Copenhagen-headquartered sports betting media group Better Collective has published its financial results for the second quarter of 2020, ending on 30th June.
Revenue dipped slightly year-on-year, which was primarily a result of the impact of the COVID-19 impact on major global sporting events.
Overall H1 2020 revenue went up, with the company also reiterating its financial targets for this year.
Better Collective has also signed a letter of intent to acquire an unnamed iGaming company in a deal worth millions of Euros.
Q2 performance
Revenue in Q2 2020 declined by 4% year-on-year, with €15.3 million being generated in this respect (Q2 2019: €15.8 million). Organic revenue fell by 24%.
EBITDA before special items also suffered a slight drop. The figure for this stood at €6.3 million at the end of June, compared to €6.8 million in the same three months last year.
As one might expect from players having very few sporting events to bet on in April and May especially, Better Collective saw a drop in new depositing customers. 71,000 players created accounts in Q2 2020, which was 36% lower than had been the case in Q2 2019.
Recovery
Coinciding with the return of sports and many countries easing their lockdown measures, Better Collective performed better year-on-year in the month of July. Revenue for this month was €6.1 million, representing a total growth of 6% – 4% of which was organic.
Compared to July 2019, new depositing customers also rose by 25%. Better Collective said in its email release that “based on betting activity in our major European revenue share accounts, European sports wagering showed the second-highest month ever”.
The company’s CEO Jesper Søgaard had the following to say about what was a challenging quarter for the sports betting industry.
“As expected, Q2 was a challenging quarter for online sports betting as the COVID-19 pandemic set a halt on major sports events. April was the low point, May still significantly affected, and in June some of the major sports in Europe resumed with accelerated play-offs.
“Sports markets in large countries like the US and LATAM are still affected and will expectedly start again in the second half of the year. However, our digital business model has proven strong under these difficult circumstances and Better Collective has demonstrated the flexibility to withstand a period of low sports activity.”
He also said that he was “very proud that we could maintain our financial earning target (EBITA > 40%) both for Q2 isolated and the full half year”.
Acquisition coming soon?
Better Collective has also announced in a letter of intent that it plans to purchase a company within the iGaming industry for up to the region of €45 million.
It said that the “target company has a global presence and is specialised within lead generation towards online gambling”. On top of this, the target company expects to generate over €40 million in revenue and operational EBITDA earnings surpassing €8 million in 2020.
At the moment, the acquisition is awaiting due diligence – as well as final contract negotiations.
H1 results also strong
Despite Q2 2020 posing unique challenges for Better Collective, the company still enjoyed overall growth when looking at the entirety of H1 2020. Revenue reached €36.2 million, up 17.7% compared to H1 2019.
Better Collective has also reiterated that its financial targets for the calendar year remain unchanged, despite the pandemic. The company has stood by this stance since the earlier days of COVID-19.
