Flutter on track for "sustainable, recreational-driven revenue", says CFO

Flutter Entertainment has said it is on the right track to building “long-term, sustainable, recreational-driven revenue” in UK and Ireland following the implementation of its safer gambling measures.

Speaking following the London-listed operator’s Q3 results, chief financial officer (CFO) Jonathan Hill reflected on the impact of measures and praised the future direction for the group.

Flutter’s UK&I division returned a 3% year-on-year (YoY) revenue rise to £509m overall, but did record a 10% dip in sports betting revenue and a 3% slip in retail-derived revenue.

The operator has ramped up its affordability measures over the last 18 months, including the introduction of a £500 per month net deposit limit for under 25s and the group’s Play Well initiative.

In H1 2022, Flutter revealed its safer gambling measures had resulted in £48m hit to revenue during the first six months of the year.

While the group did not disclose this information in its Q3 update, CFO Hill touched on the measures during an analyst call.

Hill noted the effect on the group’s revenue, when looking at YoY comparisons, hadn’t been materially impacted due to the fact Flutter was an early mover in the safer gambling space.

Hill said: “The key point for us was we started, very early in terms of instituting a lot of changes in terms of player safety.

“There was a relatively low impact in Q3 compared to a year ago, because we really got out there early. We think that’s the right thing to do for the business, in terms of building long-term, sustainable, recreational-driven revenue,” he added.

While Hill championed the group’s efforts so far in, he also highlighted the need to continue to deliver on safer gambling measures to support customers.

“We feel as if we made those decisions for the right reasons and made those decisions early, so we’re in a good place on that, but the work is never done. There’s a lot of work going on across the group in terms of our positive impact plan.

“I think it’s a really fantastic acceleration of our efforts in terms of engaging our employees and our customers,” he added.

UK-facing operators have been making sweeping changes to safer gambling strategy ahead of the long-awaited white paper into the Gambling Act 2005 review.

It remains unclear as to when the document will actually be released, despite new Gambling Minister Paul Scully claiming it would arrive in the coming weeks.

Flutter CEO Peter Jackson confirmed he doesn’t expect to see the document until 2023, while Hill also touched on his concerns over the delay.

He said: “We all want certainty; we pray for certainty. It’s not been a period of great certainty in UK politics, but we would love to see the white paper coming out in order to get that clarity and certainty for ourselves.”

Elsewhere, Hill confirmed to the Business Post the company has completed its strategic review of its UK&I division, resulting in far fewer redundancies than the potential 200 it had initially flagged.

The redundancies were part of measures taken by the Dublin-headquartered operator to improve efficiency across the Sky Betting & Gaming (SBG) business via further integration into the wider Flutter group.

“I think we flagged around 200 roles would go through that [process]. In the end it was significantly less than that,” Hill said.