FDJ United will not withdraw its Unibet brand from the UK market despite ongoing tax pressure and a decline in betting revenues in Q1, according to the company’s new gaming and betting chief Pascal Chaffard.
During its Q1 earnings report yesterday FDJ said its Kindred UK GGR was down 24.1%. Further pains were hinted at as remote gaming duty was increased from 21% to 40% of GGR in April.
FDJ reported further struggles in Netherlands in Q1, due to that country’s recent tax hikes.
Total group GGR in Q1 edged up by 1% to €2.175 billion, while revenue dipped 3% to €895 million.
But online betting and gaming, consisting of its Kindred operations, posted declines in both GGR (-1%) and revenue (-8%).
When excluding results from the UK and Netherlands, online betting and gaming GGR ticked up 6% during the quarter, while revenue edged down 1%.
Chaffard, who recently transitioned from CFO to lead a strategic turnaround of FDJ’s online betting and gaming unit, was asked during the earnings call whether FDJ would consider withdrawing from the UK.
But he remains bullish on the market, noting: “Our market share in the UK is in the region of low single digit. The situation in the UK is that we are profitable.
“So we don’t have any intention to withdraw from the UK. I think it’s not the point. The point is that we have some problems to solve.
“We have to find some way to be, at the same time, compliant and in capacity to grow. [Frankly] some of our competitors have been able to do that. We are not less smart than them.”
Collaboration to play key role in FDJ’s UK turnaround
Giving more colour on how FDJ expects to turn its UK fortunes around, Chaffard said it would rely on better collaboration between the company’s different departments. He told analysts departments had previously been too siloed.
In its Q1 report, FDJ said it had already initiated plans to implement “targeted task forces” in the UK and Netherlands to enhance collaboration.
“We had some marketing initiatives from the marketing [team], some product initiatives from the product [team], some RG requirements from the responsible gaming team, some AML requirements from the AML team, not working really around the same table to find the best way to implement all that and to make it globally efficient,” Chaffard told analysts. “So it’s a question of [finding] ways of working.
“It’s a question also on how we dig in the different details with the data that is needed to really understand what are the right decisions to take and the right moves to make.
“What I’ve done is to take all the specialists and lock them in the same room. What is completely true is that all those elements are totally linked.”
Chaffard also stressed that FDJ did not envision a UK turnaround would take too long, adding: “The question is to do things right. We don’t think that it will need years to come to this situation because at the end, it’s not a very structurally deep problem.
“It’s more the way we are working, as I said, the way we are implementing our different measures. So for me, there is absolutely no question of getting out of the UK. The top priority is to fix this problem, and it’s more a question of some quarters, maybe not one quarter, [but] some quarters [more than] than years to get there, frankly.”
Kyle Goldsmith
Kyle has been with Clarion since December 2023, joining from the world of sports journalism, subsequently becoming a LatAm-facing senior reporter with iGB.
