Flutter Entertainment plc Fireside chat

Jed, lovely to see you. Thank you for having us.

Of course. I mean, look, we've been talking to a lot of people about this, Jed, and it's been a very straightforward decision for us to make. Let me give you the background to it. I think the first thing I'd say is that the sportsbook improvement plan we put into place in FanDuel has been working very well. When I think about the recent performance of the business on a number of dimensions, I think we've been very pleased to see the progress that we're making. Whether it's the introduction of the loyalty program, which is improving average player days, whether it's actually us providing better engagement and entertainment for our customers, I think that's certainly been the case. Look, as someone who's spent a lot of time in New York, you'll have some sympathy for those customers who are betting on the Mets.

When they were on their long losing streak, we had a bit of fun with that and we were refunding customers their money. At the start of the Soccer World Cup, we did that big promo around goals to be scored, particularly for the American team, but also around the group stage of the tournament, knowing that that would give customers the winning feeling and get them excited as we are going into the tournament. I think all those have, from a loyalty perspective, we had great traction with the Bet Protect+ product, which dealt with the injury issue. I think we have had really good traction sort of landing the excitement that FanDuel brings to our customers.

When I look at what has been happening from a customer perspective, if I take the NBA finals, we saw 26% more actives on a game this year compared to last year. 40% more handle. I mean, of course it was terrific if you had the chance to be in New York and feel the excitement of the city and the Knicks had that huge victory. With that great quality content, we saw really good traction and engagement from customers. Now, it was not necessarily the most profitable thing from our perspective, but it meant that customers had full wallets going into the Soccer World Cup. We saw 2.3 million customers engage with us through the World Cup. A third of those were customers who had reactivated. So they were lapsed customers from the football season last year.

People who had got a little bit disappointed with the very high margins, the poor quality content we saw. We are sat here right now, and we are carrying a much bigger business from a customer perspective than we normally would do into the second half of the year. We are seeing good momentum, as I say. The loyalty programs working will be fully rolled out for the football season. Bet Protect, I think, is really resonating with customers. We had a great instance of it the other night where it paid out. For us, the question was: How do we make sure that we extend our leadership position in OSB, right? From my perspective, I want to make sure that when we exit 2026, we have a bigger business with a better trajectory for the future from a market share perspective.

That is what we are focused on. The way to think about this is it is an investment in growing ARPU. We have done a lot to build our AMPs platform over the years, but this is about growing ARPU, share of wallet, and also driving up the sort of expenditure in the category.

Rob, I do not know if there is anything else you want to Yes, I think Peter's touched on the main points.

This is about focusing on the longer-term U.S. opportunity, which we still think is very substantial for us, and that's a lot more important than maximizing short-term EBITDA, and that's why we're willing to make this investment. I think as we think about this into 2027, we need to trade through the NFL in Q3 and Q4 and see what kind of momentum that we've got exiting the year. I also think it's sensible to assume that we continue investing into 2027. It's a short to medium term thing. I don't think we'll be doing this in perpetuity, and there's lots of levers that we can pull in time. We're very confident about our longer term margin trajectory.

Certainly, we would foresee continuing this in the short to medium term, particularly given the levels of success that we're having early on in this investment program.

I think our brand is a really important part of their whole feature set and value proposition for customers, right? I think it's important that we talk about our product features, whether that's the parlays or indeed loyalty, or indeed Bet Protect+. I also think when people see the FanDuel brand advertised and watch those commercials, they're going to be proud that that's the sportsbook that they're carrying. Right? I think you'll see us try and use the FanDuel brand more as part of the value proposition that we have for customers as well. Look, we spend a lot of money. We're on air a lot. We engage with a lot of consumers, and I think it's important that the FanDuel brand stands for that. Part of that value proposition that we deliver customers as well.