Genius Sports at Citi’s 2025 Conference: Growth and Strategic Insights

On Friday, September 5, 2025, Genius Sports (NYSE:GENI) presented at Citi’s 2025 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference, outlining a robust growth strategy and innovative technological advancements. The company highlighted its consistent revenue growth and strategic partnerships, while also addressing industry challenges such as market consolidation and the evolving landscape of sports betting.

Key Takeaways

• Genius Sports projects a 26% revenue growth for 2024, maintaining a long-term annual growth rate of approximately 20%.
• The company is leveraging its BetVision product to enhance in-play betting engagement.
• A new partnership with PMG aims to expand Genius Sports’ media business through innovative advertising solutions.
• Genius Sports is debt-free and has raised $140 million for potential mergers and acquisitions.
• CFO Nick Taylor announced his transition, with Brian Castellani set to take over the role.

Financial Results

• Revenue Growth: Since its listing in 2021, Genius Sports has consistently grown over 20% annually. The latest guidance for 2024 projects a 26% revenue increase.
• Betting Segment: This segment is experiencing a 40% year-on-year growth globally, with U.S. betting growth surpassing this rate.
• Media Business: The second half of the year is expected to show a 60% year-on-year increase, contributing to an overall annual growth of about 20%.
• EBITDA Margin: The EBITDA margin has risen from 5% to 21%, with a target of over 30%.
• Cash Flow: The company generated $82 million in operating cash flow in 2024 and expects to remain cash positive in 2025.

Operational Updates

• In-Play Betting: In mature markets, in-play sports betting accounts for 60% to 70% of the handle, with the U.S. market trending upwards from around 30%.
• BetVision: This tool is highly successful, with 76% of its handle coming from in-play sports bets. It is available for the NFL and is being launched for soccer and basketball.
• Media Business: The partnership with PMG will help tap into new markets through self-serve advertising. The company is expanding its advertising channels, including BetVision and augmented broadcasting.

Future Outlook

• Market Expansion: Genius Sports plans to leverage the expansion of new states in the U.S. and countries like Brazil legalizing betting in 2025.
• Product Development: The company aims to develop new products and features to enhance relationships with sportsbooks and media organizations.
• M&A Activities: With $140 million raised, Genius Sports is seeking strategic mergers and acquisitions to accelerate growth in media and betting.
• Geographic Focus: The focus will remain on areas outside the U.S., where the majority of revenues still reside.

Q&A Highlights

• Prediction Markets: Genius Sports views prediction markets like Kalshi and Robinhood as potential future customers.
• Fan Engagement: The company is focused on engaging the next generation of fans through personalization and gamification.
• AI Applications: AI is playing a significant role in transforming operations, offering cost savings and new revenue opportunities.

For a detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript of the conference call.

Full transcript - Citi’s 2025 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference:

Jason, Interviewer: Very excited to have Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer of Genius Sports. Nick, thanks for coming.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, great to be here, Jason. Thank you for inviting us, as always.

Jason, Interviewer: Absolutely. I will give you just a little bit of color in terms of what I think is happening with investors. Like every month that goes by, we get a few more sort of inbound calls where people say, "Hey, get me up to speed, you know, on what Genius Sports does," right? The investor interest just seems like it’s building. Maybe we’ll just start for those that are maybe uninitiated, if you can just start with just a brief overview of what your firm does and your strategy, just to level set for anyone that might be new to the story.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, first of all, great to hear that investors certainly we’re seeing that in our sessions in this conference and in other conferences we’re doing. I mean, look, Jason, at our core, we’re a sports technology company and we partner with the world of sport. So, 400, 500 different sports leagues and federations, and we effectively capture their data and monetize it. The technology we’re deploying across the world of sport is giving them rich data insights, next generation betting products, media products, officiating products, a huge suite of different products. Effectively, we’re sort of the only company that is creating an end-to-end sports technology platform from data capture all the way through to betting, all the way through to advertising.

That’s quite strategically important because not only does it mean that those relationships with sport become very deep and very sticky, the barriers to entry are huge, but also there’s an increasingly diversification of those revenue opportunities that we get from each level of those different technologies.

Jason, Interviewer: That’s perfect. When you say the barriers to entry are significant, that really emanates, is it from the data rights themselves that you’re securing, or is it broader than that?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: It’s much broader than that. Absolutely, there are barriers to entry from our relationships with all the sports and indeed all the sportsbooks or media organizations or broadcasters. The technology really is the major barrier to entry, whether that’s our data capture technology, whether that’s our augmented reality technology, our AI technology, GeniusIQ, whatever it might be, that’s the real barrier to entry for Genius.

Jason, Interviewer: That’s great. It feels like I’m going to come to this a bit later, so I don’t want to front run myself. Let me ask you about top line growth. Let’s just do that. I think you’ve suggested you can grow about 20% over the medium term.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: That’s right.

Jason, Interviewer: Okay.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, we’ve said, you know, we’ve grown 20%, north of 20% every single year we’ve been listed, and we’ve been doing this in a listed environment since 2021. This year, our latest guide, I think, is at 26%. We’ve said we’re not in a business that’s slowing down at any point in time, and therefore we’re guiding to a sort of long-term projection of around 20% on an annual basis.

Jason, Interviewer: Okay. What would you say are the building blocks of that 20% growth?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, in betting, I think they’re relatively well known, but I’ll touch on them, as you say, for the uninitiated. In betting, there’s obviously TAM is a significant tailwind in the industry. We obviously talk about the U.S. a lot, particularly based here in New York, and we continue to see that with new states opening up over the course of the last five years. Not just new states opening up, but actually continued growth in gaming revenue on the states that have been betting for five years. Of course, it’s not just a U.S. play. Let’s remember that the majority of our revenues still sit outside of the U.S., and therefore you look at things like Brazil opening up in 2025 and a whole suite of other countries, whether it’s Germany or other European entities where TAM continues to grow. That’s absolutely a key betting tailwind.

The other betting tailwind that is a very structural tailwind is the move to in-play sports betting.

Jason, Interviewer: Yep.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: You have heard us say this before, Jason, in mature markets, in-play sports betting is anywhere between about 60% to 70% of handle. The U.S. has always traditionally been the reverse of that because it’s such a nascent market. We probably sat in this conference three years ago, and there was some skepticism about whether the U.S. was structurally different to anyone else, the consumer was different, the sport was different. What has really been proved out over the course of the last 18 months, particularly, is that’s not true. What is happening is that the market is moving to that, to the in-play market. It’s still only about 30%-ish, and different sports, different states, different companies will quote different numbers. What is absolutely true is that it’s moving, and we’re seeing that move operator-led, product-led. That’s absolutely a tailwind.

Remembering that Genius Sports has traditionally taken about 3x revenue from an in-play sports bet than a pre-play sports bet with zero additional cost.

Jason, Interviewer: Yep.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: The last thing in betting, the last tailwind, just quickly to touch on, obviously, is product and price. We continue to develop a significant level of product through our technology that I mentioned earlier, and that’s enabling us really to take more value from our relationships. We saw that when we renegotiated our U.S. sportsbooks in the fall last year, and we’re seeing the benefit of that in our 2025 numbers. Betting is our betting segment, I think, is up 40% year on year, and that’s on a global basis. You can infer that the U.S. betting is up higher than that. That will be a continuing theme over the course of the next five, ten years as technology continues to improve.

You can see then when we talk about 20% growth, one of the great things about Genius Sports and me being in my seat is we don’t all have our eggs all in one basket. There’s a number of different growth levers within that betting space. In the media space, we’re seeing great momentum in the media, and I’m sure Jason will touch on that in a little bit more detail over the next half hour. We’re seeing real momentum. Sport is becoming an increasingly important lever for brands to reach their customers, and we are perfectly placed to take advantage of that mega trend.

Jason, Interviewer: That’s great. Can we talk about this live betting mix?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, of course.

Jason, Interviewer: 30% moving to the 70% rest of the world. How much of that do you feel like is just the American consumer just getting acclimated to the ability to do an in-play bet? How much do you feel like is sort of fueled by products or software that you’re putting in front of the punter to sort of lean into these opportunities? It’s both.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: It’s both effectively. I mean, but it’s sequential. So it’s an out-of-date stat now, but I believe FanDuel—I think it was two or three years ago when they did an Investor Day—said something along the lines that 67% of their NFL bets are all things that people bet on. Whatever’s on their front page is what people are betting on. I guess when it was originally legalized sports betting, it was almost seen like a sort of lottery win. You know, parlays were very popular because you put on a $5 bet and you win $10,000. Of course you don’t win $10,000. I wouldn’t be doing this job. I’d be doing another job. That’s the kind of mentality. What’s happened, obviously, is as people get more used to it, it becomes more habitual and people become more sophisticated. That has to be led by product.

What we’ve seen from the operators, and again, Jason, you’ll talk to them more than I will, is you just listen to the mood music of the operators. You listen to an earnings call from one of the operators now, and front and center of their strategy and focus right now is in-play sports betting, where it probably wasn’t two or three years ago. Obviously, Genius Sports is right in the vanguard of that product evolution with something like BetVision, which is a very powerful tool helping to drive in-play. It’s not the only tool, and sportsbooks will create their own tools around it. That’s all good news for Genius Sports because it all gets powered from Genius Sports technology.

Jason, Interviewer: Understood. What has been the feedback for those that are really leaning into BetVision? What’s been the feedback from the OSP?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: It’s great. It’s a really powerful tool. All major U.S. sportsbooks have BetVision. It is for the NFL. It is a significantly important tool. It’s really driving engagement from the sportsbook’s perspective. It’s driving dwell time. It’s driving eyeballs. From a betting perspective, I think in the last season, I think it was 76% of all handle from people on BetVision was an in-play sports bet. You can see it’s more than double the underlying sports bet. You can see it being really in the vanguard of driving that in-play sports betting. Yeah, hugely successful tool. We continue to develop it week on week, product on product, through our analysis, through push notifications, through contextual bets, through a whole range of products.

What Genius Sports has done in the last six months is we’ve now launched BetVision for soccer, and we’re in the process of about to launch BetVision for basketball as well. It’s a key tool for operators.

Jason, Interviewer: That’s great. Can I shift gears and move to the media business?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yep, of course.

Jason, Interviewer: Maybe just describe who the customers are in the media business and then what the value is that you’re providing with your products to those customers.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah. If we take a step back on the media side, Jason, and think about what the sort of key trends in the space of advertising is and why that matters to us. I’ve already said, I think earlier, that sport is a key trend. If you think about, you know, it’s effectively one of the only things that really anyone watches live anymore, given the fragmentation of broadcasting. Most brands are now desperate to associate themselves with somehow an innovative way to associate themselves with sport. The second trend of that, of course, is the moving away from the linear sport and moving to digital platforms as well. Therefore, you’ve got those brands looking for new and innovative ways of reaching that sports customer. Now where Genius then plays into that is, first of all, we have a unique data set. What do I mean by that?

We have a whole raft of first-party data ourselves, whether that’s from our free-to-play games, our fantasy games, but also from those 400 to 500 sports partnerships that I mentioned earlier. We have access to a lot of first-party data through those relationships, whether that’s NFL.com or NFLApp. Effectively, we know the customer, we know the sports fan. We know who you are, we know who you support, we know who your favorite player is, we know where you’re looking for stats. We also know, because of our live data capture, we know when those key moments of sports are as they’re happening, you know, the touchdown, the three points, the soccer goal. That allows us, and that moment of high emotion, if you will, only lasts for a very short period of time.

If you marry those two things together, what we’re able to do on behalf of our customers is we’re able to target the right person with the right content at that right time, that key moment of emotion that allows that. What we’re effectively doing for our brands. We’ve traditionally done that through a number of different channels. We can do that via social, we do that via connected TV, we can do it via third-party inventory, but also increasingly, we are doing it and will accelerate doing it through our own inventory. That’s inventory that we’re creating via things like our BetVision platform, but also via things like augmented broadcasting that we’re doing in the market.

Jason, Interviewer: Can you, sorry, what was the last thing that you said?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: When we look at the channels that we are hitting the right customer with the right content at the right time, we do it through the traditional channels, but increasingly we’re going to do it through our own inventory. We can do that for a number of ways. BetVision is obviously something that we’ve talked about for our own inventory, but one of the other ways is through our augmented broadcasting and our broadcasting relationships that we have. We’re already in the process of doing it now, and we’ll see more of this, Jason, where we’re creating inventory for broadcasters that we can attract to brands.

Jason, Interviewer: Okay, that makes sense. What about FanHub? I think it launched about a year ago. How would you say that’s evolving?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: I mean, it’s great. It’s really driving high-quality conversations, Jason, is what I’d say. First of all, you can see it in our media numbers. Our second half of the year this year, I think we’re guiding to around about 60% year-on-year increase. Overall, that’ll be about a 20% annual increase. In the second half of the year, that’s accelerating, and absolutely, this is part of that acceleration. The whole platform, everything I’ve just talked about is really driving that. You’re seeing that not just with sportsbooks, but increasingly with non-sportsbook brands. On a quarterly basis, we’ll talk about that, whether that’s with Walmart or whether that’s with Pepsi. Increasingly, as I say, through our own inventory.

A good example for that is in our BetVision product this year, where as part of our extended NFL deal that we did in the summer, we now have the right to sell that inventory within BetVision, both domestically and internationally for the coming season. That’s a really good example that’s been driven through FanHub that is moving and evolving our media product rapidly.

Jason, Interviewer: That’s great. A few months ago, I think it was July, you announced a partnership with an ad agency.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, that’s right.

Jason, Interviewer: PMG.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah.

Jason, Interviewer: Why is that so important? What do you think it was?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Thank you for prompting me, Jason, because that’s a great, it segues into the next stage of our media strategy. Traditionally, we’ve done a lot of managed programmatic media, and that’s been a huge success. Our revenues have effectively doubled over the last few years in that space. Where FanHub is also going to, it’s becoming important is that self-serve position. That’s really through agencies. By doing deals with agencies, that’s creating a whole new total addressable market that effectively we’ve not had a chance to execute on. Now, why did PMG, why have they done the deal? PMG, obviously, as you know, is the U.S.’s largest independent advertising agency. Their customer list reads like a sort of royalty of consumer brands in the U.S., whether that’s Nike or Dre, Dreback Beats or Peloton and a whole swathe of other consumers.

Their customers, their brands themselves are looking at innovating in sport. How do they reach the sports brands? PMG are looking for innovative ways to service their customers. Genius Sports is an obvious place for them to start. We’ve done a deal with PMG. That’s a minimum revenue guarantee deal. Our aim is to blow completely through that. That is through exactly what I’ve talked about in terms of getting those brands associated with innovative ways in sport, whether that’s through our whole suite of products or indeed our own inventory that we’re selling that you can only go and buy from FanHub. You can’t buy that inventory from any other place. You’ll see increasingly, not just over the rest of 2025, but actually through 2026 and 2027, where that will accelerate that quality of inventory, whether that’s through BetVision or other means.

Jason, Interviewer: That’s great. I think everyone in this room would know that more video is going digital, more sport is going digital, but it does feel like there’s a little bit of a discontinuity with Disney’s ESPN flagship and Fox One sort of launching, I think right now or just launched maybe last month. Is that important if you’re a shareholder of Genius Sports? Does that really matter to you or sort of irrelevant? You know, the consumption is the consumption. The fact that it’s going to be a bit more digital doesn’t really mean a lot.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: I think it’s all good news for Genius Sports. I think anyone coming into the sector, whether that’s in broadcasting or sports engagement or indeed sports books, coming in looking to differentiate themselves, looking to do that via innovative ways is great news for Genius Sports because that’s effectively what GeniusIQ is doing. GeniusIQ is, you know, as our technology that we’re rolling out into Stadia, that’s all about personalizing the experience of sport. It’s all about, if I’ve got a 17-year-old son, he watches sport very, very differently to the way I used to watch sport when I was a Jason, which was a long time ago. His is all about that second screen experience. It’s about personalization. It’s about stats. It’s about gamification. That’s effectively what GeniusIQ is doing in sport and all the different monetization opportunities that that brings.

The more people coming into this space looking to differentiate it by product is great news for Genius Sports because ultimately they become customers of ours, Jason. That’s how we’re looking at it.

Jason, Interviewer: Okay. It feels to me, maybe I’m wrong, but as I’ve listened to Disney over the years, they used to sort of almost shy away from sport and betting, and it feels like they’ve gotten more and more comfortable with it as the years have gone by, where they seem more amenable to sort of integrating, partnering, doing a lot of things on a sports betting front.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: I mean, effectively, sports betting is just the ultimate fun engagement. Nobody’s more engaged than the guy who’s got $10 in the fourth quarter last night for the Eagles versus the Cowboys. Fun engagement is critical, particularly as we talked about in sport, as all of these, you know, the sort of convergence. You’ve heard Mark Locke talk about the convergence of media and broadcast and betting and streaming all coming together. We’re seeing that play out. Sports betting is just a very effective fun engagement tool in the same way all of this. Again, as product becomes a differentiator for them, that’s good news for Genius Sports.

Jason, Interviewer: Can I talk about just the competitive landscape?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, of course.

Jason, Interviewer: It feels like things have gotten less complex or less fragmented, I guess. I’d just love for you to paint a picture of how you saw the competitive landscape a few years ago, how you sort of see it today.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, I think that’s a good description of it, Jason, actually. I think if you probably went back to our IPO documents in 2021, we’d probably go on that slide of competitive landscape. There’s probably four, five names on that landscape. Effectively, that has definitely reduced over time. Therefore, data collection is a complicated business. The technology for that is not straightforward. I don’t think it’s any surprise that landscape has shrunk. We look on that as good news. It certainly feels more rational. I look at Genius Sports and I look at our relationships with sports. They’re long-term relationships. If you look at our relationship with the NFL, this season that kicked off last night would have been our first year outside of our original deal that we did in 2021. Of course, as you know now, we have a long-term deal that is secured out until 2030. U.K.

soccer, the same. It’s broadly the same kind of territory. NCAA, we’ve just done a deal with. I think that goes out beyond 2030, 2032, I think it might be. FIBA relationships with global basketball, the same. There’s definitely a more rational aspect to it. The other thing we’re seeing, I think, is a much more rational behavior around rights costs as well. If you look at the deals that we announced in the summer, European soccer is a great example of that, where it was a previous deal. I think it was an IMG deal before we’ve taken it over. European soccer, just to level set, everyone’s aware, it’s a pan-European, 16 countries, 46 leagues, 8,000 events of soccer content. Really high-quality content. Our rights cost that we are paying for that is an absolute fraction of what IMG paid for that.

That really is part of that dynamic of a more rational marketplace.

Jason, Interviewer: Right. Does it also help you with the sportsbooks themselves having fewer players in there, or do you see it mostly on the cost side in the sports data?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: I think it simplifies it. I think that’s fair. All global sports books work with us and our peers because, if you’re a legal global sports book, you would want to offer NFL events or UK soccer events or Serie A now in Italy or after 80,000 FIBA events. That means you work with Genius Sports. In the same way, you work with some of our peers for their suite of products. I think it probably simplifies. Inevitably, fewer partners means, particularly for Genius Sports, because our technology position allows us to be much more of a technology partner. We’ve talked about being a technology partner to sport, but that’s beginning to play out for sports books as well.

In the U.S., we talk about BetVision, but you must remember in Europe, our relationships with sports books is technology-driven as well because we do a huge swathe of other services for those sports books, whether it’s Flutter or Bet365 or N10 Group, whether it’s line setting and risk management, odds, opening and closing markets. It’s still very much based in that technology position.

Jason, Interviewer: The only thing that I can think of that sort of makes me a little bit nervous when I think about where we are, the sports betting industry is and where it could go, is if we saw sort of a shakeout and more consolidation happen at the OSB level. Does that worry you at all or not?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: No, no, it doesn’t actually. If you assume a consolidation, first of all, consolidation, the rationale presumably to do that at an OSB level is to make them more profitable and larger scale. That’s good news for Genius Sports. You know, a profitable sports book is great news because it means they have more money to spend on innovation, on product, and again, that leads to spending more with Genius Sports. Also, if you assume that effectively the total addressable market doesn’t change, it just becomes two becomes one, then effectively the way our contracts are set up is that we’re effectively sharing in any upside on sports books. No, we’re not worried about that. In fact, a few number of partners, a few number of peers becomes partnerships more because you’re, again, back to our technology position, you’re really driving that technology.

If you think about the other sort of short-term supposed headwinds that are out there in terms of betting markets, they don’t really impact Genius Sports very much. You think about tax rates or you think about hold. You must remember, again, as I said earlier, probably 40% of revenues are U.S.-based. This is significantly outside of the U.S. When you think about one particular state, it then doesn’t become material. The way a lot of our contracts are set up that we did this time last year, we bore that in mind for some of our contracts. Some of our contracts would now take a percentage of handle. It’s a tax rate, aren’t it, influencing for us? Some of them we have minimum revenue guarantees. Again, we’ve taken some of that sort of hold variance out of the market as well.

Some of the contracts we’ve even fixed certain elements of our revenue position. Again, we’re not, you know, I don’t lie awake at night needing the Cowboys to win last night. It’s just not something that has a significant impact to us.

Jason, Interviewer: If there was consolidation at the OSB level, it seems like the ability for the OSB to bring more of the capability in-house and not use a third party.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Ultimately, if you think about, you know, that almost goes to the sort of conceptual question of why Genius Sports exists in the first place. You know, OSBs can’t.

Jason, Interviewer: Can you answer that question?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, no, and we do now, but that’s effectively, I think, what you’re trying to get at here, Jason. You know, OSBs can’t do this themselves. They don’t want to do this themselves. We’re providing to an average OSB 120,000, 130,000, 140,000 events on an annual basis. Whether, yes, it’s NFL or it’s UK soccer or it’s Serie A, the NFL’s 276 games. If you think about the amount that we provide, not least of which the technology that we’re providing, as I say, it starts off when we talked about the competitor set. Data capture and collection of that technology is not straightforward. We’ve been doing this 20 years. We’ve been doing this a long time.

By doing that across the whole suite and then doing everything else we’re doing with OSBs, the European market is a great example of what we’re doing, and I expect that trend will continue in the U.S. as we’re doing more technology, not less technology for the sports books. A sports book is increasingly going to be a brand engine and a marketing and how they treat you as a customer, how they bonus you as a customer. That’s why you choose a particular sports book. What the user experience as a customer is like, not the backend technology and the content that they were providing, which is what we do.

Jason, Interviewer: What about capital allocation? I love, I mean, I feel like in my coverage, you know, there’s more and more firms are becoming debt-free, which is something that I’m used to not seeing. Can you just talk about it? What your philosophy is regarding sort of leverage?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah.

Jason, Interviewer: Uses of cash flow?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, I mean, you’re right. We’re debt-free. We’re now cash positive. That was a key moment in the Genius Sports story. I’ve been doing this, we’ve been doing this as five years in the list environment. We started off with sort of zero EBITDA, and people were skeptical about whether we’d ever make any. You’ve seen our EBITDA margin go over the last three years from sort of 5% to 12% to 16% to 21% this year. You’ve heard Mark and I talk about that going up to a sort of 30%+ EBITDA margin. We’ve done the same on a cash flow basis. People have said, okay, it was skeptical. 2024 was a pivotal year from a cash base. We made $82 million on an operating cash level. Now we reinvested on that, as you know, through some of this technology.

You’re seeing the benefits of that through the deals that we’ve been doing on the technology side. We’re cash positive in 2024, and we’ll be cash positive in 2025. We’re in a really good place on that position. We announced an Investor Day, I think, for the 3rd of December this year. One of the things I’m sure we’ll talk about in a bit more detail there is free cash flow conversion because now we are cash positive. That’s the next obvious metric for us to be talking about. When we’re talking about a 30% EBITDA margin on an ongoing basis and above that, what does that look like on a free cash flow margin?

If you take our EBITDA position, there’s very little between EBITDA and cash positivity, which means our business model is such that as that EBITDA grows, our free cash flow will just naturally grow in a linear basis with it. That’s an exciting place to be. In terms of capital allocation, we obviously, as a very opportunistically raised cash in January, $140 million. Effectively, that’s, we’ve said to the market that that’s for M&A. We’ve also said in the latest quarterly earnings we did in August, we gave a bit more color of what we meant by that. It’s really about keeping our discipline. I think Mark said we looked at 60 companies at that point. We are actively looking in the market, but we’ve been very clear that it’s a very high bar of what we’re looking for. We don’t need anything, but there’s always an opportunity.

If there’s an opportunity for us to accelerate either our media strategy or scale in the betting strategy or something that’s a sub-scale sport, high-quality sports technology, that’s what we’ll be looking at. We put really strong financial metrics. It needs to be a bit accretive. It needs to be cash accretive. Therefore, that’s really what we’re looking at for our capital allocation. That’s our number one priority. I think it was in March, Jason, we did also put a buyback program, at least the ability to do a buyback program in place. That’s not a priority yet. That was good housekeeping. It’s there so that we can move quickly as and when we ever needed to. Right now, we’re looking, M&A is our number one priority in terms of what we’re going to do with the cash that we raised.

Jason, Interviewer: Any questions for Nick?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Hey, how are you doing?

Jason, Interviewer: He’s waiting for one sec for the mic just so the web.

Andrew, Unidentified speaker: You talked about some of the, or Jason asked about some of the consolidation amongst your customer base. One of the things we’re seeing, if you look at the overall handle, is the prediction markets, Kalshi, Robinhood starting to be meaningful players in the market. Curious what that’s meant for you so far, where you see it going in terms of their market share and how that will impact the Genius Sports business.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, I would say we’re an interested viewer at the moment, really. I mean, it doesn’t really impact our world at all. I don’t believe it’s massively impacting the sportsbooks world right now. If you listen to, and I hear the same things you hear, Andrew. Effectively, there are potential customer parts, as and when they may try and become more sophisticated in terms of what they’re looking to do. There were exchanges in the UK, there’s a famous brand that started off as, and still is, an exchange. They’re a large customer of Genius Sports. I look at it really as an opportunity, how it plays out in the wider market. I’m not clever enough to be a U.S. antitrust lawyer or whatever it might be. I’ll leave that to other people.

Certainly from Genius Sports, we look at it at worst, we’re agnostic, but effectively, I think we see it as an opportunity.

Unidentified speaker, Unidentified speaker: Do you have social media for soccer fans? Like you mentioned about World Cup. I’m just saying your platform, is that for fan growing, soccer fan or other sports fan?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, so we have a huge suite of technology. You know, we also talk about the betting technology and BetVision. What we’re also doing, we have a lot of fan engagement products. You know, our job is really, when we look at sports and we look at our sports relationships, our job is to help solve the sports problems. One of the issues all sports have is how to engage the next generation of fans. I name-check my son. He always likes when I talk about him, my 17-year-old, and he watches sports differently to the way I used to watch sports. One of sports challenges is how do they reach him? How do they engage him? That’s what our GeniusIQ is effectively doing, whether that’s through the personalization of sport and the way people are doing sport. We’re also solving things like sports issues around officiating.

One of the big things that we did last year that we haven’t really talked about is we’re doing semi, it’s called Semi-Automated Offside Technology in the U.K., in the Premier League, which is effectively a huge issue. The Premier League, we won that work from Hawk-Eye from the Sony Group last year. That is making a big difference to how U.K. soccer engages with its wider fan base. We have a whole suite of products for that. Absolutely, we’re focused. We’re focused on what sports executives are focused on. Part of that is inevitably how do they engage in fans.

Unidentified speaker, Unidentified speaker: Just one last item, AI. We constantly hear about how AI is a benefit to everybody, how it’s more efficient. How do you, do you see any threats with AI kind of taking over? I know your technology is superior, but just kind of curious what your thoughts are. Thank you.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, I mean, you’re right. I mean, every Chief Executive stands up and talks about AI and hopes no one asks them any questions about it, don’t they? AI is transforming our business internally, which is great. You know, there’s cost savings to be made. You know, we spend, I don’t know, $15 million sending people to games to collect data. That is fast going to be replaced by AI. Look, I’m CFO. I’ll happily take an extra $15 million on my EBITDA and free cash flow any day of the week. Actually, the really exciting bit is AI. I mean, that’s what GeniusIQ is. It’s the world’s leading sports AI system. Everything we’re doing, and it’s really the differentiator. It’s why people choose, it’s why sports choose Genius Sports. It’s why the Pan-European soccer leagues choose Genius Sports. It’s why Serie A choose. It’s why NFL.

Now we have this long-standing partnership with the NFL. It’s because of GeniusIQ and what we’re bringing to the table, whether that’s through, as I say, through the AI that’s providing the automated refereeing that I’ve just name-checked in U.K. soccer, or whether that’s the AI that we’re doing that allows us to do old broadcasts like we did the Madden Cast on NBC over Christmas or the NBA 2K broadcast on TNT. It’s the AI that’s driving the betting opportunities through BetVision. You know, when you go on to FanDuel or whether you go on to DraftKings and watch BetVision and the overlaying and the push notification, that’s all of our AI doing that. It is entirely embedded in our organization. Yeah, absolutely, it’ll save us money and we’ll automate internally. That’s great for profit margin.

The really exciting thing for us and where we’re earning revenues today is its applications through the world of sport and the revenue opportunities that that’s giving us and the differentiators that’s giving us compared to anyone else in the market.

Jason, Interviewer: Just one last one before we wrap up. CFO transition, do you mind just touching on that?

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, there’s my swan song. No, not quite, Jason. Look, I mean, I’ve done six years at Genius. I’ve done the listed four and a half. I’ve been talking to Mark, probably talked to many people in this room that ultimately the CFO role needs to be a New York-based role. I joined a London business that was hoping to break the U.S. I now work for a U.S. business with a legacy London management team. We’ve appointed Brian Castellani, who’s joining us in October. Brian’s a great guy. I’ve seen him this week quite a lot. I described him the other day as a grown-up. He’s just coming out as CFO of Warner Music, ESPN, Disney. He knows the space really well. He will sit in New York.

That’s a huge benefit, not just the IR team, but if you think about we’ve appointed Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, Chief People Officer, all out of New York. I’m thrilled. I’m around for a little bit longer. There’ll be a decent space of handover. Brian joins in October. In truth, Jason, there’s always the right moment to leave an organization and to leave Genius today when there is more opportunity at Genius today than there’s ever been in the six years that I’ve worked here. I think a good moment. I’ll hand the baton over to Brian to lead Genius through the next five, ten years.

Jason, Interviewer: You certainly did a great job, Nick.

Nick Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, Genius Sports: Thank you, Jason. Thank you for your time, as always.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.