our point of view, we see this as an opportunity and we see some potentially interesting moves. I think one of the questions that sort of it does raise, which I think is interesting, again, is, you know, what does this do to long-term regulation in the market? You know, does it, you know, potentially, you know, tip the interest around federal legislation of sports betting or, you know, are the states going to continue on their own?

I think that's a really interesting question and one that could have some very, you know, extremely positive ramifications, you know, if those things were to go through. You know, it's an interesting time. It's, you know, it's worth keeping an eye on and again, worth us evolving our relationships with those parties and continuing to make sure that we're well positioned to provide the right products.

Chad Beynon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Great. Thanks. And then Nick, another one in terms of what goes into the guidance. I think last year, last earnings call, you mentioned 30% in play for NFL for the season. So I'm guessing that was for Q4 and kind of the spillover into Q1. How are you thinking about that in play percentage in the guide? Is there an expected increase getting to the natural levels that we see in other markets? Thank you.

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Yeah, hey, Chad.

Yeah, I'm anticipating there to be a small increase in the back end of the year for the new, the 2025-2026 NFL season, but not a remarkable sea change. If there is, that's upside to the guide. I'm expecting it to be a couple of percentage points.

Chad Beynon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Great. Thank you both.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey with Benchmark. Please go ahead.

Mike Hickey (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, Charles. Question is just a prediction market question. Obviously, a lot to learn, but you have experience there, Mark, in Europe and other regions. You said it's sort of probably a win for you guys. Over time, do you see the necessity for live data? Mark, in these markets, or is the opportunity for you more in the media side or fan engagement opportunities?

Mark Locke (CEO)

We can't see new product based on sports events being successful without relationships being formal sports.

You know, we think that's essential. Obviously, we've got a very secure position as a partner to the league. We're very well placed to exploit those relationships as they develop and as they grow.

Mike Hickey (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, thanks. On your buyback, just maybe a clarification. Obviously, in our view, at least, your stock still seems very undervalued. Are you sort of, is this more operable? Are you continuing to hold a bit of capital on the buyback, or is this sort of a gradual sort of growth?

Mark Locke (CEO)

I'm really sorry. I can't hear you, what you're saying. I don't know if it's your line or not.

Mike Hickey (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, I'm better. That's much better, yeah. Is that better? Yeah, much better. Sorry. I think your words were just bumping out on me. Yeah, sorry, dude. On the buyback, just a clarification.

Is this more opportunistic, or should we sort of see like a quarterly cadence or grind here? Obviously, your stock, in our view at least, seems very undervalued. It seemed like a good allocation to us.

Mark Locke (CEO)

Listen, it is entirely opportunistic. It is really about just good housekeeping. You know, the market is volatile at the moment. We think that, you know, who knows if there is going to be some opportunity or not. At the moment, this is entirely opportunistic. You know, we do not see any sort of cadence you should be looking into at all.

Mike Hickey (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, good. Last clarification for us. On the NCAA deal, congratulations. Obviously, a big win for you. Just wanted to clarify, I guess, the monetization piece. Obviously, the data rights were not in your original agreement. Just was not sure, like, you know, it probably was not baked into your guide for this year.

Obviously, we're through March Madness now. I'm guessing that's sort of the big event where you would look to next year. How much monetization is that for you in the near term? In fact, is that upside to your 2025 guide? Thanks.

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Hey, Mike and Nick.You're right. You kind of slightly answered your own question there, Mike. Obviously, the lion's share of the financial aspect is March Madness. We're through that now. Therefore, I'm expecting there to be most of the monetization to happen in 2026, not in 2025. Appreciate it.

Mike Hickey (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Eric Martinuzzi (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, a question for you, Nick, on the cash use. You said in your press release that we're talking about an increase in the annual cash flow in 2025.

Yet, we saw a significant increase in the amount of cash used, at least here in Q1 of 2025 versus Q1 of 2024. Help me understand maybe one or two puts and takes that bridges that for me.

Nick Tylor (CFO)

Yeah, hi, Eric. Yeah, I never paired remarks. I reiterated what I've said previously. You know, we were obviously significantly cash positive as an operating cash flow in 2024, net cash flow as well. I'm expecting that to again happen in 2025, although I expect that to be increased proportionate with the increase of EBITDA that we're delivering in 2025 as opposed to 2024. As far as individual quarters are concerned, I'm expecting 2025 really to follow the same sort of seasonal pattern as 2024. That's really a working capital outflow probably in Q1 and Q2, and then significant working capital inflows in Q3 and Q4.

In terms of when you look at it year on year, you know how these things work, Eric. It can just be a matter of timings around payment runs, whether it's happening on the 31st of March or the 1st of April. The pattern and seasonality this year should follow next year. Therefore, expecting significant operating cash and cash inflow for 2025.

Eric Martinuzzi (Senior Research Analyst)

You're right. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

That concludes our Q&A session. That concludes today's call. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.