Better Collective has posted more financial growth in its Q2 report with largescale increased across the business.
Revenue in the period was up by 27% from 2023’s Q2 results to €99.12m (£84.21m/$110.5m), while operating profit before amortisation margin (EBITDA) rose by 28% year-on-year.
Recurring revenue jumped from €48.74m to €61.56m which the affiliate explained was achieved from good development in revenue share income, above expected sports win margin as well as additional recurring advertising revenue from acquisitions.
Euro boom
The affiliate also experienced a boost during June due to the European Championships even with fewer club games played in Europe due to the shifted calendar following the World Cup in 2022.
“Besides uniting millions of people across borders, the tournament was also a good driver for our business. We developed and executed a distinct content strategy across our European sports media during the Championship, which proved effective by driving a surge in our audience numbers,” said Jesper Søgaard, CEO and co-founder.
“Our key European sports media brands saw an increase in page views of more than 20%, while social engagements were up more than 100% with social media views up more than 100%.”
New depositing customers (NDCs) grew by 1000 in Q2 from 2023 to 501,000, with 82% of those sent on revenue share contracts. However, organic revenue growth in the three months was slower than its previous year's figure with a 5% rise compared to 29%.
Profit before tax also rose from €11.84m to €12.65m year-on-year, but operating profit fell from €20.71m to €18.56m in the same period.
Adtech rollout
Better Collective also confirmed that it increased its investments to build out adtech and sales competencies for its AdVantage platform and other AI investments. The platform is now being gradually rolled out across the affiliate’s network with its commercial team in place and the first proof of concept already achieved.
The company acquired UK sports affiliate AceOdds back in May for €42m and upgraded its 2024 full-year financial targets. Better Collective confirmed that the integration of AceOdds was “seamless and swift and the brand is outperforming expectations” as it benefitted from better search rankings from the Google updates earlier this year.
Positive Google update
The update impacted one of the affiliate’s media partnerships in North America negatively, while in Europe and the rest of the world, there was an overall positive impact. Some of Better Collective’s brands saw an increase in traffic from the update too. While the company’s sportsbook partners increased budgets within the paid media business.
Google since the close of the quarter announced a retraction of its plan to phase out third-party cookies. “Since 2020, the digital advertising industry has been bracing for this change, but likely due to the lack of a viable alternative, third-party cookies seem to be here to stay. This delay is advantageous for Better Collective in several ways,” added Søgaard.
“Firstly, our core performance marketing operations can continue using the familiar tracking methods, significantly reducing associated risks.
“Additionally, this announcement will benefit the rollout of our AdVantage platform as we can effectively combine zero, first, second, and third-party data to build and segment our audiences more efficiently.”
H1 & region revenue
Revenue from publishing grew by 33% year-on-year up to €71.18m, with the figure responsible for 72% of group earnings. Whereas, paid media’s share of group earnings dropped from 31% to 28% as its revenue rose 14% from €24.57m to €27.95m year-on-year.
Europe and the rest of the world comprised 74% of group revenue with €73.33m, up 33% from Q2 2023. North America grew by 12% in the same period to €25.79m.
For the first half of the year to date, the company experienced revenue growth of 17% with €194.15m. As costs also grew by €29m from H1 2023 driven by acquisition costs and personnel expansion. 370 employees joined Better Collective in the Playmaker Capital acquisition.
Better Collective’s financial targets for the rest of 2024 remain unchanged and sit at a revenue of €395m-€425m, which would represent a 21-30% growth. As well as an EBITDA of €130-140m, representing a 17-26% growth, and net debt to EBITDA to stay below 3x.