Pinned straw:
Discl: Not Held, In Thesis Building Mode
Continuing my notes:
F. LEADING BOOKMAKERS & BETTING GROUPS - GLOBAL REACH/TOTAL REVENUE
Here’s how the top horse-racing bookmakers and betting groups rank globally by overall revenue or reach — noting, however, that most operators aren’t breaking out horse-racing–specific figures separately.
These figures reflect overall betting revenue, not solely from horse racing. However, big operators like Flutter, Bet365, Entain, and William Hill derive a meaningful portion of their activities from horse-racing markets (fixed odds, pools, exchanges, broadcast partnerships).
Horse racing remains especially significant in regions like the UK, Australia, and the U.S., where bookmakers typically highlight these events with live streaming, commingled pools, and special markets
1. Flutter Entertainment
Overview: The world’s largest online betting company. In 2023, total revenue reached $11.8 billion. This includes horse-racing exposure via brands like Betfair, Paddy Power, and FanDuel. (TIME)
Notable Expansion: Flutter acquired stakes in Brazil’s NSX Group and Italy’s Snaitech—underscoring its global footprint. (MarketWatch, Reuters)
Leads by a wide margin as the largest global betting company, with extensive horse-racing operations embedded across its brands.
2. Bet365
Overview: One of the most profitable betting companies globally. For fiscal year ending March 2024, group revenue was £3.72 billion (~$4.65 billion). (Betting US, iGB, gamblinginsider.com, SBC Americas)
Context: Though not as large as Flutter, Bet365’s sheer scale rivals top-tier operators.
Powerful standalone operator with strong horse-racing integration and broadcast rights, particularly in the UK and increasingly in the U.S.
3. Entain Group (Paddy Power/Ladbrokes / Coral)
Overview: Major bookmaker with global presence and strong horse-racing offerings. While not stated here, it’s regularly listed among the industry's top five. (Betting & Gaming Council)
Holds a top-three position globally, with major racing wagers running through its brands.
4. William Hill (now part of 888)**
Overview: In 2023, revenue was around £1.2 billion (~$1.5 billion). (iGaming Express, Covers.com)
Horse-Racing Exposure: Historically, horse-racing accounted for about £1.4 billion in turnover back in 2017. (Andrew Cetnarskyj)
Smaller but still a major force, especially in UK racing cycles
5. Other Noteworthy Players
Betfair / FanDuel (part of Flutter but notable on their own): Betfair Group’s standalone revenue is estimated at £340 million historically, while current numbers are embedded within Flutter’s results. (Tracxn, bloodhorse.com)
Crypto Operators (e.g., Stake): Not traditional bookmakers, yet emerging players like Stake reported $4.7 billion GGR in 2024. (Financial Times)
Emerging players like crypto-based operators are starting to shift the competitive landscape, although their horse-racing penetration remains limited.
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Have circled RTH's existing customer which are highlighted above. Its a decent overlap, which gives me confidence that RTH is indeed playing with the Tier-1's, particularly Flutter, Bet365 and Entain, the Top 3.
G. GLOBAL HORSE RACING DATA & CONTENT PROVIDERS
This is RTH's biggest segment.
“Data & Content” here covers official entries/results/past-performances, live video/simulcast, live odds/price feeds, trading/odds engines and editorial/form/rating services.
No clean global market-share number is publicly published. Providers report customers, volumes (events/day, data points) or revenue segments — but they rarely publish a standardized “% of global racing data market” figure. Market share must therefore be inferred from: (a) official status in jurisdictions (e.g., Equibase in US; JRA in Japan; PMU in France), (b) customer counts and geographic coverage (e.g., SIS claims ~400 customers in 50 countries), and (c) commercial footprints of sportsbook platform vendors (Betgenius, Sportradar, Kambi/OpenBet) in operator technology stacks. (SIS, Equibase, Timeform).
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Each of the main horse racing jurisdictions has its own clear owner of data. And from @mushroompanda 's diagram, we know that RTH ingests data from these governing bodies as one of its inputs into the RTH Data & Analytics that RTH eventually publishes to its customers.
The 3 questions in my mind that I would want to ask management around this topic:
- "What is the RTH value add/enrichment/amalgamation from other sources, either in process, content and/or analytics, that makes the RTH Data & Analytics valuable to its customers".
- How is this value add executed - humans or AI (it will be both), and in what proportion
- How is this value add important/critical to the success of its key customers, particularly the handful that makes up a significant chunk of RTH's revenue base
The answers are not immediately clear to me ... this is quite key to gain an understanding off, as I think this will provide insights on the moat and the strength of the moat. It will also allow for an assessment of risks around customer concentration.
As a regular industry participant (a gambler that loves a punt), I'll try to add a bit of colour and answer your queries to some degree @jcmleng
Firstly, in your graphic where you've circled RAS's customers, it turns out that you can also circle the following entities as well
- Neds and Ladbrokes are Entain's two Australian Brands; and
- Sportsbet and Paddypower are owned by Flutter
So my read on this is that RAS would have at least 80% (Probably >90%) of Australian dollars gambled covered in the above 4 entities + TAB + Pointsbet. Globally it would not be to the same degree as yet, but therein lies the market opportunity. The other query I have here though is what is the TAM? How many more potential customers are there if you already have so many of the major players?
Looking into this further, these enhanced information services they provide tend to be things like race previews, horse-by-horse commentary, horse statistics from past races, detailed placing information for every horse in a race and all that sort of information that could theoretically give a punter confidence in order to bet more dollars. This information provided to punters continues to increase in volume every year and shows no signs of stopping. I would assume that they are the provider of this same sort of information on sporting events too.
To answer your questions directly
- What is the RTH value-add/enrichment - A great question! This is what I'm personally struggling with when it comes to RAS. How strong is the moat if your main source of income is buying data/results/info from a variety of providers and then combining this info for betting sites? It sounds like the value predominantly comes from strong execution when compared to their competitors and to some degree a level of technological lock-in. Technological lock-in definitely counts when it comes to a moat, but how locked-in are customers and what would customers do if RAS start hiking prices?
- I don't know how the value-add is split between AI / Humans, except to say that it would seem to be an industry that would be relatively easily transitioned to AI? Further to the above, I note that all of those Australian brands now have horse-by-horse commentary provided I assume by RAS, but all have differing comments for the same horse. It would make sense to me if AI is already involved here?
- I think asking whether the information is valuable is definitely relevant, but in some ways, it's possibly slightly redundant in my view. If you currently offer all this information as every major Australian betting website does currently, it's difficult to imagine a website removing that information when all of your competitors still have it and remaining competitive in the market? So the more relevant question is probably similar to point 1, will it always be RAS that will be the best value provider of that information?
So yeh, I'm with you in being very interested in RAS and looking forward to learning some more at the meeting!