Genius Sports Limited Aktie

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Genius Sports Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Results. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to Genius Sports. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 17, 2026.

During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniusports.com.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Locke.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. This is an important and exciting quarter for Genius Sports. Against the backdrop of significant attention on prediction markets, the Legend acquisition and our cash flow potential, we're pleased to report our first full quarter as a combined business. This earnings report proves our critical position in the ecosystem, our successful ongoing integration of Legend and our ability to generate meaningful cash flow.

Our strategy is working and it's translating to financial outperformance. Group revenue of $270 million exceeded our guidance of $260 million and group adjusted EBITDA of $87 million also beat our guidance of $85 million. This resulted in a 32% adjusted EBITDA margin or 12 percentage point expansion compared to last year.

Importantly, we generated $54 million of free cash flow, representing 61% conversion from adjusted EBITDA. From here on out, you will hear me reference free cash flow as an important metric to demonstrate the earnings power of the combined business. I'm holding my team and myself accountable to free cash flow generation because we are confident that today's results set a foundation that we will build upon in the quarters and years ahead.

This performance reflects the strength of our commercial model, predictable revenue, multiple opportunities to grow across the sports ecosystem and increasing operating leverage as we scale. Today, we will cover 4 key topics: one, the rapidly growing demand for sports wagering spanning traditional online sports betting and prediction markets; two, an update on Legend, which is continuing to perform strongly; three, our continued momentum in the combined media space; and finally, four, the importance of free cash flow as a key measure of operating performance and the value that we create for shareholders.

I'll start with our Betting business, which increased 33% year-over-year. This remains a highly reliable and predictable revenue stream with approximately 70% to 80% of betting revenue coming from contractually fixed minimum revenue guarantees. Our contracts have always provided strong downside protection while preserving the upside, creating more consistent and durable revenue streams as the market evolves. That upside is driven by a diverse set of factors, each of which moved in our favor this quarter.

The NFL season started late, so this quarter only captures 3 weeks of it. But looking at our first 4 weeks of the NFL season year-over-year, gross gaming revenue is up nearly 60%. In-play betting was a particularly strong contributor as improving bookmaker win margins translated to nearly 50% growth in in-play GGR. BetVision, our watch and bet product is part of that. We are seeing record levels of engagement through our BetVision product, including with the NFL's in-market and national games on mobile.

During the first 4 weeks of the NFL season, minutes per user increased by nearly 50% year-over-year. This means fans are spending more time with the product and engaging more deeply with the live game experience. This creates more opportunities for in-play betting, an area driving significant value for Genius and its bookmaker partners.

Our bookmaker contracts, many of which we recently renewed, provide a stable base of reoccurring revenue with opportunities for both parties to benefit from future growth.

We've been intentional about building a strong foundation to support a predictable and resilient Betting business. We're now leveraging that same foundation of data and infrastructure to capture new growth opportunities, most notably in prediction markets. We believe this is the biggest opportunity in our industry right now and in financial markets more broadly.

The scale of investor interest is already evident in the private market. Kalshi and Polymarket have a combined valuation of approximately $60 billion based on their latest funding rounds. That is a striking indication of the expectations surrounding this category. For the public market, we believe Genius offers a differentiated way to invest in this growing category. The reason is simple. As dollars flow through prediction market ecosystem, we generate revenue at every step along the way.

It starts with customer acquisition. Prediction market operators are competing aggressively to acquire customers, establish their brands and gain market share. This is an area where our Media business already has proven track record, helping sportsbooks acquire customers at scale.

The combination with Legend strengthens these capabilities considerably. Legend owns and operates established products that attract highly engaged sports fans, representing some of the most valuable audiences in gaming. As operators and prediction exchanges compete for those customers, our Media properties and marketing capabilities become even more valuable.

Importantly, we support nearly every operator across traditional sports betting and prediction markets. Therefore, as customer acquisition spend increases across the industry, Genius takes a share regardless of which platform wins.

Once acquired, those customers trade sports contracts on the exchanges where liquidity is critical. Much of that liquidity is provided by institutional market makers who rely on real-time data to set the price for those contracts. This is particularly important in live trading, which we estimate accounts for roughly 2/3 of total sports volume. As more market makers enter the space and as trading activity grows, demand for our data increases. We already supply many of the major institutional market makers providing that liquidity, meaning Genius shares in the growth of the market regardless of where that liquidity comes from.

The final step is in settlement, the moment the contract pays out. Exchanges rely on official data, a single source of truth sanctioned by the league to settle contracts quickly and accurately. So as more sports contracts are traded, Genius takes a share regardless of where those trades occur.

Customer acquisition, trading, settlement, 3 critical stages of the prediction market ecosystem with Genius already monetizing all 3 with over 50 new customers this year and counting. And we're doing it using the same data, technology and infrastructure that have underpinned our sports Betting business for 25 years. That's the operating leverage of our business model.

The rise of prediction markets reinforces our original investment thesis. Genius provides data and services to the entire regulated sports wagering ecosystem and is positioned to benefit regardless of which platforms ultimately succeed. The thesis hasn't changed, only the size of the opportunity has. And I want to build on that point and clarify how we think about the size of that opportunity.

Genius serves regulated sportsbooks, major prediction market exchanges and the market makers that provide liquidity to those exchanges. Our opportunity is, therefore, linked to the total dollars legally wagered on sports regardless of the platform. Prediction markets have clearly proven the demand that exists for sports wagering in America. These platforms are simply bringing more dollars into the sports wagering ecosystem, which increases our TAM and reinforces our confidence in the potential upside to our 2028 guidance.

This brings me to the question surrounding the regulatory future of prediction markets. After 25 years in the industry, my view is that today's structure will evolve. Rules around access products and taxation will change. Some of today's advantages will shift and some of today's winners may not be tomorrow's.

We often get asked what it would mean for Genius if oversight moves from a federal to a state-by-state model. Our view is that the underlying opportunity remains meaningful either way. We're already seeing states take steps towards taxing or regulating this activity. North Carolina is taxing exchange trading fees. Illinois has proposed a transaction levy and tribes in California has signaled interest in gaming regulation. These are early indicators of how oversight could evolve.

Given the scale of the activity, we believe governments will have strong incentives to establish a regulatory and taxation framework. Whether that framework ultimately operates at the federal or state level, we expect the activity to continue in some regulated form.

The question is how it will be governed, not simply whether it will exist. So to put it simply, the ground is shifting, but we do not need it to land any particular way. If it flows back to the sportsbooks we already serve, we win. If it stays on prediction market exchanges, we're already there, too. There's no version of this that doesn't pay Genius.

Our business is built to engage fans and provide our partners with mission-critical tools to monetize that engagement. Prediction markets give us an opportunity to expand that role. This has always been the core investment thesis for Genius. What's changed is the size of the opportunity in front of us.

Now Legend. We're even more excited today by the asset that we acquired, the talented people and long-standing customer relationships that underpin its superb track record of cash-generative growth. We are now proving this through execution and results. Integration is progressing as planned across commercial, technology and culture. And as a result, we are realizing revenue synergies ahead of schedule.

Our deals with Kalshi and Polymarket are high-profile examples of what the combined business can achieve. They demonstrate how Genius and Legend create greater commercial value together than either could independently. And while these deals make the headlines, we're applying the same approach across a long tail of operators in sports betting, iCasino and prediction markets.

We're also seeing the strength of Legend's audience firsthand. Since closing the acquisition, Legend has set multiple engagement records, first during the World Cup and more recently across the NFL and college football weekends. It's a consistent pattern, and it's converting to results, particularly as competition for prediction market customers intensifies. The timing of the acquisition could not have been better for Genius to capitalize on these competitive dynamics and capture a share of the increasing advertiser spend. We're also building on this success through the launch of prediction.com, a dedicated destination for prediction markets, offering a compelling suite of tools and data.

It's another example of how we combine Legend's audience and technical capabilities with Genius Sports official data to create differentiated products. For instance, one product brings real-time data for live sporting events together with a live feed of trades that are taking place on exchanges for those events. The results are encouraging. Users who engage with this product are 5x more likely to transact. That's proof that the combination works better than either business alone.

Prediction.com also gives us deeper understanding of sports fans, the leagues and teams they follow and the products and content that resonate with them. Over time, these insights can help deliver better outcomes for advertisers and attract additional advertising spend. This represents another important area of potential synergy across the combined business. Taken together, these early results reinforce our conviction in the strategic and financial value of the acquisition.

As discussed, our Media business has a strong foundation in gaming with reoccurring revenue and contractual minimums providing meaningful visibility. We're building on that foundation by expanding the Moment Engine to a broader range of consumer brands beyond the gaming space. The opportunity is clear. Live sports gives brands access to large, highly engaged audiences in real time. By combining real-time sports data with first-party audience data, we help advertisers understand fan behavior and reach the right audiences in the moments that matter the most. We're seeing growing demand for the Moment Engine and our integrations across major supply side and demand side platforms allows us to capture that demand at scale.

Advertisers can tap into our data and technology through the channels that they already use, giving us broad access to advertising budgets without relying on any single platform or buying channel. The proof is in our customer growth since launching the Moment Engine. We added 174 advertisers in Q2 and another 279 in Q3, including a wide range of non-gaming brands such as Toyota, State Street, Whoop and Domino's to name a few.

Additionally, what's most encouraging is that the existing advertisers are returning to the platform and increasing their spend. In Q3, our net revenue retention was 224% compared to Q2. While the product is still in its early stages, we believe these metrics demonstrate the value that the Moment Engine can deliver. We recognize that the growth may vary over time as advertiser adoption and spending patterns evolve, but we're pleased with the early traction and remain very excited about the opportunity to build on this foundation.

Beyond helping brands make better use of existing advertising inventory, we're also creating new inventory through our data and technology. This expands the ways that we can engage sports fans and creates additional opportunities for brands to reach them.

Two developments this quarter illustrate the opportunity. First, we announced a new partnership with the NBA All-Star Chris Paul to create original athlete-led sports content powered by GeniusIQ. This is more than a content partnership. It's a powerful demonstration of how we are translating our proprietary computer vision and AI technology into differentiated fan experiences and new commercial opportunities.

GeniusIQ captures and transforms next-generation data into insights and stories that brings fans closer to the game, allowing them to see and understand basketball through the eyes of its most accomplished players. At the same time, this model creates a compelling opportunity for brands to connect with highly engaged audiences through premium athlete-led content and sponsorship. What makes this particularly exciting is the way that it brings together our technology, data and commercial capabilities to unlock new opportunities for monetization.

Second, our partnership with Univision, the largest broadcaster of Liga MX, brings a new level of insight to live broadcasters. GeniusIQ turns real-time tracking data into insights and visualizations that gives fans a deeper understanding of the game. Through our Moment Engine, these moments also become premium sponsorship opportunity, allowing brands to connect with fans directly on screen as the action unfolds.

Together, these initiatives demonstrate how we're extending the value of our data, creating more engaging experiences for fans, more valuable inventory for advertisers and additional ways to monetize our technology across the sports ecosystem.

Taking a step back, the story is clear. We've built a differentiated position across the sports ecosystem and Legend makes that position even stronger. Our data and technology underpin predictable Betting business, position us to capture growth in prediction markets and power our expanding Media business. Legend extends our reach, creates new commercial opportunities and adds further diversification of our revenue. These businesses reinforce one another, allowing us to generate more value from the same underlying infrastructure and drive greater operating leverage as we scale.

We've talked about what this business could become. We're now demonstrating what it can deliver. We're beating expectations, generating significant free cash flow and improving the earnings power of the combined company. Our strategy is delivering. Our opportunity is growing, and we're just getting started.

Before I turn to Bryan, a personal point. I'm the largest individual shareholder in Genius. In September, I sold about 800,000 shares, around 4% of my vested holding and arranged at my own cost a collar over a further 4.4 million shares. The collar sets a floor under those shares and is structured in a way that allows me to keep those shares. Maintaining those shares is of paramount importance to me because I believe in the future of this company. The cash is for my growing family and personal tax planning. You can expect me to collar further shares as that planning requires and to handle any other transactions thoughtfully in a similar vein. My intention is to unwind the collars as liquidity arise from elsewhere.

I remain substantially invested in Genius and my confidence in the business has never been higher. We've invested heavily for the future, and that investment is clearly delivering, and I'm committed to seeing it through. As a founder, I take a long-term view. As CEO, I'm accountable for meeting our commitments, generating cash and being disciplined with your capital. We will keep growing Genius and turn that growth into lasting value per share, hold us to both.

And with that, over to Bryan.

Thanks, Mark. As we just outlined, this quarter was another strong quarter for Genius Sports. What I want to focus on in my remarks is not just the growth we're delivering, but how that growth is translating into higher margins, stronger free cash flow and an increasingly attractive financial profile. But first, let's start with revenue, where we saw continued growth across both product groups.

In Betting, revenue increased 33%, matching our strongest quarter of growth this year. This was driven by multiple factors, including a strong start to the NFL season, increased in-play betting, improving operator win margins and pricing uplift on recent contract renewals. This growth was also supported by new monetization opportunities across prediction markets, which Mark highlighted earlier.

In Media, revenue increased 126% year-over-year, which was supported by the Legend acquisition, along with underlying strength in prediction market and online sportsbook spend plus the increasing adoption of the Moment Engine.

One important point to keep in mind when assessing our Media performance is the mix of our revenue. An increasing portion of Media revenue is now generated through our self-serve platform, where revenue is recognized on a net basis. As a result, the reported revenue figure is lower than it would be under a gross presentation, but the margin profile is higher.

Importantly, we're growing group revenue significantly faster than our cost base, driving greater operating leverage and allowing more of that revenue growth to flow through to profitability. On that note, one area worth highlighting is data rights costs. The increase we reported in the first half of the year reflected the timing of new rights acquired in the fall of 2025. With those additions now behind us, cost growth is normalizing and data rights are declining significantly as a percentage of revenue. And with long-term agreements in place for our major rights, we have good visibility into these costs over the next several years and expect the rate of growth to continue declining.

We're already seeing the benefits of this operating leverage in our results. Gross profit more than doubled year-over-year with gross margin expanding to 34% from 25% in the prior year quarter.

Stock-based compensation was $15 million in the quarter, representing 6% of revenue, down from 16% a year ago. And we achieved $10 million of GAAP operating profit, which we expect to continue building on.

Finally, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 32%, up from 20% a year ago, reflecting the growing profitability of our combined business as we scale.

Importantly, this profitability is converting to free cash flow. This quarter demonstrates the quality of our earnings and the cash-generating power of the combined business. We converted 61% of adjusted EBITDA into free cash flow, which in line with market practice, reflects operating cash flow, less capital expenditure, capitalized software development costs and purchases of intangible assets. Excluding $16 million of cash interest expense incurred in the quarter, our unlevered free cash flow conversion was approximately 80%.

As we're discussing free cash flow and unlevered free cash flow, I want to make sure that we're clear that we are focused on free cash flow as a key financial metric going forward. For completeness and to be clear, we previously guided to over 60% unlevered free cash flow by 2028. That target remains unchanged, and we expect to progress materially towards that target in 2027. This strong cash-generating profile gives us significant financial flexibility and our capital allocation priority remains debt repayment. We are committed to delevering, and we expect net leverage to fall to approximately 2x by the end of 2026 and even further in 2027.

Moving on to guidance. The outperformance in Q3 reinforces our confidence in the business and our outlook for the full year. Therefore, we are raising our group revenue guidance to a range of $1.015 billion to $1.035 billion and adjusted EBITDA to a range of $287 million to $297 million. Additionally, we expect a year-end cash balance of approximately $260 million, representing free cash flow of more than $100 million across the second half of the year.

With strong revenue growth, expanding margins, increasing cash generation and a strengthening balance sheet, we believe our results continue to demonstrate the financial strength and scalability of our business. We enter 2027 with significant momentum, a strong foundation for continued profitable growth and increasing financial flexibility to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. We look forward to sharing more details on our 2027 outlook next quarter.

With that, I'll hand it back to Mark for closing comments.

Let me close summarizing how we've delivered on our key objectives for the year. We have outperformed the guidance we set in the first 2 quarters with Legend. We reported $10 million of GAAP operating income, and we've generated $54 million of free cash flow, which underpins our confidence in our deleveraging path.

We are the infrastructure layer that our customers rely on, and we supply every regulated channel in which people bet on and watch sports. We take no view on which way the ball bounces. Our financial profile is now reflecting that. We have contracted revenue, a predictable cost base and multiple upside opportunities, resulting in significant operating leverage. This is what gives us confidence in achieving our 2028 targets of 35% adjusted EBITDA margins and at least 60% unlevered free cash flow conversion. We believe that this quarter demonstrates the progress we've made, and we look forward to updating you as we continue to execute. We will now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Josh Nichols with B. Riley.

Look, it's great to see the really strong free cash flow generation here to kick off the second half. The Betting revenue accelerated pretty meaningfully, up 33% despite some more better favorable outcomes at the start of the NFL. I'm kind of curious if you could give a little bit more granularity on what's driving that in terms of the breakdown for the renewal mix, in-play and prediction markets that's leading that growth?

Yes. It's Mark. So obviously, we've talked a lot before about the way that our underlying deals have locked in revenue. So we're not particularly exposed to the wins or losses that any particular team or sport may experience at any time. So that's coming through pretty clearly in the numbers and that exposure isn't there. Prediction markets, obviously a strong growth area for us. We're seeing revenue that we make through deals with the likes of Kalshi and Polymarket, but also through the market makers as well. So we're selling to all the market makers. And just to remind everybody, we take a profit share from those market makers as well as charging a data fee in the same way that we sort of charge OSBs.

So from our point of view, the Betting business is growing particularly strong. I think you said it's 33% growth. So we're very, very happy with that. That we expect to continue to -- all the way through '27 towards '28, and we're very happy with where we are on that.

Appreciate it. And then just for my one follow-up. The Legend acquisition seems to be performing quite well. You previously talked about there's a multitude of synergies that really are not into the 2028 guidance number. If you could just provide a little bit of update on how the company has been executing on those synergies relative to plan and things like customer acquisition pricing that you're seeing today?

Yes. I mean, look, the acquisition is going brilliantly. We're really happy with it. From a cultural point of view, the teams are working really closely and the business is getting fully integrated on that side. The main areas that we're focused on are obviously the commercial side. I think the evidence of that was the Kalshi and the Polymarket deals that we originally did, but there's also a number of other areas that are coming through on the commercial synergies. We're looking at doing more close work on OSBs as well as other prediction market players.

And then the other area that probably isn't so visible, but from our point of view, it's pretty exciting is the technical integration. We're bringing data in to both businesses. Prediction.com is a really good example of that. And I think the most interesting sort of -- and it's early days, but the most interesting piece of what we're doing at the moment is on the prerediction.com, where the Legend engine that we talked about a lot when we bought the deal, where we bought the business has really been sort of put out to use in that particular project, and we're seeing really strong initial results from that.

So overall, integration is going, I would say, fairly well ahead of schedule, and we think there's a lot more opportunity still to come.

Looking forward to continued progress and seeing that free cash flow KPI continue to improve over time.

Your next question comes from the line of Sam Nielsen with JPMorgan.

Congrats on the quarter. We've heard some other industry participants talk about increasing CPAs in the space as a result of an increasingly competitive customer acquisition environment. Obviously, we assume you sell, but wondering if you could talk about this more specifically in the scope of your performance in the quarter and maybe what your outlook is for that spend to continue going forward here?

Yes, I think that's right. I mean I think it goes without saying that as the market becomes more competitive, CPAs go up. I think I've said before, we've seen CPAs double on the prediction market side since we bought Legend, which has been good. And again, we see a strong trajectory for growth over the coming time. So yes, I mean, I think what you're hearing is pretty much what we're seeing.

Makes sense. And then as a follow-up, appreciating that it's early and you aren't yet got into 2027, but is there any way you can kind of give us a sense of some of the puts and takes and building blocks to kind of be thinking about for next year between maybe the core business, Legend, prediction markets and maybe some offsets in Brazil or elsewhere?

Sure. It's Bryan. We are early in planning for '27. We'll share more of that in March. As we look to the growth, it's the consistent building blocks. When you think about just the expanding TAM, both behind betting, prediction markets adds further, iGaming continuing to grow and the Legend acquisition gives us exposure to that. And so that, coupled with our continued product penetration and -- we're always adding and negotiating new deals and able to drive pricing uplift as well.

So a number of things helping drive the top line. And then as we look to margins, and you're seeing it come through this quarter and this year with operating leverage, where the cost base grows lower than the revenue base. And so you get the compounding effect and the expanding margins. And then additionally, and as you can see how we've highlighted our focus on free cash flow, that's flowing through there and continuing that ramp to our '28 guidance and building '27 will reflect that. So we're positioned well. The continued momentum sets us up and we'll share more on the next call.

Yes. I think it's also probably worth adding that we've got a lot of visibility on this already because of the way the business operates and because of the deals that we've got locked in, especially on the betting side, we've got very strong -- very clear visibility of what the revenues look like, but also on the right side, what the cost base is. The rights market has been -- has sort of acted as we predicted and is coming down. So I think from our point of view, we feel increasingly confident about our '28 guide.

Your next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer.

Just going back to your earlier comments on the net revenue on Media now. I think it's pretty important to sort of look at the leverage there. I think it's now Media direct cost as a percentage of Media revenues mid-20s. How much of that is being driven by Legend versus how much of that is being driven by more people in your core fan hub experience choosing to do self-service advertising? How should we think about those margins going forward?

Sure. I mean, look, we think about Legend as a component of our broader Media business. And obviously, that allows us to cover the full funnel of all the operators. CTV and video are building awareness on that at the top of that funnel, and that's powered by the sports data and of course, by the Moment Engine.

Programmatic display and native keep operating in front of those players through the consideration. So from our point of view, Legend's properties, Covers, Sportsbook Review, Oddspedia and Casino Guru reach players with the highest intent and drive the lower funnel from comparison to deposit. So we're feeling pretty good about it.

Got it. And then just as a follow-up. We are seeing market makers or smaller market makers starting to have to pay the exchanges higher fees, particularly for RFQs. Do you think this is a business model where market makers it starts to consolidate for a handful of larger scale players? And how does that impact your -- how does that impact? Is it more higher volume, but you're getting lower rev share to higher volume market makers? Just can you talk about that dynamic and the impact of higher fees?

Yes. I mean the key dynamic we think about is liquidity. Obviously, the TAM in our space has expanded enormously and very rapidly with the addition of prediction markets. And I think I've said this before, Jed, the way we think about the business and the way we think about the market is about the total amount of bet, whether it's bet through OSBs or whether it's bet through prediction markets, we're fairly agnostic.

So I think the expansion that we're seeing in the TAM and the way that we make money on every bet is becoming pretty clear. The way the prediction markets evolve is going to be quite interesting. You've seen case studies in other countries with exchanges about the way that they charge. And I think we've all got a keen eye on that. But overall, from our point of view, it's just really about liquidity. The more liquidity in the market, the more money we're making is we're basically taking a slice of every bet.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

It was great to see the level of growing advertiser adoption that you called out. Can you talk to us a little bit about both the seasonality and the structural long-term potential for growth in the advertiser pipeline and the revenue retention as well? Just so we understand some of that being either seasonal and also how you continue to possibly have confidence interval about the pipeline longer term?

Yes. Thanks. Look, we're super happy with it. The strategy on Media is really about land and expand. We're looking to acquire and add in as many new customers as we can. And I think we went from 174 last quarter. We added another 279 this quarter. So we're up at sort of 450-odd customers running through that. Once we've got those customers, there's obviously a period of time where they're testing the results, making sure that we're actually delivering what we said we were going to deliver, and we're seeing net revenue retention very -- come through very well there.

Our job now is to expand the amount of money that they're spending with us. So they've got through the test campaigns. We've got a lot of customers. So it's really a case of working with those customers to drive usage over time.

Your next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens.

One of the key themes here during third quarter has just been around some of the decelerating iGaming growth across North America. It sounds like the Legend business is performing great here. But can you just remind us how much Legend is kind of tied to market growth?

And then maybe a separate question on that is just in terms of the Legend properties, kind of what are you seeing in terms of traffic to those sites as we start the NFL season?

Yes. So I mean, we -- obviously, just to remind you how we get paid on Legend, over half of Legend's money comes from a historic deal that have already been signed. So we're getting paid in some cases, from customers that were signed up 15 years ago. So the sort of annual dynamics, they're important on some basis, but not -- they don't really affect the overall macro view of Legend.

The majority of Legend customers is iGaming, as I said, but we're adding many new channels. So obviously, Covers, launch prerediction.com, some of the RIP stuff that's been coming out, I think, provides an exciting opportunity going forward. So we see fairly significant growth opportunities across the market. And as I said, from Legend's point of view, we've got a very stable, solid and reliable historical revenue stream that's delivering as we would expect.

I just wanted to add on that, the diversity within Legend, there's diversity geographically. It's not tied to any one market or significant region. The other point is there is the Covers and the sports business. So there is iGaming and also exposure to online sports betting and prediction markets. So there's diversity within it. And then certainly, as Mark hit upon, the recurring revenue within those contracts also provides predictability as well. So less tied to any one market or any one change in the regulatory environment.

Great. And then just maybe one quick follow-up here. On the implied guidance for 4Q, how much was Brazil maybe part of the old guide that isn't in there anymore? I guess, more broadly, just how much was Brazil a percentage of revenue or how should we be thinking about that in the model?

Yes. So just to remind you, the way we get paid is we have very strong contracts that don't have us exposed to any particular regulatory environment. So in the same way that we don't take risk on the outcome of sports events, we also don't take regulatory risk. So from our point of view, the closing of Brazil didn't really have any material impact on the underlying business.

Admittedly, it's probably got a little bit of -- taken some of the upside that we may have had going forward and probably muted that a little bit, but that doesn't really affect our view on any of the numbers through to '28.

Your next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

Bryan, you mentioned that leverage will be at 2x at the end of the year and then further decline here as we move forward. So given the growing free cash flow and your confidence in the earnings power, how are you guys thinking about share repurchases versus debt reduction in the near term?

Thanks, Chad. That's right. As we grow our free cash flow and the operating leverage, the path to 2 is clear, further down in '27 and '28. We've prioritized, as we continue to say, delevering and debt repayment. We think as we get into '27, '28, we'll be well on the path of that, and that will give us optionality. But right now, the focus is that debt repayment and getting the net leverage down.

And then with respect to further BetVision or in-play adoption, why do you think you're seeing so much growth this year? The product has been out there. Is this just an evolution of the customer, kind of what they like? And how do you think this could portend for future years? Is there still upside in terms of in-play percentage from your customers?

Yes. I mean, look, we've always said there'd be a shift from pre-match to in-play. I mean the benefits to customers are pretty obvious. The margins are significantly higher, and I think the customers are pretty focused on that now. So that aligns with us really well. Obviously, things like BetVision, where we've seen a significant increase in the viewing minutes on that, I think, helped change user behavior. And ultimately, the products are getting better. So I think the combination of all of those things is taking us to the place that, frankly, we sort of thought would come over time.

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum.

I want to start on that last question you just answered for Chad, but you mentioned kind of the benefits from an in-game standpoint and what's driving adoption and growth there, BetVision being one of those. But how do you think about that from a prediction market standpoint, evolution of the product and services and the ability to help drive even accelerated volume from the current growth they have there, namely BetVision and ways to drive in-game betting?

Yes. So prediction market, I mean, already, it's about 2/3 of the volume. So it's already a very significant part. And that kind of marries with what you see in Europe in some of the more mature betting markets, or it's slightly higher to be maybe up to 70%. Obviously, prediction market product set suits in-play betting really well. And the adoption of the products of things like BetVision is something that we're clearly in conversations about and watch this space.

Maybe a question for Bryan. Free cash flow was better in Q3. Kudos on that and good to see it flow through. You reaffirmed your $100-plus million target in the second half. The cash target actually implies like $105 million in the second half. You got some EBITDA upside a couple of million. It appears like that flowed to free cash flow, which is good to see. I guess, would you agree with that?

And then when you say you're going to exit the year with $260 million of cash, I guess my question is, why not proactively pay down debt quicker? Maybe it's as simple as just talking to net debt targets going forward, so you can utilize that cash faster.

We remain consistent on the second half and generating over $100 million in free cash flow. So you saw the $54 million in Q3. Q4 will be at a comparable absolute level and sets us up well. Obviously, there can be timing across quarters. But generally, we're consistent on that second half and poised well for '27 to ramp that towards our '28 guidance.

Your next question comes from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist Securities.

It's Jeremy on for Barry. I believe the guidance raise implies no change to Q4 assumptions. So can you just walk us through the puts and takes if there's any upside over there given the strong in-play GGR growth and new prediction market revenue contribution?

It's Mark. Look, last quarter, we took it up $15 million on revenue and $15 million on EBITDA, which equates to about a 34.5% EBITDA margin for Q4. Incidentally, that's, I think, the highest Q4 margin that the business has ever had. So obviously, that's being done off the back of good momentum for prediction markets, strong integration with the Legend product. So I think we're feeling quite good about the Q4 setup. And more importantly, we're feeling very good about the setup into 2027.

Got it. And then with NBA embracing prediction market, do you think that changes anything in terms of timing for the NFL to sign on as well? Curious your thoughts there.

Look, I don't speak to the NFL. I don't know if it does or not, but all I can say is that it's not in our guidance for this year, next year or 2028.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Stantial with Stifel.

Maybe just starting off on the Media business. So a lot going on there, Bryan, you mentioned some of the changes in self-service and how that impacts revenue growth from an accounting perspective. There's also Legend flowing in. Can you -- is there anything you could do to sort of quantify or help us think about sort of underlying organic rates of growth during Q3 for both the Legend business as well as Media as you sort of normalize out for some of the accounting changes, I guess you can look at on a gross margin basis. But just anything to sort of better frame for us sort of underlying organic growth in that business would be helpful.

Yes. As Mark kind of walked through how we think about the business and Legend is a component of the overall and being able to work from the top of the funnel down to the bottom with operators and advertisers and marketers. We are growing that Moments Engine, just launched in March, really, really good traction and ramp coming off a small base and now up to over 400 cumulative advertisers. So good indicators there.

And you're right that the more we drive into that programmatic and curation or self-serve business that it is a net accounting where our take is lower, but our margin is higher. And so that will start to flow in more as it grows and ramps, but good traction there, and we're excited about it.

Got it. And then maybe I'll stick with you, Bryan, you said something in the prepared remarks on -- I think it was that you have line of sight to moderating rate of growth in sports rights costs. Can you just expand on that point? Are your contracts structured in a way where the annual escalator steps down later on in the contract? Or is this more in regards to sort of a more rational bidding environment between you and your main player for kind of new contract come up and extensions and things of that nature?

Yes, shall I pick that up? I mean, look, I mean, there's a few dynamics going on in the right space. We have a very rational market these days with us and our main competitor, which is good news. We've kind of got our lanes. And I think we're operating well in those respective lanes. I think the technology investment that we've made over the last few years is really paying significant dividends in our rights negotiations now. All of our rights deals right across the board are starting to include GeniusIQ in some way or another. And that's giving us a real position and helping the partnerships that we've got with the leagues, which again is reflecting directly in the rights fees.

So obviously, the majority of our rights fees go to the NFL and Premier League. Those are locked into the end of the decade. So we've got good visibility on that. But the rest of the market, we've got very strong position with the technology stack that we've got. And I think we feel pretty clear about the direction continuing as we've sort of outlined previously.

The other thing I would add and just a reminder, last summer, we added a couple of rights agreements. So now that those are lapped, that also contributes to the moderating rate of growth. And as Mark said, our major contracts are locked in. We know what those are. And so line of sight and predictability gives us confidence in that.

There's only -- there's one other point, which is probably worth making as well is we don't actually need any more rights deals. We've got an incredible portfolio of rights. We've got the 2 largest sports in the world for sports betting, and we've got a very strong long tail. So from our point of view, we can be very discerning about the rights deals that we do. And we've obviously got a very high bar from a profitability and accretion point of view to any deals that we would choose to do in the future.

Your next question comes from the line of Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo.

Mark, maybe a big picture question for you. I think one question investors have in mind these days is just kind of the durability of the prediction markets. I think you did a good job kind of lining up that the whole market should continue to grow. But if we do get a Supreme Court decision sooner rather than later and the prediction market sports betting is kind of reversed, how quickly do you think the states can move? And just any sense of what that means for you guys' business, given how strong kind of the tailwinds are right now of that being replaced by more of a state-regulated environment?

Yes. I mean, look, I think we, and frankly, everyone on this call probably would welcome the clarity. But I sort of stand by what we said a number of times that we believe that the market is proving its demand. There's a huge demand for prediction markets or betting liquidity to be placed somewhere in the market. And at the moment, that's through betting on the prediction market.

But ultimately, the thing that I keep coming back to is I think the thing that's going to change is the regulatory wrapper around it. You've got -- do I think that prediction markets will look exactly like they do in 3 years' time as they do today? I think it will evolve. But I think what is going to be durable is that betting volume. We've seen it in other countries.

And I think what -- the opportunity for us through the TAM expansion is really quite significant because not only is this a catalyst for sort of growth in our business, but I think it's a catalyst for states to change. Once you -- if you've seen there's a number of states that are already taxing prediction markets, they're looking at ways of working with them. You've got the tribes who have already indicated that they would like to regulate betting space to move forward. You're seeing those sort of dynamics, which I think are very beneficial.

And ultimately, if you look at it from a taxation point of view, you can now quantify the taxation level that these states will be turning down because they know how much prediction markets are generating. So I think the argument is a very different argument to, one, that's previously been where everyone has been slightly blind on this. You know how much money is going through these markets and you know what the taxation rates could be. So I think it's very -- it becomes a very different conversation.

I think the other thing that's going on is it's sort of bipartisan issue. It used to be, I think, something that I think the Republicans were pushing pretty hard, but Kalshi and Polymarket have done a very good job of making that bipartisan issue with some of the hires and some of the work they've done on the political side. So I think all of these benefit pretty well the sort of durability of the markets going forward.

Awesome. And then a quick follow-up question, Bryan. Great to see the free cash flow really turn a corner this quarter and expected next. You provided the 60% unlevered free cash target by 2028. Could you just give -- I think you've maybe given this before, but could you remind us what the interest expense or leverage assumption against that is just so we could kind of bridge from unlevered to free cash conversion by '28?

Yes. On an unlevered basis, as we've said, it's over 60%. Our interest is between $50 million to $60 million a year. And so that over 60%, I would tell you, becomes over 50% on a free cash flow basis.

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Gibas with Northland Securities.

Congrats on the results. I know you likely don't want to speak for them, but to the degree that you can share what you're hearing from the NFL as it relates to their updated stance on prediction markets and if anything has changed there from your perspective?

Look, I can't speak -- I don't speak for the NFL. I can't speak for the NFL you're right, I don't want to speak to the NFL. Look, I think the biggest clues in the market that you should look at are what's going on in the other sports and some of the conversations that have been sort of made public that the NFL have put out there. I think, as I said in sort of last comments, we're going to welcome some clarity with the Supreme Court. But from Genius' point of view and bringing it back to what we do, we haven't assumed it in any of the numbers that we have put out there and what we think is going to happen at any point. And our guide for '28 stands without the NFL.

Got it. Fair enough. And I wanted to follow up on a previous question, but as it may be related to the upside in relation to your prior expectations or your expectations going in, was it mostly prediction market and/or market maker derived versus OSB derived based on GGR growth? Or would you say just generally broad-based?

Yes. I mean, look, it's broad-based and it is Legend. We're seeing strong growth across the business. Legend is integrating really well. We're super happy with the product sets that we're putting out. The market dynamics are good for us as well. There's some tailwinds. So we -- overall, the business is performing, frankly, as we expected it to.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Genius Sports Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Results. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to Genius Sports. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 17, 2026.

During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniusports.com.

With that, I'll now turn the call to our CEO, Mark Locke.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into the quarter, I want to step back for a moment. Genius is becoming the operating system of modern sports. We own the official data, the technology and now the audience that regulated sports ecosystems run on. As we bring these capabilities together on one platform, they reinforce each other. And as AI becomes more powerful, the value of our data only increases. Since announcing the Legend acquisition in February, we have told the market consistently that success would be shown, not told. This quarter is the first real look at that combined platform in action and it delivered.

Three takeaways today. First, we delivered on every single line of our guidance. Revenue of $196 million, up 65% year-over-year and ahead of our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA of $53 million, well ahead of the $45 million we guided. And cash came through our seasonal low point ahead of the range that we set out last quarter. Revenue, adjusted EBITDA and cash all ahead. Second, this quarter gives you a flavor of the margin profile that this business is built to deliver. Strong underlying profitability accelerated by the addition of Legend and synergies that we are already realizing in the early stages of integration. The combination of the businesses is doing exactly what we said that it would.

Third, we sit at the center of the 2 things that this whole market is chasing, official data and live high-intent audiences. In a world that's being reshaped by AI, that position is worth more, not less, and it is already showing up in real deals. Let me take each in turn, and then Bryan will take you through the numbers. Revenue was $196 million, up 65%. Betting grew 28% and our media business, which now includes Legend from the 1st of May, grew 193% as reported. Our $11 million revenue beat in Q2 flowed through to an $8 million EBITDA beat, aided by the strong natural operating leverage in our business model, ramp of GeniusIQ and the initial Legend synergies, which, as we'll discuss in a bit, are just getting started.

We outperformed across both betting and media, which now includes Legend. First, the core betting business continues to progress. We serve over 500 sportsbook brands across regulated markets. More than half our revenue comes from outside of the United States. And net revenue retention remains consistent with the range we share annually. Year-after-year, our customers spend more with us because our data and products only get more central to how they operate.

Our 28% year-on-year growth comes in a quarter of customer-friendly results across sport, Championship runs, star players scoring, the kind of outcomes that typically result in low win margins for sportsbooks. Our business model is built differently. Our revenue is not driven by which way the ball bounces. We are paid on contractual guarantees and volumes across both sides of the house, and we continue to grow despite that operating backdrop. That is what durable growth looks like.

In fact, in a sports betting ecosystem, which has shown volatility, our betting segment has delivered over 25% revenue growth in each year since 2023 and is on track to do the same this year. Again, that is what durable growth looks like. In addition to our outperformance in betting, we've also outperformed in media, reflecting continued momentum across our existing media business, driven by new brand and agency customers, increased spend and strong demand from prediction market operators. This performance was further strengthened by the addition of Legend. The market is shifting in the direction of the business that we have built.

At Cannes Lion a few weeks ago, the industry's loudest conversation was live sport, one of the last places that a brand could reach a large emotionally engaged audience at scale. Genius is now a well-known name at Cannes because we own the data layer underneath that attention. This gives us a unique view of sports fans. Our data doesn't just tell us who the sports fans are. It tells us how they behave during key moments. As an example, it tells us that consumers spend 25% more on food delivery when their team loses. Ahead of the NBA finals, we knew the Knicks fans spent 7x more on live entertainment than spurs fans, while spurs fans are 3x more likely to be fishing enthusiasts.

Our biometric research with media science has showed that an ad served immediately after a heightened moment in live sports can double unaided brand recall. Those aren't just interesting data points, they're signals that brands can act upon. Our advantage is the data layer behind the moment engine. We don't just help brands reach sports fans. We help them reach the right fans at the right moment with the right message. That's the difference between buying impressions and delivering outcomes. And we're proving this value as more brands buy in.

On our last earnings call, we told you that we had won roughly 70 new customers since launching the Moment engine in March. In Q2 alone, we've added 174 new customers, including major brands like McDonald's, YouTube TV and DoorDash, who are shifting spend to our platform. This is not sponsorship. It is measurable attention sold on our own data. The World Cup showed exactly what that looks like in practice. Take the example on the screen. Argentina's comeback against Egypt was one of the defining moments of the tournament.

Using GeniusIQ data, we not only tracked what was happening on the pitch, but what millions of fans were likely to be feeling as that match unfolded. That allowed brands to adapt their ad campaigns in real time, aligning spend and creative with the moments that mattered most. And that wasn't a one-off. We executed this throughout the tournament. One global consumer brand used GeniusIQ to activate campaigns around goals, penalties, VAR decisions and other pivotal moments.

The result was roughly 3x greater CPM efficiency than planned and the lowest cost per click of any campaign that they ran during the World Cup. That is the opportunity. Official data is no longer just telling you what happened. It's helping brands to decide what to do next. While the World Cup was a great showcase of what our products can deliver, we expect this to scale across the entire sports calendar. As a result, Genius is in the middle of conversations that we simply were not in 12 months ago. We are serving as a strategic sports partner to agencies. We are integrating with established ad tech businesses and brands are telling us our data is some of the most important infrastructure in their programmatic campaigns and we're only just beginning.

This season, we expect to bring the moment engine capabilities to the NFL-related media activations, extending into one of the most valuable media properties in sport and unlocking another avenue for long-term growth. Underneath both the growth and the margin sits product. GeniusIQ turns our official data into faster, more automated, higher-value products, and it is a direct driver of the margins that you're seeing and will continue to see. These are still very early days. Our single connected platform is creating value across every point of the sports ecosystem, one platform, endless solutions. Every new capability we build creates another way to monetize the same infrastructure. Broadcasters like D Zone are using it to make live sport more immersive. Brands like Amazon and Enterprise are using it as real-time sponsorship opportunities during heightened moments of the match.

Analysts at Sky Sport are using it to deliver rich insights and analysis. Leagues like CBS and Liga MX are using it to make fast, accurate and transparent officiating decisions. While these are different use cases, they all point to the same simple objective. GeniusIQ is turning official data into products that makes sport more valuable for every participant in the ecosystem. This is the operating system of modern sport.

Now to Legend and the synergies specifically because this is the part that I want you to hear clearly. Legend is one layer in the Genius system, the demand layer, sitting alongside our data and our technology. It brings a durable owned audience, roughly 180 million users, 2/3 of whom return and customers acquired through Legend carry around 60% higher lifetime value for operators after their first year. Those audience characteristics aren't just theoretical. They have been consistent since the start of the year, and they are already showing up in our results.

Group revenue increased $77 million year-over-year, yet sales and marketing expenses are only up $3 million. And that's with Legend only contributing since the 1st of May. If we'd acquired a business that depended on continually buying and reselling its traffic, then that sales and marketing expense line would have looked very different. In reality, however, we do not rent the audience, we own it. Here's what's new. When we announced the deal, we laid out a set of revenue synergies and said they would build over time. They're building faster than expected. Cross-selling across the combined customer base is underway, already delivering results. Prediction markets are our most visible example of this coming through.

The first phase of audience data integration is complete, immediately benefiting our fan graph and delivering results for our media customers. And we have begun using Legends properties as media inventory, which benefits margin as we shift spend away from third-party platforms and onto our own. On the forward, the significant bulk of the synergy opportunity is still ahead of us, but it is no longer just a line on a slide. It has started and it is ahead of schedule. And on the AI question that we always get, an owned, returning first-party audience becomes more valuable as the open web fills with generic machine-made content, not less. As AI decides more of what people discover and buy, the businesses that own real data and a real audience are the ones that win. We own both. That is the position.

Prediction markets are one example of how we're leveraging this position. In the second quarter, we generated meaningful revenue from the category. And after the quarter end, we reached another important milestone by signing direct commercial agreements with both Kalshi and Polymarket across official data and customer acquisition. At a high level, 3 things are happening at once. First, the data layer. Over the past few months, both Kalshi and Polymarket partnered with leagues like the Argentinian Football Association, Liga MX and SiriA, each built on official data and integrity from Genius.

Building on those league partnerships, we've now established direct commercial agreements with both prediction market platforms, covering a wide range of content across our data portfolio. Official rights run league by league. That is the structure of this industry. And on the sports that we hold, settlement runs on our data. Leagues will move at their own pace in this category, and so will the scale of our platform relationships. As an example of this, look at what happened last week. The NFL filed formally with the CFTC and told the regulator in writing that markets on sport cannot operate with integrity without official settlement data, real monitoring and information sharing between the venues and the leagues. The largest league in America has put on record that this category runs on infrastructure and that infrastructure is what we have spent 2 decades building.

For the avoidance of doubt, we do not expect the NFL to green light prediction markets in the near future and have not included this in our 2026 guidance. However, what is clear is that the direction of travel is towards more official data, not less. What we've established with Kalshi and Polymarket is a foundation upon which we will layer more content, more services and more territories over time. It is the same compounding playbook that you have watched us execute in sports betting, now applied to prediction markets.

Second, the data layer also extends to market making. The reliance on our official data and models to price markets is essential to provide liquidity on these exchanges. This puts us in a uniquely valuable position. Third, the audience layer, as was part of our thesis when we first announced Legend in February, and this category is where Legend is already excelling and delivering in our Q2 results. We are sourcing new customers for prediction market operators in a very significant volume.

Every one of those customers is acquired somewhere. With our organic media platform now turbocharged by Legend, we own many of the destinations where those customers are acquired and competition for those customers is only becoming more intense. That is why acquisition dollars flow to us in Q2 and why our combined media offering became a key part of our deals with Kalshi and Polymarket. Our role in this market is infrastructure. We supply everyone. All 3 of these elements come together to represent a sum larger than its component parts. That is exactly how we said the Legend acquisition helps us and exactly how we said prediction markets would expand our total addressable market.

While sports moments will come and go, our prediction market revenue is beginning to structurally rise, and we expect significant upside in the years ahead, both in our betting and media segments from this important market segment. Two key questions about our stock asked frequently since the Legend announcement in February are now directly addressed in our results. More importantly, they leave us better positioned for the next phase of growth.

And with that, let me hand to Bryan.

Thanks, Mark. Let me start by simply recapping our 3 key financial metrics. First, another quarter of solid revenue growth across the board, 65% overall, underpinned by 28% in Betting and 193% in Media, reflecting the effect of the acquisition, but also continued organic growth solidly above 20% for both Genius and Legend Media. Taken together, these demonstrate the strength of our combined business. Second, another quarter of solid adjusted EBITDA growth of 54%. This represents a 27% margin, which was over 250 basis points above the margin implied by our guidance. Let me be direct about that margin because I know the question, is this just acquisition mix? Mix helps just as we said it would, but it's not the whole story. Our organic growth is generating real operating leverage. GeniusIQ automation is improving our core economics and integration synergies are already landing ahead of schedule, with most of that opportunity still ahead of us. That's why we're confident raising guidance today.

And third, quarter end cash of $155 million was above the range of $140 million to $150 million we set last quarter. To delve into cash flow a bit, Q2 is always our seasonal low point for cash. And in this quarter specifically, the transaction-related factors amplified that effect. First, our normal seasonality remains unchanged, where the second half of the year is naturally more cash generative. Second, we incurred the onetime costs associated with closing the Legend acquisition. Those costs are now largely behind us and will not repeat.

To put this quarter in context, we finished Q1 with $197 million in cash and finished Q2 with $155 million. The change was predominantly driven by $41 million of debt financing costs. Excluding certain onetime transaction-related impacts, underlying operating cash flow would have been roughly breakeven. One additional accounting point that's worth calling out. The cash flow statement shows a $579 million use of cash for the acquisition of the business. That reflects the accounting presentation, excluding the repayment of shareholder loans, settlement of Legend's historic incentive plans and the cash acquired in the transaction. Taken together, those contribute to the $800 million upfront cash consideration paid.

As we mentioned last quarter, from here, we expect cash generation to accelerate through the second half of the year. We expect to generate approximately $145 million of unlevered free cash flow in the second half. That represents 70% unlevered free cash flow conversion of the approximately $210 million of adjusted EBITDA, less roughly $30 million of interest and $10 million of debt repayment gets you to 50% levered cash flow conversion. So from the third quarter onward, you'll have a much cleaner view of the underlying cash-generating power of the business as we progress toward our 2028 targets for 60% unlevered free cash flow conversion.

Importantly, we're now seeing capitalized software costs flatten just as we've said it would. As revenue continues to grow, this will continue to decline as a percentage of revenue, providing another structural tailwind to cash conversion over time. On the balance sheet, our only debt is the $825 million term loan used to fund the Legend acquisition. We have no revolver drawn and no other borrowings. As cash generation accelerates in the second half, we expect to exit the year at approximately 2x net leverage and continue reducing that in 2027, while maintaining ample liquidity throughout.

Let me quickly comment on our GAAP net loss of approximately $77 million and remind you that this reflects the accounting for the close of the Legend acquisition. The result includes onetime transaction costs, acquisition financing and the noncash accounting associated with acquired intangible assets, not the underlying operating performance of the business. Looking ahead, we expect our earnings profile to continue improving as we progress toward sustained GAAP profitability. Taken together, the financial profile of the business is becoming increasingly clear, durable revenue growth, improving profitability, increasing cash generation and lower leverage.

Now let me finish with guidance. We are raising our full year outlook. Revenue moves to a range of $1.005 billion to $1.025 billion, and adjusted EBITDA moves to a range of $285 million to $295 million, a margin of roughly 29%. The operating leverage is showing up in the numbers, driven by strong revenue growth, nascent rise in prediction markets revenues, ramping GeniusIQ automation and early synergy capture, all of it structural. That gives us tremendous optimism for Genius' path forward. 2027 is when the combined earnings power really starts to show, and it puts us squarely on track to achieve our 2028 guidance, which is more visible today than the day we set it.

And with that, back to you, Mark.

Thanks, Bryan. There's a lot in today's earnings, so let me summarize. We beat our guidance on every metric. Our largest ever acquisition is already delivering synergies ahead of schedule. We own the official data that the regulated ecosystem, sportsbooks, media and now prediction markets depend on, and we own the audience layer on top of it. We believe we are only just beginning to monetize the full potential of our platform within prediction markets.

Thank you, and we will now open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Maybe I'll kick us off with a big picture one. Obviously, with the close of the Legend acquisition, talk to us a little bit about what some of the key learnings have been as you went through the pre-close and now the integration process with the asset? And how you're thinking about potential for elements on both the monetization side and the synergy side to continue to evolve and what some of those key learnings have been?

Yes. Thanks, Eric. It's Mark here. Look, Legend started really, really well. We're super positive about it. And I think the synergies are coming through faster than we expected. You can see that and we announced in the last couple of days, Kalshi deal, Polymarket deal. And it's really proving the thesis that we had when we went out and bought Legend that there would be immediate and significant synergies. So, they're coming through immediately. From a operational point of view, the teams are merging really well. We've had some off-sites. The products are coming out the door in a really satisfactory way, and we're starting to get some technical cross-sell -- sorry, technical crossover as well with our product sets. So overall, it's been remarkably successful, and we're super excited about it.

Your next question comes from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist Securities.

Guys, decelerating OSB handle growth has been a factor for a competitor and a customer this week. And I think PM proliferation potentially could be a factor. Just curious, are there similar risks for your business once we get to NFL season?

Thanks, Barry. Look, the way we think about the market is that we're taking revenue from anything to do with sports betting. So whether that's from the traditional OSB operators or whether that's the expansion in the TAM that we're getting with the prediction market, it's all very net positive for us. The other thing that's worth focusing on, and we said it before many times is that we've got a business model that has that underlying floor. So the way that we do deals gives us the sort of minimum downside that protects us from the volatility. You've seen a number of times in our business when there's been sort of negative sports results for the OSBs that we've actually been protected. And again, we carry that philosophy forward in all the deals that we do.

Barry, the only other thing I would add to that is just a reminder on the global nature of our business and the Americas being roughly 50%. And so there's diversity there that we're not necessarily hinged to one geography or one sport.

Got it. And if I could just ask a follow-up on the guide, $15 million increase to both revenue and EBITDA, which would be about 100% flow-through. I see that Q2 revenue beat by 11% and EBITDA by 8%. But just curious how we get to 100% flow-through for the full year.

Yes. Again, just the continued momentum, the momentum year-to-date, you see it in the numbers in the quarter, exceeding margin there and then just continued build for the rest of the year. That's the execution of the underlying business, the Legend integration tracking well and just new deals and partnerships as exemplified by the recent ones in the last couple of days with Kalshi and Polymarket So multitude of factors there factoring into the guide.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Pizzella with Deutsche Bank.

I think you mentioned that 2027 is when the combined earnings power really starts to show in the prepared remarks. Can you talk about some of the biggest drivers of acceleration next year?

Yes. Again, our -- you've seen it before, just this compounding playbook we have across the business, both betting and media. We are tapping into a rising market, growth of prediction markets is nascent, the continued opportunities as we bring on new operators, sportsbooks. Legend also gives us exposure to iGaming. So there's a number of factors there as we continue to just grow our portfolio of products and get more penetration and uptake with our partners to help them grow as well.

Okay. And then in the prediction market revenue drivers in the presentation, you mentioned the liquidity. How are you seeing demand for your pricing models in addition to the official data?

Yes. So, just to remind everybody with the prediction markets, we make money in lots of different ways. We've said it for a while. But obviously, on the marketing side, especially with the addition of Legends, we're helping the prediction markets acquire new customers, bring them in. We've said for a long time that we sell to market makers and the market makers take both the data and the pricing services. And finally, now we're cutting deals as you've seen with Kalshi and Polymarket with either directly with the prediction markets. And there's some significant upside in a number of those prediction markets out there. So, the demand for our products and services is growing. It's something that we think there's some significant upside in over the period, but we've been very cautious with the way that we've forecast. For example, the NFL is not and never has been included in any of our numbers. So, the opportunities across the prediction market space is significant for us.

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey with StoneX.

Mark, Bryan, Brandon, congrats guys on a great quarter and seeing that Legend deal come through. So, kudos to you guys. Just maybe as a quick follow-up to the last question. You're obviously delivering the data and pricing to market makers. That's -- can you just maybe talk about real quick why that's so valuable for them? And then Mark, do you see an opportunity in the future that maybe Genius could eventually participate more directly in market making on PN platforms?

Yes. Good questions, Mike. Look, we've traded on the regulated exchanges for the last 20 years or so, and we really don't see any difference in the U.S. with prediction markets and the emergence of the prediction markets is just more opportunity for us to keep leveraging our pricing, our risk capabilities and really sort of drive revenue. It's no additional cost for us. So, we're seeing good results from our engagement with that, the market makers, and we feel very optimistic about the future.

Nice. The one last one on prediction market deal economics. Awesome to see the framework here in partnership with Kalshi and Polymarket. To the best you can, can you give us some color maybe on how these agreements, the economics of these agreements compare with your traditional sportsbook deals? And I guess, specifically on the data pricing and services, if those structures are broadly similar or if PN platforms are maybe paying less for data while you can sort of make up the economics through bundled services like integrity, liquidity and customer acquisition?

Yes. I mean, so I think I said last quarter that we see those players as being large tier operators for us going forward. And I think the deals that we've seen coming through are more than satisfying that requirement. The deal structures, again, are very similar. We have fixed minimums. There's upside as well as part of it. And clearly, especially seeing the -- I guess that, where they are in their stage of evolution around products and customer acquisition, we actually see significant opportunities there in terms of providing product, providing data, providing services as they evolve their business in quite a rapid way.

Your next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer.

Just getting back to the increase in the guidance and specifically in the Media segment, is that coming strictly from some of the higher prediction market advertising you're expecting to see? Or are you seeing other brands outside of sports coming as well, and that's also benefiting considering all the agency partnerships?

Yes, a good question. It's sort of everything. So, if you take the World Cup, for example, the World Cup was great for us. We managed to add a significant number of new brands to it, which is a great way to kick start relationships with new players there. So, we see significant upside there. You've seen, obviously, the cross-sell from the Legend, the synergies coming through there in terms of the marketing. So, that's coming through. It's a sort of combination of all of those things.

What's going on in the advertising world and the focus that I mentioned it in my remarks that the world now has on sports as a sort of sector, and we saw that at Cannes Lion, all of that's really contributing to some of the significant growth and demand that we're seeing for the product set.

Great. And then just as a follow-up, when you look at the prediction market is trading and where volume is and it's heavily weighted in game and it's popular with certain sports such as tennis, college basketball. How does that make you think sort of your rights portfolio? And is there some opportunities you kind of look at given the user behavior in that market?

Yes. So obviously, our business has grown up on live betting, live data. So, it's having the best data, having the best collection technology is becoming increasingly important. One of the things that we're getting with GeniusIQ that we're rolling out, and we're doing this across global basketball with FIBA. We're doing it with global soccer again, where there's a lot of live betting is really the ability to upscale and to take new higher quality, faster data feeds, which are highly relevant to the prediction market. So, that's a big opportunity. And again, we're pretty unique in our technology that allows us to do that. And certainly, that technology as a slight aside, we're rolling out additional faster collection technology with the NFL at the moment. So, there's better ways of collecting data using the technology that we've invested in and the money that we spent over the last few years, which are highly relevant to prediction markets.

Separately to that, obviously, pricing the volume of events that are happening now and creating those models that we mentioned before is something that we have a huge amount of history and we've got all of the data. We've got those pricing models. We've been doing it for a long time. So, we see it as a big growth opportunity to actually have our models and our data out there being used to create those new market opportunities.

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Nichols with B. Riley.

Great to see a solid first quarter with the Legend acquisition under your belt now. You've talked a lot about the synergies. I realize it's still early days and a little bit hard to quantify. Any kind of framework that you could maybe put around some of the opportunities that you're seeing thus far, maybe at least maybe name and size 1 or 2 things that you've been able to get done this far and opportunities as we head into the seasonally stronger second half?

Yes. I mean, again, if you just look at the Kalshi deal and the Polymarket deal that we just agreed, there are really 2 significant proof points that have come through, and there's plenty more to come. You've got real evidence of faster synergy delivery in the business and in the numbers now. And so we're extremely pleased to see how that's operating.

And last question for me. A big step-up in the momentum in advertisers this quarter. It's ramping up quite quickly. You're probably going to get more traction headed into the NFL season coming up. How should people think about the opportunities there, whether it's like contract size, renewal expectations and how that business is going to grow and how that advertising base has been expanding thus far?

Yes. So, I guess there's 2 parts to it. I mean you've got the advertisers and the brands and the World Cup has been a fantastic test case for that. We've brought on, I think, 174 new clients, which we tested over the World Cup. And clearly, those clients have had a lot of success in a lot of ways, and that's a great base to build from. So, that's one sort of vector that we've got. The other vector is clearly around the prediction market with the upcoming NFL season with, frankly, just with the number of prediction market operators coming into the space and also with the OSB, some of the major ones talking about their prediction market aspirations, there's an enormous requirement for new customers, customer acquisition, customer engagement.

And again, part of the logic behind the Legend acquisition and what we're now seeing through Legend with the product set that we're putting out there is very focused on that. So, we see that sort of as the other vector in that space. So, we're pretty confident about how that market is going to evolve. And again, we've now got real sort of empirical evidence, which allows us to have real confidence in our future growth forecasts.

Your next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan with Needham & Company.

Maybe just to start, Mark, I understand the commentary that you're not expecting the guidance doesn't include the NFL to sign a deal with prediction market operators. But is there any way to frame what that would mean for your deals or the potential monetization of those contracts if a deal were to come through between the NFL and either Kalshi and/or Polymarket?

Yes. I mean, look, as I've said and I want to be very clear, we don't expect that. And as you said, it's not in our numbers. Clearly, it would be very significant. There's a number of factors. There's a financial significance that comes directly with the sale of the data for the most important league. And there's obviously the value of the affiliation that they get, which has a real monetary value as well. So, we've got a very close eye on it. But again, we've been conservative in the way that we forecast. We've never included it. And if I were you, I wouldn't be expecting that to come through this season.

Understood. And then I was just hoping maybe to dive in a little bit deeper on the moments engine. I think it really launched in March of this year. So, this is the first NFL season. I think there was a lot of success with the World Cup. So, can you just talk about maybe cross-selling or having those advertisers, especially the 174 that just came on board, staying on board and having them advertise during the NFL season as well?

Yes. Look, it's a big industry trend that's coming through. We launched, as you rightly said, in March. We then had Cannes, which has been, frankly, very successful. And the advertisers that have trialed it over the World Cup, we fully expect to take into the beginning of the NFL season. We've got some pretty big names that we're now working with some pretty big agencies. The technology is deployed. You've got to remember, it's over 90% of the platforms that the agencies are using. So overall, we are extremely well positioned. And the best thing about where we are at the moment is that we've actually got that empirical evidence. We've got that data that tells us what the results are. So we can be very confident in our forecasting going forward and our ability to cross-sell to the client base.

Your next question comes from the line of Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo.

Just a couple of modeling questions. First, on the Legend side of things. You guys talked about the 20% organic growth at both Legend and internally. Would that say that you guys did about $45 million of Legend in the second quarter?

Trey, we operate the businesses as one. We don't break out Legend separate from Genius. Again, as I said earlier, the underlying business across setting and all of media has been strong and solid, and that execution continues to be ahead of where we thought for the quarter and on the full year guide as well. So, we're excited about that.

Okay. Perfect. And then just on the cash flow side of things, helpful to get the expected cash balance by year-end. But could you guys just maybe break down a little more detail around that, just expectations for operating cash flow, capitalized software and PP&E spend and against that, just any kind of feel for Q3 versus Q4? Will Q3 be a positive quarter? I assume Q4 is going to be quite a bit bigger because of seasonality, but just any breakdown around all that would be great.

Yes. Thanks. There was a lot of movements in cash for the quarter and not everything -- or I should say it's spread in various lines on the cash flow statement just given the accounting. But for the rest of the year, as we've said, we're going to be at about 70% unlevered free cash flow on the back half and then it nets down to about 50% after the interest and debt repayment. You're right that it will scale. Q4 will be ahead of Q3, but you will see that progression towards the year-end balance of over $100 million improvement.

Your next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens.

I want to start maybe back to like the day 1 thesis for the company, and that's the shift towards in-play betting. Can you just kind of talk about if you could maybe rank some of the initiatives that you're working on into the NFL season that we should be watching out for as we watch your in-play mix?

Yes. I mean the first one that I would be focused on is the improvement of the betting data and the betting quality work we're doing the NFL to improve that. That then has a knock on flow, not only into the sports books, then being able to leave the markets open for longer and offer better service to our customers, but also especially now with the prediction market, evolution that people are going to be pretty focused on data speed and data quality. So, I think that world is evolving pretty quickly as you go into the NFL season.

Okay. And then, Mark, following up, I think you said you generated meaningful prediction market revenue in the second quarter. And going back to your Investor Day back last year, you added some level of contribution to your long-term guidance from prediction markets. But now that we're starting to see those actually come to fruition with Kalshi and Polymarket, is there a way to kind of think about what prediction market revenue could represent as a percentage of total revenue over time? I know you're probably not going to give a firm number, but just directionally, how we should be thinking about that?

Yes. Look, I think the best way to think about it is thinking about the addition of the major prediction market guys like additional Tier 1 operators. That's really how we think about it. When we did our Investor Day in late November, early December last year, we pointed to the marketing revenues from prediction markets, and we pointed to market making. That's come through almost exactly as we thought it would. The addition of the data through the Kalshi and Polymarket deal, that's come through around about the same time. So, I think our numbers going forward, we're feeling very good about, and it includes what we think is a prudent amount of money for prediction markets.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Stantial with Stifel.

Maybe starting off on the betting business, Mark, can you just update us on some of the upcoming renewals for customer contracts, in particular, what's in the pipeline in the U.S. ahead of NFL season and maybe how you're thinking about that in the context of guidance?

Yes, sure. Look, we're constantly renewing contracts. And as you know, the way that we operate the business is we don't have everything coming through for renewal at the same time. We stagger that. So, we're always under renewal conversations. As the NFL season draws in, there will be some renewals that need to get completed by then. But we've seen this movie 1,000 times. We will get the deals done. Everybody needs the data, everyone needs the relationships with the NFL. So, the deals will get agreed, and we expect to carry on as usual.

That's great. And then for our follow-up, just a super quick housekeeping item. Bryan, I just want to be clear because I think there was a decent bit of confusion here on the last call. The $100 million plus cash flow guidance for the back half, the definition there is change in net cash position on the balance sheet, correct? And then your unlevered free cash flow, you talked about 70% conversion. If you can just clarify that definition as well to not seen in the release. And then I'll add a third part to that, if I can, which is it seems to imply bridging your unlevered free cash flow to that $100 million. You listed 2 items out. That seems suggest there's no real -- at least no material onetime drag in that conversion. So, I just want to be clear on that because obviously, there's been some litigation costs and stuff of that nature over the last few quarters.

That's right. So, the unlevered is essentially operating cash flow minus the CapEx and the cap software in the business. We said we expect cap software to flatten at that high teens, low $20 million mark a quarter, including the acquisition of Legend. The difference between the unlevered and the levered is, as I said that roughly $40 million combined between interest payment and debt repayment. And so that's the difference where we're saying levered is after those 2 things and the unlevered is your traditional operating minus CapEx.

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum.

So, Q4 margin normally -- I know you guided to Q3, you guided for the year. So, if I back into Q4, it normally seasonally steps down due to the timing of rights costs, which makes sense. Your guidance implies something like 200 basis points improvement versus Q3, exiting the year at 35%. That is your 2028 target despite that seasonal drag from rights costs. I guess talk through that exit rate at 35%. Is there anything onetime in there? And then if your structural operating leverage assumptions are materializing better, which you've indicated, but why not assume that for a good run rate in 2027?

Again, our margin usually increases through the year as that back half is more revenue and cash generative. We also have the effect of the acquisition. So, the exit rate does end higher. And so that improvement you see in the guide and puts us solidly on the path and optimistic about our '28 guide.

And then if I look at Slide 5, the Genius Moment Engine, 174 new advertisers in Q2, how many of those were legacy Legend customers? Or I guess asked differently, how many of those 174 are new incremental to both the combined Genius and Legend?

Yes. I mean they're almost all new and incremental. I mean I can throw -- I mean if you -- I think on one of the slides, we put some of the names, McDonald's, YouTube TV, DoorDash, Qualcomm, Airbnb, Seek, Wayfair, Woop, Kroger. There's a lot of new brands that are coming to the business and trying the services and getting good results from it. We're super excited about it.

Your next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

Two quick ones from us this morning. Just on the World Cup or the second quarter, are you able to parse out what you think the benefit was maybe versus your expectations from the World Cup overall in the 2 different business segments? And then secondly, related to that, I saw in the release, you mentioned semi-automated off-site technology deal. Where are we in terms of just doing more deals with leagues kind of on the back of everything that we learned from the World Cup and kind of where your technology is versus some of your peers?

Yes. So, just on the World Cup, remember, we didn't buy the data right. So, the World Cup effect is really around the marketing and the advertising, and it was pretty much almost exactly in line with our expectation. So, I think that answers that. On the data side, we're doing quite a lot of deals. I mean we just launched probably saw with Brazil, the semi-automated off-site. I mean that's a pretty significant deal. We've got the Leger MS. We've got some stuff in college that's coming out. We're rolling the technology out pretty quickly, and we're getting very good traction.

In terms of the technology itself, we still have a massive head start on anything else out in the market. If you look at one of the metrics, for example, might be the mesh tracking that we have. So there -- the business that we have with the GeniusIQ product is to have skeletal tracking. I think we're at 10,000 points on a human body 200 times a second versus the number, I think the second player in the market that's at 26 points on a human body. So, the fidelity of the data, the quality of the product, the speed at which we're capturing it, and then we're using that technology to do things like the automated event capture, faster data using in the prediction market. The whole strategy is coming together brilliantly. We're extremely pleased about it. We're rolling new products off the back of it, and it's becoming a real incremental driver of our growth.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Handler with ROTH Capital.

Two questions. First, other than the NFL, are most of your league partners have deals with prediction market companies? What's left? Are any of them consequential?

Sorry, I didn't get the last bit of that. Can you say that again?

If there are any leagues that are not -- that do not have deals with picture market companies, are any of those consequential of size?

Yes. I think in the U.S., the notable ones are obviously, as you said, the NFL, college and NCAA is the other one. Globally, I think there's an evolution and a move towards it. Our partners like SiriA, Liga MX, they've all moved into the prediction market world. So, we expect that trend to continue and there to be additional opportunity. Again, just to sort of make the point, we see this as a real growth opportunity for us. We believe there's plenty of upside here for us still to come, which we haven't baked into our numbers, but we're excited about where that's going to take us.

Okay. And then, how has customer acquisition spend changed with prediction market companies now coming into the picture? Do you see -- is there a big battle between sportsbooks and predictive market companies over customers?

Yes. I mean the short answer is yes. There is a battle and clearly, that's causing the premium space to be elevated in price. And obviously, through Legend, we now own the hands down the best customer acquisition platform out there for any of the prediction markets or sportsbook operators. And we're reaping rewards on that really in quite an immediate and aggressive way. So, we're seeing strong growth in the space as a result of it.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call to Mark Locke, Co-Founder and CEO, for closing remarks.

Yes. Just a quick one for me. And I just want to say thanks very much for all of you joining today, and we're looking forward to talking to you again in Q3. I just wanted a quick note on the timing of that call. It might become a little later in the month as I'm expecting another baby around that time. So, I just wanted to give you a bit of a heads up, so there were no surprises.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and welcome to Genius Sports First Quarter 2026 Earnings Results Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this call is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Genius Sports. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 17.

During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniusports.com.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Locke.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. Before I get into the results, a quick word on context. We're really pleased to share that we've successfully closed the Legend acquisition last week. Integration is well underway, and we're excited to share our progress into the quarters ahead. Q1 was another strong quarter, reinforcing the simple point that this is a reliable compounding business model and that we are executing on plan. We delivered group revenue growth of 31% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 21% with meaningful contributions from both Betting and Media. Importantly, Betting grew 33% this quarter, and that consistency is structural, and I want to spend a few minutes on why.

Net revenue retention remains in the 120% to 130% range across our Sportsbook customers year after year. We partner with circa 500 licensed Sportsbook brands across regulated markets globally, and over half our revenue is generated outside of the United States. Our consistent growth comes from the same drivers that we have always communicated, selling additional content and products to sportsbooks, winning new customers globally, sharing in market growth and increasing the value of our partnerships as they come up for renewal.

Each renewal is a pricing event, more content, more products, more geographies. And that's what compounds into the growth that you see year after year. What sets us apart is how deliberately this business is built. That repeated performance across a diverse set of customers, products and regulated geographies is fundamental to how this business compounds. Further, we are selective by design, working only with licensed operators in regulated markets. It is what makes our business model predictable and sustainable. That predictability is reinforced by our contracts, which are structured to protect against the downside.

Volatility in handle or hold does not translate to earnings volatility for Genius. We have proven this through periods of industry-wide pressure, and this quarter was no different. While discussing our Betting business, I want to spend a moment on prediction markets because, as we've mentioned before, this is a meaningful new ecosystem for Genius Sports. The regulatory framework is evolving. Leads are establishing agreements with the CFCC and prediction market platforms and well-funded operators are deploying significant new influxes of capital at scale. We are a beneficiary of this. Where we are different is that our position here is structural. We provide the data and the infrastructure that enables prediction market operators and the other stakeholders in the ecosystem to function at scale. We expect this to translate into both incremental data revenue and advertising demand as those operators ramp customer acquisition.

The way to think about this is simple. We are applying the same proven model in the U.S. online sports betting market to a new category. As a concrete example of revenue, during the quarter, we onboarded several high-profile market makers using our low-latency data feeds to help them participate in prediction markets. That is the pattern. Our infrastructure becomes the foundation for new products as they emerge. And as the industry continues to evolve, we see a clear opportunity to execute that same proven strategy and effectively expand our addressable market. We are at the very early stages of that journey today and are excited about our pipeline. That is the Betting story.

Now media. Media grew 22% in this quarter. Most excitingly for Genius was the launch of our Moment Engine that has already gained significant traction across the advertising industry and become the new standard. The Moment Engine identifies when fan engagement is likely to peak, not just from the scoreboard, but from momentum shifts, comebacks and the kind of high-impact moments where customer attention is most valuable to advertisers.

GeniusIQ is what makes that possible. And importantly, it matches that moment to high-value audiences and activates them instantly. It's not just about identifying what is happening in the game. It's about understanding who it matters to and how they are likely to respond because not every fan reacts to the same moment in the game in the same way. That signal, the connection between the moment, the fan and the response is what advertisers pay for. What differentiates us is the combination of data and identity. Our FANHub:ID graph, 250 million consumers, combined with Legends intent signals drive better targeting and higher yields. The result is enabling advertisers to target high-intent audiences in real time, which drives higher yields and increased spend over time that translates directly into high-margin media revenue.

To accelerate the growth of this opportunity, we have now integrated the Moment Engine with leaders, representing approximately 90% of the programmatic market, agencies, broadcasters and the major SSPs and DSPs. These integrations lets us connect into existing advertising workflows and budgets with minimal friction, supporting our ability to scale efficiently. The product was already live during the tentpole events like the Super Bowl and March Madness with NBA finals and FIFA World Cup still ahead. What we are executing here is a structural shift in how digital businesses create value. The economy has moved from selling attention to capturing intent. Search engines did it. Retail media did it at the point of purchase. In sports, we are enabling that shift to happen in real time, and the Moment Engine is built precisely for it.

At our NewFront event in New York a few weeks ago, we partnered with nearly 70 new advertisers, clear evidence of growing demand for outcome-driven sports advertising. That builds on existing partnerships that we have with Publicis, WPP, DoorDash, Venmo and Samsung. Samsung, in particular, tested our self-serve CTV product early and quickly graded Genius as a Tier 1 partner within its internal evaluation framework, increasing spend by 220% from their test campaign to their most recent booking, a remarkable signal given Samsung's scale and selectivity in choosing advertising technology partners. We expect more of these graduations as advertisers complete their first full season with the product.

As adoption continues to grow, we expect the Moment Engine to be a meaningful driver of high-margin media revenue over time. The core businesses in Betting and Media are on a strong footing. And now I want to spend a few minutes on the 3 areas that are accelerating our margin expansion and profitability. Legend, GeniusIQ and AI. They're all connected and all running on the same platform.

First, Legend. As you know, Legend adds the intent layer of the system that we have been building for 2 decades, owned environments where 118 million unique users actively engage with sport and iGaming with more than 2/3 returning regularly. Combined with the official data and infrastructure that Genius already provides, the platform now connects context, engagement and action all in one place. As AI commoditizes information retrieval, owned environments are where users come back to engage. They become more defensible, not less.

Legend also extends the Moment Engine into the global iGaming market, which is expected to grow at near 20% CAGR over the next 3 years. On customer acquisition, as U.S. markets mature, sophisticated operators are shifting spend from the blanket promotional offers towards targeted high-intent performance media, channels where Legend is a proven leader. We're already seeing clear evidence of this shift. For example, Legend acquired customers delivered 60% higher yield for operators after 1 year. The category is moving towards Legend's model. Integration is underway, and we'll share more on synergy execution next quarter.

Second, GeniusIQ is replacing legacy systems across the sports league landscape. As we outlined at our Investor Day, GeniusIQ is the operating system of modern sport, one platform that captures live game action, understands fans, distributes data and powers every touch point where sports is consumed, officiating, coaching, betting, fan engagement, advertising, all running on the same system. Legacy manual data capture, where humans key in events from television feeds is obsolete. Leagues are transitioning towards automated AI-driven solutions, and we are winning that transition.

Our recent expansion with Liga MX is one example, a single relationship covering officiating support, performance analytics for clubs, betting data and fan engagement, all powered by GeniusIQ. We see a meaningful opportunity to take market share and drive incremental revenue with limited additional costs as more leagues make this transition. This is the strategic shift that we anticipated and that we built for, and we are now seeing the return on that investment in real time.

Third, AI lowers our cost base and increases speed across the business. GeniusIQ automates data collection in venues where it is deployed, delivering faster, more accurate data with reduced operational overhead. By the end of next year, we expect that automation to span our entire data rights portfolio. That is a meaningful margin lever as we scale. Internally, Agentic AI has cut feature development time by more than 50%, and we expect these gains to compound. We're extending the same capabilities into partner workflows, embedding our technology more deeply into customers' operations, which both creates stickiness and creates additional commercial opportunity.

We have also developed automated antipiracy solutions to protect our most valuable asset, the data itself. AI is not just enabling innovation in our products, it is structurally improving our margin profile and reinforcing the defensibility of our business. The true line is this: one platform; three, accelerants, expanding operating leverage. That is what gives us confidence in sustained margin expansion from here.

Bryan will take you through the financials, but I'll leave you with this. Q1 extends a consistent pattern of execution on a durable model. We are moving from a data provider to the operating system and monetization layer of global sport. We've built a competitive position and margin profile that few others in the sports ecosystem can replicate. Consider this against the backdrop of an industry that's being reshaped by AI. Every wave of AI progress increases the value of 2 things: data that can't be replicated and destinations audiences actively choose. We own both, which puts us in a rare position. AI doesn't threaten our core. It compounds it. The opportunity is to use AI to make our data more useful, our destinations more essential and the gap between us and everyone else even wider.

I want to close with a direct comment. We understand and appreciate but it's early days with respect to Legend. As I wrote to shareholders in February, the gap between how we see this business and how some of the market currently sees it is where the asymmetric returns live. The way that we close that gap is by delivering quarter after quarter with the discipline that has defined this business for 2 decades. These results begin that process and every conversation between today and our next call will be about exactly that.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bryan.

Thanks, Mark. Three things I want to land today. Q1 was another quarter of well-balanced, consistent growth. The Legend financing priced well with strong lender support and the combined company takes our 2026 EBITDA margin from 23% to 28%, pulling our long-term target forward by 2 years.

Starting with Q1, we delivered well-balanced revenue growth across both segments. Betting was up 33% and Media up 22%, translating to group revenue growth of 31% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 21%. Geographic balance was equally strong with over 25% revenue growth across Europe, the Americas and Rest of World. Two housekeeping notes on the quarter. First, as outlined previously, we now consolidate our Sports Technology and Services business into Betting and Media. This aligns with how we manage the business and reflects where expected growth and profitability will come from. Going forward, we will report on those 2 segments only. Second, on cash, we historically see outflows in the first half and inflows in the second half, netting positive for the full year. We expect that pattern to repeat in 2026.

Now on Legend. The financing tells you what outside capital thinks of this business. Concurrent with closing last week, we funded an $825 million Term Loan A at SOFR plus 350 basis points, better terms than where credit markets sat when we originally signed and a lower cost of capital than we initially expected. In a more selective credit environment, lender diligence reinforced the predictability of our cash flows, our low leverage profile and the durability of the model. We also elected to size the debt $25 million below the original structure, reflecting our confidence in free cash flow generation and our commitment to disciplined deleveraging. This reduces upfront and ongoing interest, fees and amortization while preserving ample liquidity which brings me to guidance, now reflecting the combined company beginning May 1.

For Q2, we expect 1 month of stand-alone Genius and 2 months of combined group financials, delivering group revenue of approximately $185 million and group adjusted EBITDA of $45 million. For full year 2026, we expect group revenue of between $990 million and $1.01 billion and adjusted EBITDA of between $270 million and $280 million, in line with the 2026 annualized estimates we provided in February. The headline number. This raises our 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin expectation from 23% to 28%. The acquisition is immediately margin accretive and accelerates our path to our previously stated long-term revenue and margin targets by 2 years.

On cash flow, 2 points. First, this year Q2 will mark the low point, consistent with the seasonality of prior years, while also having one-off acquisition expenses. In the second half, we expect the combined business to generate approximately $100 million of total cash flow, including all interest expenses and debt repayment. This equates to roughly 50% to 55% conversion of the approximately $200 million of adjusted EBITDA we expect in the period. Second, the trajectory. As we move into 2027, free cash flow conversion increases towards our previously stated 2028 target of at least 60% on an unlevered basis. And 2027 is also the year we transitioned to positive GAAP net income on a sustained basis. One last point, and it's the most important forward-looking one. Today's guidance does not yet include the 4 revenue synergies we identified at the time of the transaction, and these are where we see significant upside potential.

To recap them briefly, they are: first, customer cross-sell uniting Genius' official data with Legend's high-intent acquisition funnel; second, monetization of the combined audience asset across the advertising ecosystem; third, scaling Legend's technology platform across our 400-plus league and team partners; and fourth, distributing Genius data and products through Legend's channels.

On that fourth synergy, work is already underway. Over the coming weeks, users on Legend's properties will begin seeing Genius products integrated directly into their experience. This will be the first visible signal of integration progress. In 2026, the majority of Legend's value comes from consolidation, margin uplift and cross-sell of Legend inventory into existing betting partners. Deeper data-driven media synergies build as we move into 2027 and beyond.

One specific synergy worth calling out separately, prediction markets. As Mark covered, the ecosystem requires both official data and high-value audiences, capabilities we uniquely combine. Together, Genius and Legend create the only platform in our industry that delivers both at scale. We see this as one of the most attractive incremental revenue opportunities ahead and only the very early stages of this opportunity are reflected in today's guidance.

To close, Q1 extended the track record, the financing validated the model. Legend pulls our long-term targets forward by 2 years. The combined business is set up to deliver sustained revenue growth, margin expansion and cash flow and meaningful long-term value for shareholders.

With that, we'll open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl from Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Nice to see the strong Q1 results. I want to start, Bryan, with guidance just because you ended on it. Are you able to break out the legacy Genius guide relative to your new guide? And then what's included for Legend? I tried to do some reconciliation relative to the stand-alone expectations you had put out there. It appears like maybe a little lower on the revenue and the same EBITDA, but hopefully, hoping you can help me with that.

Ryan, thanks. On guidance, this is all in line with the earlier guidance we gave in February. And in February, we started with the Genius stand-alone guidance that had 22% revenue growth and 36% EBITDA growth, which is really strong, and we're on track to achieve that. With Legend closed just last week, we now present it as a combined business. So the guidance you see is effective May 1 on the combination. And you can see it's immediately accretive to margin and cash flow, potential synergies to drive upside. And so we feel good about that guidance. And again, I just want to stress it's all in line with that earlier guidance in February.

Helpful. NFL, so there's -- it's reported the NFL does not have an official Sportsbook. They're in those negotiations, previously DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars that expired at the end of March. Curious kind of what your view is of that. I know it's a long time until the start of the season, but just how that relates to you guys and what you expect to happen there?

Ryan, thanks for the question. Yes, I mean, look, it is a long time to start the season, right? And I mean, this is nothing we haven't really seen before. I don't want to comment for the NFL or how those negotiations are going. But from our point of view, we've got very strong visibility over our future revenues and our partnerships and our relationship with the NFL, just to remind everybody, is locked in until Super Bowl 2030.

Our next question comes from the line of Clark Lampen from BTIG.

Thanks for really detailed thoughts around sort of Legend and the opportunity sort of moving forward. Maybe to drill down on that at a slightly more micro level. I wanted to see if you guys could talk about some of the ongoing work and the Publicis and sort of Moments integrations that you guys talked about in the March time frame. Could you give us a feel for early commercial traction, what you're seeing with the integrations? Are those driving incremental revenue now? Or are we still in the sort of activation and testing phase?

And then a clarification on guidance. I think, Bryan, you just said immediately accretive. There are potential synergies, but guidance should be considered basically in line. It sounds like you guys have a very nicely growing demand backlog from core and prediction customers. What would you want to see before maybe starting to underwrite or sort of embed those potential synergies that you just talked about?

Clark, thanks for the question. Look, I'll let Bryan pick up the second part of it. But I mean, suffice to say, I think we said a few times that the upside isn't priced -- sorry, isn't in any of the guide. To answer your question sort of micro details, I think you called them. Look, we've got a few main things we're going. On the Legend integration, things are going really, really well. From an operational point of view, we've got a 60-person commercial off-site together, I think, next week or the week after, which is going to bring the businesses together, and we're going to address a lot of the inbounds that we're getting already, which is a really, really good sign. So the combined offering is going down very well.

From a product point of view, we're integrating BetVision into Legend at the moment, which gives us not only additional reach, but more inventory, which we should be able to immediately drive value from through our advertising partnerships. On the Moment Engine, you saw the comments or heard the comments in the prerecorded script. We think we picked up 70 new customers and 90% of the SSP, DSP market, and that's delivering immediate revenue. So we're extremely excited about the opportunities. It's going exactly to plan, and we feel very confident about the growth and the revenue numbers that we put out into the market previously.

But I'll let Bryan pick up the second part of the question.

I think that second part, just on the what we would need to see to layer in those synergies. And we've always been consistent that the acquisition was -- we guided with what was in front of us. And as those synergies come to light, we will start to layer them in. We've said the nearest ones are the cross-sell opportunities. And as Mark said, the teams have started to get together. There's interest on both sets of customers and proposals going out where we can now leverage the combined opportunity. So as those things start to layer in, we will update you as we go.

Our next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender from Citizens JMP.

Mark, you touched on onboarding the market makers to your platform. Broadly, can you maybe just help us think through the economics of what selling that data might look like? I know you're not going to be able to kind of give us contract by contract, but just kind of help us size the overall opportunity there for you guys? And maybe the second part of that is you have the infrastructure in place, would you guys ever consider market making yourselves?

Yes, it's a good question, Jordan. I mean these are fairly early days. Whilst we've got a great deal of experience of doing this in Europe, I think we've mentioned before that we've worked with market makers there for a long time on the exchanges. And I think from a technical point of view, we don't really see much difference over here, saying all about the economics and the way it's going to wash out in the U.S. is clearly something that we're keeping an eye on and watching the evolution of.

As a result of that, the deals that we're running are short-term deals. We have various different economic structures. But fundamentally, as time goes on, we'll evolve those deals as we get more clarity, frankly, on what the best economic deal is, but that's going to be on a case-by-case basis depending on the quality and the type of the market maker that we're working with. We're leaving ourselves a lot of flexibility.

Understood. And then just on the follow-up, Bryan, I think I caught that you said $100 million of free cash flow in the second half of the year. If I look at the 1Q number, it kind of implies you have to not lose that much in the second quarter. Is that to say that you might actually be free cash flow negative for the entire year? Did I catch that correctly?

Sorry, no. So let me just give you a little bit of a walk on the cash flow. So Q1 seasonal pattern, that is part of our history and just the way timing vis-a-vis -- timing of rights payments versus revenue, right? We monetize our rights over 12 months, but the rights payments time into the season. Q2 will have a number of onetime impacts just given the transaction. So we will see the low point in Q2, probably around $140 million to $150 million.

And then that build back that $100 million and starting from really the second half of the year, you really start to get a clean read on the earnings and cash flow power of the combined business. And so that's 50% to 55% total conversion just so that we were cleaner on where you might model that. And so that reflects basically the back half of the year earning about $200 million of EBITDA that may be more Q4 than Q3, again, in line with the pattern of history here. But hopefully, that answers your question as to how to think about the cash flow in that.

Our next question comes from the line of Barry Jonas from Truist Securities.

Maybe just talk a little bit more about the prediction opportunity right now. I don't believe the NFL has reached an agreement at this point. So just curious what the opportunity is and then what you're sort of waiting on to proceed once you get more buy-in from the NFL or any other leagues.

Yes. It's a good question and clearly a hot topic at the moment. So I think it's probably best to break it into 3 buckets because already the prediction markets are driving a lot of value for us. And the first one, we touched upon a minute ago with the market makers, we're generating good revenues there. Early days, but we're seeing real positive opportunities there. You've got the second part of the -- or the second bucket, if you like, I'm sure you've all watched the valuations and some of the raises that have been going on at the moment, which, frankly, is going to be for marketing for product. And we see a lot of that raise coming through to Genius and Legends as part of customer acquisition and the marketing. So there's a significant opportunity there, which we are already starting to capitalize on.

And then finally, on the data side, look, we've got to have a very close eye on the regulators and the regulatory environment is something that we are obviously very sensitive to and our partners are very sensitive to. But you're seeing positive moves from the CFTC towards official data. A lot of our partners outside of the NFL are showing strong interest in engaging. So we expect that those sorts of deals will come in on a longer -- sorry, on a short-term basis. On a medium-term basis, the NFL and the U.S. sports leagues, I'm sure, are considering their positions. But I think it's fair to say that for the prediction market to have a long and rosy future, they're going to want to work very closely with those leagues and with the CFTC. So as a result of that, we expect in the medium term some progress on that front.

That's helpful. Then just for Mike, can you talk about allocation specifically customer purchases? I think the company volume in the quarter fell off.

So we will prioritize our capital in the highest ROI opportunity. We're closing the trends and finance favorable focus on management. We always focus on scheme and to a paying down that as well. We get done because we've set our strap and the quick lever, the quick have optionality to do those other types of things you're asking about. Our focus right now is the delever.

Our next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon from Macquarie.

Wondering if you could expand a little bit just in terms of engagement in Syria as that season comes to a close. And this was a big integration year with your new rights contract in BetVision. So any additional color just in terms of what you've seen from that contract in this first year?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Look, it's super interesting. I mean the -- Italy is the biggest betting market in Europe. It's often missed by people. Our relationship with them is very strong. We're very happy with the technology integration that we've done and the distribution of the products. And we feel really good about the future of that relationship.

Okay. Great. And then as we think about the NFL ad inventory opportunities and kind of tying that back with the event that you just had with NewFront, when will we start to see you kind of fill the bucket in terms of that inventory? Is that something that's closer into the season? Or is that a process that's going on right now? And any commentary there would be helpful.

Yes, sure. Look, we're already outselling the NFL inventory. And clearly, with the addition of the Moment Engine and the improvement in ROI that our advertisers see a result of that, we are very confident that that's going to generate a very good result for us this year.

Our next question comes from the line of Eric Handler from ROTH Capital.

I wonder in terms of your Media business, is -- would you be willing to sort of quantify either from a volume or dollar basis, how interest is shaping up for the NBA finals this year? And as well, when you look at the incremental opportunity with the World Cup, is there any color you can give around that?

Yes. So this is an interesting moment for us, excuse the pun, with our Moment Engine. We -- the great thing about it and the fact that we've distributed it so widely and it's being picked up by so many clients is that we're part of the workflow of those clients. And so when you combine that with the fact that we have a rolling set of events throughout the year, you mentioned a couple, and obviously, the World Cup is a big one. The combination of that means that this product will automatically be used by our clients as part of their campaign management. So effectively, we are now running our product sets on a 24/7, 365 basis based on the events, based on what's going on in the match and generating revenue from every campaign.

Great. And I wonder if there's any sort of updates or color or data you can give for BetVision in the quarter.

Yes. Look, BetVision, we're super happy with it. It's going really nicely at the moment. We've seen BetVision's growth in global football actually now with the with the off-season, but now pass some of the NFL. So there's a huge amount of opportunity that we're seeing outside of the core U.S. market there. We're really happy with the output and the results that we're getting are really strong. And clearly, we're winning result -- sorry, we're winning rights away from our competition, and that product is really helping us do that. So we feel very, very strongly about it, and we're super happy with the ROI that we're getting on that.

Our next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan from Needham & Company.

Maybe to start, Mark, I know it's early days, but is official data holding that same demarcation that had in online sports betting meeting? Are you and your competitors staying in your own lanes in terms of selling data to prediction market stakeholders that only you have official data for? Or is it more of the Wild West out there at this moment in time?

Yes. I mean it's certainly not the Wild West. It's much more -- the market has evolved. It's much more rational than it used to be, and I think you're seeing that in the results. We are pretty clear, and I think our competitors are pretty clear about what rights we hold, and we're engaging with not only the rights holders, but the prediction markets on that basis. I think the most important thing that people need to think about in terms of prediction markets is as they evolve and mature and become -- move towards sort of stronger regulatory framework, they're going to need to fall much more in line with the way that, I guess, the more traditional sports betting market work.

So they're going to look to mirror those -- that type of framework, which provides a significant opportunity for us and also other players in the market who have access and the control over that data. And again, if you look at the -- and I think I mentioned this before, you look at what the CFCC has said about the need to move towards official data and the fact that the leagues are starting to align, you're just going to see more adoption on that basis. Again, we're very well placed for that.

Got it. And then just a clarification. Bryan, I believe you mentioned the full year kind of legacy Genius guide was unchanged, but there was a pretty substantial beat in the first quarter. So was this just a pull forward or just maybe some confusion that we had on seasonality?

No confusion. We're always mindful in managing to the full year guide, and we're consistent with that. And so again, here with Q2 just closing the transaction, we want to come out of the gate here well. And so really no change, just managing the full year rather than quarter-to-quarter.

Our next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly from Oppenheimer.

I think when you acquired Legend, you were kind of calling for like 20% growth for the full year. It seems like 2 of the largest sports books are increasing the amount they're willing to invest in prediction markets. Kalshi has gotten funding. So it seems like we're ramping up for what one would call maybe a '22, '23 advertising spend that you saw in OSB in prediction markets. So just how should we think about the back half advertising ramp for Legend?

Thanks for that. Look, obviously, we love that comparison, and we agree with it as well. We're seeing a lot of the sort of excitement that we saw in those early days. The back half is going to be seasonal. There's still going to be rational spenders and even though they raised a lot of money and they're being aggressive with their acquisition. However, it's going to be based around sports events, and we would think it's likely to follow that calendar, albeit it's a big opportunity for us. And as I've said for a while, we're extremely well placed, even more so now with Legend and the distribution network that they have.

Got it. And then just as a follow-up, just with Legends, I guess, just in the relationship with the LLMs, when you go do and you kind of go into some of these LLMs, they are scraping covers and taking the sources. Is there any way to protect that data or protect what they have or maybe integrate with the LLMs? Can you just talk about that relationship in terms of preserving some of the uniqueness around the Legends portfolios?

Yes. Look, LLMs are a big opportunity for us through Legend. We -- I think I said in my prepared remarks, we -- what LLMs are good is aggregating information. But really, this is all about destination sites, which Legend has and the new app that's just been soft launched as well. So we feel from an AI point of view and an LLM point of view, we're a net winner. And we're seeing record audience coming through the LLMs to Legend at the moment, which is obviously translating to cash.

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey from StoneX.

Mark, Bryan, congrats guys on a great 1Q and the closing of your deal here. Just 2 questions from us, Mark. First one, renewals. Obviously, you've had a lot of success in renewals historically. Just curious sort of how you're thinking about any upcoming operator renewals in the U.S. And what are the key levers you think in terms of driving incremental growth from these agreements?

Yes. I mean, look, Mike, we're horizontally relaxed about this stuff. We've been doing it for years, and we expect this to carry on in the same way that we've seen it historically. We know what the levers are. We know what our value proposition is, and we've got an incredible track record of customer renewals and net revenue retention and growth. So we feel very confident and very relaxed about that.

Then just curious on the marketing opportunity you see, Mark, international. Obviously, the U.K. is a big area. I think in terms of Legend on gaming marketing, just the tax situation there has gotten nasty. Obviously, that's already baked into your guidance. Just wondering the impact you're seeing there. Do you think it will normalize or I guess, how it will trend through the year? And then just broadly speaking, when you look at the Moment Engine, which has been absolutely exceptional. And now Legend, when you look international, the biggest opportunities for growth that you guys see in the future?

Yes. Thanks, Mike. Good question. Look, I mean, Legend obviously globally diversified, and that's a super important part. One of the things that might be quite interesting is to think about the U.S. If you remember, look at Flutter's results yesterday, 90% of the growth was iGaming versus 1% betting. Now clearly, Genius is outperforming on the betting front in a very significant way, as you've seen from the results this month and going forward. But I think the proportion of the money that's coming and growth that's coming from iGaming is very significant and a really good indicator for how well Legend is going to perform in the U.S. market. Suffice to say, we're pretty excited about that, pretty excited about the new exposure that we've got to the iGaming market. That, combined with the growth that we're seeing in the advertising product means that we expect some really strong results from that space.

Our next question comes from the line of Trey Bowers from Wells Fargo.

Just first, a couple of guidance questions. Any seasonality to call out around Legend? The incremental EBITDA for Q2 just relative to 2 months, seems a little lower in that quarter, if I just annualize the overall annualized EBITDA contribution of Legend. And then with that, any update to those long-term guide targets that you guys provided at the time of the acquisition? And then I have a quick follow-up.

While Legend is less seasonal than Genius, and you guys know our back half, just given the sports calendar and the advertising calendar is significantly weighted to Q3, Q4. Legend is more even given that it is iGaming, but they still have their peak quarters in Q3, Q4. So there is some seasonality to it where the front half is notably less than the back half. And no change on the guide. We remain consistent. And I think you guys know me well enough that I keep saying we're consistent.

And then just on cash flow, just if we could put a finer point on this. If Q1 burned around $80 million, Q2, you guys expect that to be $140 million to $150 million and then a rebound in the second half of $100 million, it's a negative cash flow year of north of $100 million. And then you mentioned kind of conversion showing up at the 50% plus rate in the second half. But if you're usually in a cash draw position in the first half, you should be well north of that in the second half. So I think it would be super helpful just to kind of try to quantify what the one-timers related to the deal, et cetera, were in the first half, just to get a better sense of what kind of underlying cash flows look like.

The underlying cash flow, again, Q3, Q4 is the clean read. It's about $100 million total. And that Q2, a reminder that given just the confidence in the business, we did reduce the loan balance in any transaction as any company would upon close, you do have the financing and the closing costs. So -- and as we end the year, we will have optionality on that cash balance in terms of delever or invest in the business. So again, the Q3, Q4 is the better read. And the guidance to '28, we expect '27 to build towards that 60% free cash flow conversion in '28. And so all of it remains consistent. And as you get through the second half into '27, much cleaner and moving away from one-off transaction-related costs.

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Stantial from Stifel.

Maybe just starting off by following up on, I think, Bernie's question earlier. So the CFTC just wrapped up an engagement process for some potential rule-making. We know there's some understandably mixed responses regarding whether or not the CFTC should require the use of official data. I think it's specifically from the exchanges. Mark, can you just help us think about sort of sensitivity to the addressable customer mix and the TAM here for your data if the CFTC does require the usage of official data versus the scenario where it's really more a function of latency that determines official versus nonofficial data?

Yes. I think the key thing is that quality of data that you need to have an official result set by. Otherwise, you've got the Wild West. And I think that's well understood. And you're only going to get the official result from the official holder of data, and that's fundamentally the leagues and Genius or the leagues and whoever holds those rights. So I think that's a fairly clear relationship that's out there. In terms of the TAM, the way I think about or the way we think about it, the way we model it is we think of each of the major prediction markets being like one of the top U.S. sports books. So we see the economics of Flutter or DraftKings or Kalshi or Polymarket or Robinhood, we see all of them being equal in terms of their size. So when we think about the TAM and then we think about the opportunity for revenue from us, that's our sort of base case.

You've then got marketing around the edge. You've got the addition of Legend, which obviously over-indexes on customer acquisition, which in the current market is extremely good for us because they've got the opportunity to go outside of the current states where you've seen potential saturation from the existing OSB. So we see an outsized opportunity in the prediction market. But ultimately, we think that the underlying data piece will settle down, as I said, around the large OSB players size.

That's great. And then switching gears, Mark, you touched on this briefly in your prepared remarks, but just double-clicking here into some of the focus on specifically or only regulated markets and operators. I just want to clarify, does any of your betting business or material -- any material portion of your betting business revenues come via B2B resellers? Or is it only direct relationships with regulated license operators? And then if you could just sort of broadly refresh us on your compliance processes that are in place to ensure that customers are behaving according to commercial terms and conditions, that would be helpful as well.

Yes, sure. Look, I mean, I think it's a good question. And obviously, we expect it to talk about this. But I've been doing this for 25 years, and we've always taken very deliberate steps to avoid any exposure to any sorts of these risks. And the way we operate is that we're very, very selective by site. And what that means is that we structurally set ourselves up to only work with operators that meet our very high property standards, which is why we've limited ourselves to such a carefully curated list of only about 500 operators.

And our last question comes from the line of Greg Gibas from Northland Securities.

You mentioned being flexible with respect to market maker contracts and them being fairly shorter term relatively as a result. So I was wondering if you could -- maybe how you expect those contract terms to evolve over time as prediction markets mature.

Sure. It's a good question. Look, you've got a couple of levers, right? You've got liquidity and you've got breadth of market and then you've also got regulatory change. And we've got to be focused on all 3 of those. So taking short-term contracts gives us a bit of a view and flexibility around that. As liquidity in those markets grow, clearly, the value of our data and the need for low latency, high-quality specific data becomes more valuable. And that's something that we've got a very clear eye on. So we see a very, very clear path to revenue -- significant revenue growth in that space as the natural evolution of that market values the higher quality data that's available.

Got it. Very helpful. And as a follow-up, I wanted to just see with your Moment Engine now generally available or greater availability now integrated across partners that represent 90% of programmatic advertising ecosystem, how would you maybe characterize early adoption or engagement with those advertising partners relative to your early expectations?

Yes. Look, we're super excited about this. The adoption rate that we've seen is really, really good. And more importantly, the results that we're getting are very, very strong. As I think you heard in the prepared remarks, we mentioned Samsung out spending by 220%, and it's early days. So I mean, look, there's a number of test campaigns that we're running at the moment and is still to finish. But if the initial results maintain at the level that we've seen, this is going to be a very strong product in the market.

Thank you, everyone. That concludes our conference call for today. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, CEO of Genius Sports, Mark Locke.

Good morning, everyone. Quite the introduction. Thanks, Josh. So NewFront Week is, obviously, as we can see, very crowded, and it's great to see such a good turnout today. Every company this week will tell you that they can reach sports fans. Almost none of them, though, can reach them when it actually matters. You can buy context and you can buy audiences, but you lose the one thing that matters most in sport, timing. Because in sport, moments aren't just part of the experience, they are the experience.

Being near the game isn't enough. If you want to win in sports, you have to show up at the right moment for the right fan in a way that actually means something. That's why this is changing. At Genius Sports, our mission has always been clear to become the operating system of modern sport. For years, that meant building the foundation, partnering with leagues, capturing and distributing the most trusted real-time data in sports at global scale. But data alone isn't the answer, understanding fans is. That's why last year, with the addition of Sports Innovation Lab, we further established the Genius Fan Graph, a deterministic view of sports fans that goes far beyond demographics, into behaviors, passions, intent. From that, we built FANHub, where official game data and deep fan intelligence come together.

So brands can activate with real precision. And what we proved is simple. When you connect what's happening in the game with who the fan is, you don't just improve performance, you change it entirely. But you also told us something very clearly. You don't want another destination. You want this capability where you already work inside your planning tools, inside your supply platforms and inside your existing workflows. So no more trade-off. As you'll hear today, we're taking the next step. The world's most advanced view of the game and the deepest fan intelligence are now available directly across the ad tech and publisher ecosystem, not as an add-on as infrastructure.

What brings us -- which brings us to what actually powers all of this because if sport runs on moments, then the marketing needs to as well, not after the fact, not in post analysis, but in real time, understanding when something meaningful is happening, recognizing intent as it forms and making that moment actionable instantly. That's why today, we're introducing the Genius Sports' Moment Engine, a new way to connect live sport, fan intelligence and activation, so you can show up exactly when it matters most.

Thank you all for being here, and thank you for your partnership. And I'd like to now introduce our SVP of Marketing, Gina Waldhorn, who's going to show you what this actually looks like.

Thank you so much. My name is Gina Waldhorn. I'm going to be your host today, but I don't want you to think about me as your host. I want you to think of me as your coach, okay? We're all a team here together, and we are up against a formidable challenge because we have entered a new age of sport and the fan has changed. The fan has evolved. We're reaching a fluid fan who is open to change and powered to choose continuously evolving and who has never had more choice when it comes to media and entertainment than they have today.

So we all need a game plan, right? If we're going to succeed in this new age of sport, we need to be inspired, yes, we need to know what's possible, and we're going to bring you those conversations from visionaries today, but we also need a game plan to win. And that's what I'm going to deliver for you today because don't worry, have we got one. But before I get into the game plan, I'm excited to set that foundation and build that strategy for you by inviting to the stage our Chief Revenue Officer, Josh Linforth.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here. NewFront Week is loud. Every platform is promising reach. Every streaming service is promising premium. Every ad tech company is promising precision. But you showed up for sports. Why? Because nothing else in media feels like this. The last second shot, the overtime upset, the record-breaking play or the impossible comeback. There is no skip button in that moment. No algorithm deciding what comes next. No passive scrolling. These are the moments that matter. And that's because sports is live, sports is scaled, sports is premium.

And in 2026, it remains the most valuable media asset in the world. The power of sports hasn't changed, but how you connect and reach fans has. The average fan now watches the game, check stats, follows, highlights, tracks bets, engages socially all at the same time. A motion is concentrated. Attention is fragmented. Intent is immediate. So why are you still buying sports the old-fashioned way with a 30-second spot during the game or programmatically targeting sports fans and hope relevancy leads to impact. That model is outdated. Context is not intelligence. Keyword targeting is not intelligence. And none of these media channels connect you to what really matters, being in the moment.

In a world where milliseconds matter, almost right is completely wrong. If your data is delayed, you're late. If your signal is scraped, you're flawed. If you congratulate the wrong fan, you're canceled. If your targeting is inferred instead of known, you missed the moment entirely. Moments are not just highlights, they're what make fans feel and what gets felt gets remembered. And that's why we're here today to formally launch our latest sports media solution, the Genius Moment Engine, critical ad tech infrastructure for sports media. Built on official live signals, predictive moment models and our Genius Fan Graph audiences, allowing specific sports moments, in game, around the game, all season to be planned, packaged and activated at scale.

Now accessible natively inside the platforms you already use via deal IDs. Across the channels where sports fans show up, all made possible because no one can see the game like Genius Sports. Our in-venue optical tracking captures every moment of every player with sub-second latency, not just the scoring play, every second of the game. And layered on top of that is GeniusIQ with its predictive analytics running across the NFL, NCAA, Premier League, NBA and more. We don't just detect moments, we predict them. We can see when probability swings, when momentum turns or when history is forming in real time because a touchdown isn't just 6 points, it might be a rookie breakout, a playoff clincher, a momentum shift, the start of a comeback. These signals don't start at the highlight. They build before it.

Our technology is installed in thousands of venues around the world. More than 400 leagues and federations trust us as their official data partner. We have deep relationships with the NFL, NCAA, English Premier League, NBA and WNBA to name just a few. Sportsbooks build their trading engines on our data. Broadcasters enhance their live coverage with it. Leagues operate with it. Coaches and players rely on it. We are not adjacent to the game. We power it. If sports is the most powerful media channel in the world, Genius is the intelligence layer underneath it. With the Genius Moment Engine, your brands aren't chasing moments. You're predicting them, but it's not enough to just see the game. You have to know the fan insider because not every fan experiences the same play the same way.

For some, it's joy. For some, it's anxiety. For some, it's money on the line. And for others, it's legacy. A motion is personal which is why our Moment Engine connects directly to the Genius Fan Graph with 250 million U.S. consumers built on deterministic transaction-based data, not cookies, not look [indiscernible], not broad demographic assumptions, real behavior. The teams they follow, the games they stream, the bets they place, the brands they buy with official exclusive first-party data, you cannot get anywhere else. And with the addition of Legend and Covers, that graph grows even stronger. Adding additional search, betting and intent signals to solidify the Genius Fan Graph as the only scaled addressable consumer data cloud purpose built for sports.

So when the momentum shifts on the field, we don't just know what's happening, we know who it matters to and what they're likely to do next for the right moment, the right fans and all within the existing programmatic media buying workflow because intelligence doesn't scale if it requires a separate buying path. So today, we're announcing a series of transformative partnerships. Genius Sports has integrated the Moment Engine directly into the world's largest SSPs and premium publishers, including Magnite, DIRECTV, FreeWheel, Equativ, The Weather Company, Index Exchange, OpenX and PubMatic with more to come.

And the world's largest advertising holding company Publicis will be integrating the Moment Engine directly into Epsilon, giving Publicis' clients early access to the groundbreaking technology. Now layer that intelligence and activation into premium rights-based inventory, BetVision, where official data, live odds and brand messaging live inside the stream. NBC and FanDuel Sports Network scaled environment enhanced by real-time signals and data who covers one of the most engaged betting communities in North America, where fans actively declare intent. The fan journey is always on and Genius Sports is there.

And today, we're taking another step forward. We're proud to partner with Univision to introduce moment-driven in-game ads across Liga MX, the most watched soccer league in the U.S. This is what it looks like when intelligence meets scale. Where brands don't just show up in the game, they become part of it. So today, for the first time, the same official data layer that powers leagues and sportsbooks is embedded directly into the native advertising ecosystem. So whether you're buying our owned environments or activating across broader premium supply, the intelligence travels with you. This isn't about choosing between reach or precision or between premium and performance, it's about operating with both, and that unlocks a new framework for 2026, Own the season, activate the moment, extend beyond the game. Own the season through rights-based environments where your brand is embedded in the most valuable properties in media. Activate the moment with predictive signals and deterministic audiences while a motion is rising. Extend beyond the final whistle into culture, community, intent-driven environments, all powered by the same moment engine. If sports is the most valuable emotionally driven asset in the world, Genius is the infrastructure behind it. And over the next hour, we're going to show you exactly how to plug in, how to plan smarter, how to activate faster. This is the year you see the game, know the fan and win the moments that matter. Thank you.

Thank you, Josh. I love something Josh said. He said, what gets felt, gets remembered. And that's what we're all here to do today. And I mentioned I want to be your coach today. And some of the best coaches were players once. So I was part of your team, okay? I was a buyer for over a decade at Carat, at GroupM. And I've been to these NewFronts and dozens of these presentations, and after the LED cube shut off and after the big announcements are made, you've got to go back to your desk. You've got to issue dozens of RFPs and you've got to figure out a way to activate, to make this real.

So I mentioned we've got to have a game plan, and we do. And there are three things that I heard Josh tell us today. So step into my proverbial locker room, and we're going to leave here today with our plan to go to market. And Josh said 3 critical things. He said we've got to see the game. He said, if we want to succeed, we have to know the fan, right? And once we can see the game and once we truly know the fan that is going to allow us to win the moment and specifically win the moments that matter. And so I want to start here.

I want to start with seeing the game. And let me say game, what do we think about? Well, for most of us, we kind of think about this, right, game time and everything that's happening in the game. But for fans, for fluid fans, it's not just about this, right? It's about what happens before this. It's a pregame. It's the buildup. It's the emotion and what happens after the game, right? It's the post game because the fan journey is always on. The fluid fan journey, the emotion of sport does not stop at the final whistle, and it builds even preseason. And when I think about how we're going to create an always-on fan journey that allows us to truly see the game and see the moments that matter, I think about creating a narrative.

And I think about what leagues have truly created everlasting narratives that transcend culture and conversation, that become part of the zeitgeist and I think of the NFL. Nobody creates storylines and narratives just like the NFL. So I want to lead us to a conversation that's going to inspire us with some visionaries from the NFL, from one of their sponsors, Lowe's and from Publicis.

So I would like to welcome to the stage for this next conversation, our moderator, EVP of North America from Genius Sports, Sean Conroy, joining him, Marissa Solis, SVP of Global Brand and Consumer Marketing at the NFL; Chief Creative Officer from Lowe's, Kyle McCarthy; and CEO of Publicis Sports, Suzy Deering.

Thank you, Gina, and good morning, everyone. As Gina said, the topic of our first panel today is designing the ultimate fan journey. And we're going to talk about the NFL and how the league -- some of the league's most defining moments, both on the build and before, during and after the games have driven fan emotion and connection and impact and what that means for brands. And we're delighted to be able to get perspectives from the league as well as from a brand as well as from an agency. So maybe let's start with some quick introductions, and I'll start, Marissa with you on my left.

Yes. Hello, everybody. Marissa Solis, I lead our Global Brand and Consumer Marketing at the NFL. I have been there five incredible years where we have seen a tremendous amount of change in terms of how we tell stories and how we engage with a new fan base that's quickly evolving.

Good morning. I'm Suzy Deering, I'm the CEO of Publicis Sports, but I also refer to myself very often as a recovering CMO. That's probably more the truth, but a huge fan, love sports, but great to be here with you all today.

Kyle McCarthy, I am Chief Creative Officer at Lowe's. We are in our believe, our fourth year with our NFL partnership right? It's not only one of the most fun things we do, one of the most powerful engines that we have for the brand.

So Marissa, as I think everyone in this room would agree, the NFL drives unique and very powerful storylines, rivalries, breakout performances, and this isn't just on the field, this is throughout the course of the season. Can you talk to us about how at the NFL you think about creating narratives that sustained throughout the course of the season beyond just on game day.

Yes. I mean, first of all, that's the power and the greatness of the league. There are so, so many stories. And the myth is that it's during the season, right? I mean, last year in 2025, there were over 15 billion conversations about the league, 365 days, 24/7. It just doesn't stop. If you look today, we're talking about the great prospects coming to draft in Pittsburgh. We're talking about stadiums being built. We're talking about who's trading to who. So there's always, always a story.

And what I love is that the stories can range from great things happening on the field to who's showing up at the stadium and who you can see on broadcast to the tunnel walks, all the way to what's happening in culture. And so it is a very, very powerful thing that partners like Lowe's really can get a handle on and create great storytelling.

And Kyle, you obviously, as you said, have been working with the NFL for some time now. What makes the NFL such a powerful platform for brands to connect with.

Yes. I think it's -- for us, I think it's three things, right? It's the scale, first and foremost, right? And then who that scale is reaching, what the audiences that engage with that? And then finally, for us, it's the activity around the game, the behavior around the game. So scale, at 180 million fans watch, right? And it's not just on Sundays, as you said, people -- this is their lives, especially within the season, right? So there's a cadence there. And then 100 million of those are Millennials and Gen Zs and everybody wants to talk to Millennials and Gen Zs, Lowe's included, right? And then the last part is the -- maybe the most interesting for me, which is the behavior around the game, right? There's a lead up. There's an anticipation.

Sunday is an event. And if you're hosting, that means you're cooking, that means you're fixing things around the house. So it's a real natural place for Lowe's to fit into that world, right? So we're showing up on a regular basis to an audience that we want to reach in a situation that they have a lot of love for in an authentic way, and that's a real powerful mix.

And Marissa the storylines around the NFL are not necessarily new. But what is new is the availability of data. I think about Genius' role with the NFL and the types of sports data that we're collecting now and the understanding of fans and the data that we have on fans. Can you talk a bit about how the league is beginning to harness that data to tell better stories and amplify the great storytelling opportunities that exist across the league.

Yes. I mean, data is everything, right? Data is everything. And I think what it helps us to do -- you mentioned the ultimate fan journey. There is no ultimate fan journey. There's thousands of fan journeys each very, very unique. And so what the data allows us to do is, yes, harness insights at scale where you can [ have ] a massive Super Bowl commercial, but also harness the very personal insights. And if you allow me to indulge, I have a very interesting example of how we're able to reach a very avid male fan versus maybe a casual female fan with the very same player, and that's Joe Burrow. If you guys recall in 2024, the great game versus the Cleveland Browns where Joe Burrow literally fell and through that last minute pass, it was unbelievable.

And it captured our avid fans in a crazy way. I mean that had tremendous amount of conversation. But 80% of that conversation was led by male fans. Fast forward to Paris Fashion Week when Joe Burrow walks onto the stage with a backless suit, looking fab, guess what? Tons of conversations, but led by our female fans, and that's why the journeys are so different, and that's why the data matters because it's details like that, that really allow you to reach different fans in different ways with the same player.

And Suzy, I may ask you a similar question. I know from the work that we've been doing with Publicis that you're at the cutting edge of how you use data, all forms of data and your types of experiences. Can you talk to us a bit about how you are using data to drive new types of opportunities for brands and for fans to connect across a variety of different digital platforms.

Absolutely. Number one, I would say data is not new. I mean we've been talking about data forever and ever. I think the biggest change for us is, and I would say that in the sense that what Marissa talked about is, we haven't -- I think what has changed tremendously is, and I give the league a ton of credit in this regard, which is we've turned it into not just a sport, we've turned it into lifestyle. To turn it into lifestyle, we now have taken it past just the game that happens on the field. And to do that and do it authentically and especially on behalf of brands, you have to have the right data to make it living. It can't just be data for data's sake. You have to make sure that it actually is actionable.

So for us at Publicis, that's why we talk about being very disruptive in the sports space, making our fan graph on top of Epsilon, which is what you talked about, we really take that very seriously because it's not just the moment. The moment matters but being able to take that moment and take that data and making it so that we can action off of it being very nuanced. The nuance matters because the nuance have not just been in that moment, but being able to take it across the journey, the journey of the season is the season, but the season now is 365. The fan doesn't shut off. We have to make sure on behalf of our brands, we can connect that data to where it's very relevant across every moment at which they're going to want to connect with that experience.

So for us, we've got to make sure that we can show up in the right place, make sure that, that connects to our creators that are going to want to make sure that they are also creating the right content at that moment. So for where we sit in the ecosystem and making sure across this very fragmented space, that we can ensure that we can have that moment in that data that ensures that connection and the authenticity sits there and is relevant for our brands.

And Kyle, I think you would agree. The NFL is not just about Sunday afternoon, it's about the weekly rhythm leading up to it. Can you share with the group your approach to building the Earn Your Sunday campaign around those sort of pregame rituals that fans have and what that allowed you to creatively for Lowe's?

Yes. I mean, it started with the simple human truth, right? Sundays are for football. I work at a home improvement company and nobody wants to be fixing anything during the season on a Sunday, right? You want to be watching about the game. So like that reframed everything for us, right? We then became the enabler of that, right? We help you earn that moment, get all your things done, right? You don't -- the [ tutulist ] is not going away, but we can help you get it done. So you have that sacred time on Sunday to enjoy those moments and those stories that you really love.

And it's an active role for us, right? We are along that journey with those fans from giving them inspiration to showing them how, getting them the right product. And then -- and finally, like when it's close to the end, right, like it's Saturday, we can help you get that done really, really quickly. So for us, it's capturing that journey, capturing that moment and being part of the experience versus just showing up on Sunday and selling at things.

And Marissa, the NFL, as we've talked about, and as we all know, sits at the intersection of sport and culture. And that provides opportunities to engage new generations and new types of fans. Can you talk about how brands can authentically tap in to those more cultural moments around the sport?

Yes, absolutely. I think the key is understanding your brand, your values, where you want to be and then creating your own fan journey. Clearly, for Lowe's, it is about the rituals, but it's also about home improvement. At the end of the day, you got to drive your guest to your store. For any other brand, it's really tapping into what is happening in culture that has to do with my brand. And we have incredible partners, whether it's Toyota talking about heroes and tapping into flag football, whether it's Abercrombie & Fitch tapping into this craziness around fashion and the tunnel walks and everything in between, whether it's P&G and Tide and laundry -- doing your laundry on game day and a very similar insight of, hey, game day is for game day, how do we get the laundry done.

So there are 1,000 ways that you can tap into, whether it's pop culture and what's happening with the creators and influencers and how your brand can partner with the NFL to do that or whether it's moments that are very functional, right, that are also tied to your brand so that at the end of the day, you can leverage the partnership to drive your customer or your consumer to the action that you need them to do, right, to be loyal to your brand, to leverage your brand, to go to your store. So there are many, many ways to do that. And I think tapping into what you said the data, the fan journey and where your brand fits into all that culture and storytelling is the key.

And building on that, Suzy, as consumption shifts from linear to digital, where are the new and real monetization opportunities around these new digital touch points? And how is that changing both the depth and the frequency compared to more traditional linear broadcast formats?

This is my favorite question ever because I just laugh when I think about -- maybe I've been in this industry too long. When I go back in time and think, gosh, it must have been really boring. It didn't seem like it then, but when it was just a one-way conversation. And now I look at it and like, gosh, we think it's so complex. But gosh, how incredibly rich it is now that we have so much opportunity to really engage and engage at such an incredible level with customers. Let me also give you a little dirty secret. Most marketers will come to you and tell you, I just speak from experience because I was one of these animals that would come to you and tell you, here's our customer and here's who we're going after.

We didn't really know we think we know, but the reality is, is that we needed data and again, living data that would really try and tell us how to sharpen and really understand all the audiences that we were missing because we thought that we had perfected our understanding and research so much that we could really target as to who we wanted to really reach. Now because of the fact that we do have this fragmentation and because we have so many other ways that we can truly engage, we, again, from our standpoint, being able to take the data, being able to put it from a fan graph standpoint, put that on top of our Epsilon data.

One of the things I love because, again, if you think about it, we look so straightforward and think about a fan as a fan. And we missed the fact that like, oh, my gosh, they have all these other characteristics to them that we can grab a hold of. Guess what? They love fashion. They're actually interested in music. They actually have entertainment that they're interested in. We have so many other ways to capture audiences, females, younger audiences. They may not be engaging in broadcast. They may be in TikTok. They may not be just on a Saturday -- I'm sorry, a Sunday or on a Thursday. They may be engaging in other ways.

So now because of this, we can monetize in such a really like a massive platforms that we didn't have that advantage before. Even if we did have the advantage, we didn't have the signals to tell us. So now we have that advantage in the sense that we take and go back to our brands and say, hey, I know you told us that your audience was this, but guess what, we also now can tell you that we missed all of these customers and consumers over here that are engaging with your brand and you need to now put the right creators and content in front of them in a different way. So to me, it's a playground. It's amazing. We have so much opportunity.

And Kyle, for you, this digitization of sport, it will enable and is enabling more opportunities for personalized, adaptive creative. Can you share some of the opportunities you see it in the context of your role at Lowe's?

Yes. So let me reframe that a little bit. I think of it more along the lines of timeliness, right, to steal a theme from today, showing up in the moments that matter, right? And one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is there's actually a really interesting parallel between a home improvement project that you do and how your favorite NFL team prepares for the game on Sunday, right? There is inspiration, there is planning, there's execution and there's reward, right?

The NFL team, early in the week, they are looking at film, they're putting in a game plan. The middle of the week, they are practicing their game plan. They're in the film rooms together, right? They're honing that, and then Sunday is the execution and reward of that. Same thing with your project. Maybe Monday, you get inspired or maybe Monday, you decide you can't put that thing off any longer. So you make the decision to do it. The middle of the week is figuring out the how and the what. What product do I need? How do I do it? And then towards the end, it's that execution. So this is a really nice parallel that allows us to show up in the right ways, right, with digital, TV, social, all of the places in a meaningful way. So we're not just there to sell things, we're along for that journey.

And Marissa, looking ahead, and this is a topic dear to my heart as a Brit living in New York in the States now and becoming a huge NFL fan. One of the big focuses for the league is expanding the global footprint. Can you talk a bit about which trends and strategies you see being fundamental to driving that international reach and how partners and brands can best tap into that focus?

Yes. We were talking a bit offline about our international expansion strategy, and it's really fascinating for us because we are truly the students in this. We are not the lead brand. We are not the lead sport abroad. We're a challenger brand, and it's really forcing us to think very differently about how we approach the sport, how we approach the fans. Education is massive. We know that if fans don't understand the sport, they can't engage with the sport. And so figuring out really creative ways through the data to bring to life those incredible plays, the stories of our incredible players to this audience is going to be key.

One of the things as we talk about creators and influencers that we've learned is if it was 10 years ago, we would take a very glocal approach, right? You want to be global, but then you also want to connect with the local community, great. But what we're learning is that communities aren't tied to geographies anymore. So Gen Z in Shanghai looks very similar to Gen Z in New York. And so how do we tap into those communities through the power of influencers and creators to really get to these moments that matter, these cultural points that get people to connect and start that spark to engage with our game.

So a very cool example we're doing creator flag games now. So IShowSpeed, Tom Brady, maybe doing these incredible flag moves that people who may not be as familiar with the sport, get to see, get to get excited about and just sparks that interest of, I want to learn more, I want to get more engaged. And that's really been our strategy. Spark those cultural moments to get them interested in the game.

Thank you very much. And I notice, we are just up on time. So thank you so much for joining us, guys. Thank you for the support, and thank you.

All right. So we just turned a lot about -- I love something that Suzy said. She said "You need live data. You need signals in order to tap into those moments that matter." But again, if I'm sitting in your shoes, I'm also starting to wonder, is it worth it, right? Sports is premium, sports is expensive, getting in those moments, a peak emotion, what we call the moments that matter. Is it actually worth it?

Well, Genius Sports teamed up with industry research leader MediaScience to study just that thing. We looked at how live intense moments of surprise, emotion during live sports. What kind of impact did that have on the ads that ran directly adjacent and after those moments of surprise and emotional intensity. And what we found is that brand recall was 2x higher when a brand ad followed an emotional moment that mattered. So it does. It matters. So we're going to go back to our game plan. How are you planning to execute against the moments that matter? And we need to start thinking about a different way to buy, and we need to start thinking about the game a little bit differently.

So here's how a lot of times we're buying today, right? You're going in, you're buying a little bit of the preshow. Maybe you're buying some in-game spots, maybe if you're lucky, you hope one of those spots is going to air after a touchdown. And then things, and maybe you're going to do a little post-game recap, right? This is how we're buying sports today. And we're buying early. You're making these commitments 9 months in advance, right? But this assumes that all games are created equally. And you're making this buy ahead of time and you don't know where these other moments are going to hit. When you have those live signals, when you can see the game like Genius Sports, you start to see that not all games are created evenly because what if there's a game and there's an intense rivalry between these two guys, that makes for a totally different game. What if there's a record chase. This game is all the more meaningful because somebody might go ahead and hit that 2,000-yard club, right? What if there's a new rookie breakout, right? There's some player news. That makes this game completely more valuable and the game hasn't even started.

And then when we're in the game before this touchdown, did you know that there was an unbelievable interception right before that touchdown, there are some l[indiscernible] there are some game-making moments that change the game, right? What about if there's something a little bit controversial right, a controversial call, maybe right here, maybe we don't know, but there was a VAR and we had a complete turnover of a ruling on the field. And then the game ends, right? We've got the score over here. Oh gosh, the game ends. Well, that game end is very different. Somebody is ecstatic and somebody is not so happy, right? So there's emotion. There's different fans. There's different stories. Maybe there are some other injuries. So there's new player stories at the back of this game. And this is what that always on fan journey looks like. It's not just these 3 points, right?

Now we're seeing an ebb and a flow. And this is also how you're able to find scale. Because today, when we think about that model, how we're buying sports today, we're mostly over here, right? It's premium, it's live, it's in-game. It's a bit scarce, and you don't know. You don't know if you're going to hit one of those moments that really matter. So maybe you're trying to complement that buy with scale and precision and audiences kind of over here, right? That is not a box, right? You've got your audiences, maybe you're buying some contextual. You're going on to espn.com. But again, you're missing the emotion. This is running any time, always on. Nothing until today has been able to close that gap, and that is what we are bringing you, a new buying model.

This is where Genius moments sit. And they sit through deal IDs within your existing buying framework. This is how you see the game. When you have the underlying infrastructure, as Genius Sports does, you can package up these moments to change what it means during a game and follow all the moments that matter ahead of time. So that when they hit, your brand is there, and you are there when what gets felt gets remembered. And so now that we've got a plan, we know how we're going to structure packages in order to be always on during the moments that matter, it comes to a point where, all right, we got them. We got them during a moment. We hit them. We hit them at the right time. What are we going to say? And that's all about storytelling. That's about creative format. That's about bringing them an ad message that causes conversation. And when I think about who's out there, Drumming Up Conversation, bringing the drama, bringing the heat, I think about women's sports and I think about WNBA. And I think about storytellers like NBC and Peacock.

So I'm excited now to bring our next conversation, our next set of visionaries to the stage, moderated by Genius Sports, Director of Media Operations, Anabella Chiosonne, and joining her on stage, please welcome Phil Cook, CMO of the WNBA; Sam Levy, EVP of Optimum Sports; and Kevin Lappen, SVP Sales and Sports Sponsorships at NBC Universal.

Well, thank you, Gina, and thank you, everybody, for being here and joining us on this lovely chat that I'm honored to be here. So yes, let's talk about a little bit about creativity. Let's talk about what we actually are going to message these fans. Because these fans are different. This is not the traditional fan. This is a fluid fan. It's a fan that is here, is there, it's everywhere. So we have to really deep dive into who is this fan. And I want Phil to tell us a little bit about this fan. This fluid fan, I think that you guys at the WNBA have a great experience here. And just probably we should give 2 minutes of what you do at the WNBA. Forgot about that.

Sure. My name is Phil Cook. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer of the WNBA. I've been there. I'm in my sixth season this year.

Kevin Lappen, NBC Sports, been with NBC for about 25 years. Maybe a payroll glitch, but I'm still there.

Sam Levy, Executive Director of Sports Marketing at Optimum Sports, and I'm in my 11th season with Omnicom Media.

You're the rookie.

I'm the rookie.

So let's talk about the fan. Let's talk about this fluid fan. What has changed on the fan? How do you reach this fan, keep them engaged? What is it about this fan that is so different from past generations?

The WNBA has been experiencing this tremendous growth of unique fans into our ecosystem over the last few years. Thank you, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese. And the result has been -- these are fans who are first time experiencing the WNBA, and they're coming in because so many of our athletes are building identities and brands in advance of them coming into the W. So fans are following them early in their careers, college or maybe even international and they're following them into our ecosystem. What we're finding is this fan is very much aligned with the brand values of these athletes. Secondly, they certainly recognize just how good they are as performers.

And I'm going to give you kind of two examples. Sabrina asked you a couple of years ago, NBA All-Star game takes on Steph Curry for a 3-point contest. And Steph hits the 3 of the last 5 balls in the rack, final rack to beat Sabrina by 1 point. What that did was it validated just how good our athletes are. So immediately, fans are like, shit, these players can [indiscernible]. I didn't know that. They were watching NBA, They got a taste of WNBA and it surprised them. So we were authentically connected and we validated just how good our athletes are with the young fan who watches things like All-Star weekends, and that fan came into our ecosystem, thanks to Sabrina.

A year later, Angela and Catlin have this rivalry in college that they bring into our sport. The rivalry is on the court, 2 very, very distinct athletes as individuals, 2 great basketball players, one really leaning into the culture, Angel Reese is undeniably a cultural icon. And this, again, connects to that new fan who enters into the WNBA ecosystem through a different door. Not through the magnificence of a 3-point shooting door, but through the fact that Angel is rocking the cover of Vogue or she's over Paris Fashion Week, and she's driving cultural influence because of her connections outside of the game of basketball.

And this is what we're finding is the fan is a very, very distinctive fan that is aligning themselves through the performance aspect of our athletes, through the cultural influence they carry. And the third piece of this or the third lane of connection is through our authentic connection with purpose. And we, as the WNBA, we're in our 30th year. Purpose and social justice has always been a part of our DNA since day 1.

And so we have a very distinctive fan that aligns with the W through that lens as well. So this fluid fan is coming in through different doors, aligning themselves, engaging themselves with the WNBA and it's incumbent upon us to serve them where they are with content and stories and insights around those 3 different lanes of performance, culture and purpose.

This is really interesting. I didn't know about that. Tell me a little bit -- and this is for you, Kevin, on NBC. We always look at these like amazing moments. We're waiting for like these specific moments, the dunk, the interception at the last second, even the pass by and a race in the last curve. But these are just some moments, how you keep engaged the audiences during long seasons and some seasons could be not full of these moments, that's the reality. It's a game. This is not script. So tell us a little bit how do you engage this audience also and fluid fan and fluid audiences with this momentum.

I think our job primarily is being prepared for the moments. And it kind of harkens back to some of the conversations we've had earlier is that these moments are going to happen, obviously, throughout every sport, everything is comprised of these big moments. But we -- as from a table stakes side, we need to make sure that we prepare all the sports that we broadcast and stream in the same way that we have,, obviously, a stellar pregame that focused on the matchup and the athletes, a half time that's kind of jumping on some of those zeitgeist moments.

And then obviously, a wrap-up of the game that's going to obviously segue into the season and give a little bit of momentum. But beyond that, beyond the service level of production, we need to evolve sort of how we take advantage of our rights with our league partners and figuring out ways how do we present content in unique and new ways, how do we broadcast a different audiences to Phil's point. And obviously, we have the mass reach and scale of a broadcast network, but not everybody is watching it that way.

We have a huge, obviously, audience on Peacock, and that's a collection of cord cutters, shavers, nevers that are not watching broadcast and obviously, in many cases, different demographics. So how do we program that. But in order to gain momentum, we have to do that consistently across all the sports that we have. So regardless if it's baseball to the NBA, the WNBA, Sunday Night Football, we want to make sure we have some continuity in terms of how we -- what fans expect and we need to evolve. We obviously need to evolve. We need to figure out how we're presenting those specific games to get that momentum.

From a moment standpoint, that's changed. Obviously, new platforms, new opportunities to distribute across social and kind of really honing on those zeitgeist moments beyond our 4 walls of our broadcast and our streaming properties, how do we take advantage of that? So obviously, it's incumbent upon us to make sure we're maximizing our rights, so we can put that out there. But also other kind of those moments that we know that are coming and we're preparing for where we could really take advantage.

An example that Phil and I were talking about as we did with State Farm, we did a Caitlin cast. Back, we broadcasted Big Ten Basketball on Peacock, and we had the game exclusively when Catlin Clark broke the scoring record for the NBA -- for the NCAA. And when she did that, we actually had an ISO-cam dedicated to her because fans were so into it. It was a zeitgeist moment, and we kind of did that on the fly because obviously, that's what fans expect.

There's so much hype around it. We had the rights to do so. So we worked with a partner like State Farm to figure out a way that we could actually bring that to fans. And you want -- the way you want to bring advertisers in is actually demonstrate that utility that you're bringing fans something that they can't get beyond the traditional streaming or broadcast. So that's what we're focused on, it's definitely evolving but really being in a position that we're prepared for those big moments across all the sports that we have.

Thanks, Kevin. I want to switch gears a little bit on creative, okay? I think I've been an agency with a couple -- 20 years ago probably. But the creative war rooms were very different. It was literally the copywriter and they took the lead and it was their decision. How is that war room be changed right now? We have data. We work with partners directly, not only broadcasters, but the leagues. So we're all sitting in the same room and then ad tech partners like Genius. We're all sitting in this room, and we have to collaborate. How has that changed the creative room, Sam?

Well, the data used to tell you who to reach. Now it tells you what you need to say to them in that exact moment. And it's scary. It's a burden, frankly. It's an open canvas.

[indiscernible].

But it's -- when I say it's a burden, it's an opportunity because -- and we tell this to our clients all the time, it really drives in the need for relevance, right?

I mean, no one has a higher BS meter than a sports fan. And we talked a little bit about not being interruptive but amplifying and adding value to the equation. And that is sort of the sort of the gold star of achievement that's needed with real-time creative marketing and real-time actions off of these insights and these triggers that we've talked about, that we have at our fingertips. And just to rip a little bit on Phil's points around the evolving fan, I mean the sports fan, it's not -- he or she is not a passive fan, right?

The days of sitting watching the game, going to bed, look, maybe looking at the box score in the morning or maybe the really engaged fan would put on sports talk radio, right? Now there's multiple engagements happening during the game. There's gambling, fantasy, group chat, social chatter, all of these signals that are captured offer that opportunity for brands to maintain relevance. And the war room has to reflect that reality in real time. And that's a scary challenge, but a great opportunity.

Perfect. Goes directly into the next point we want to talk about is, how do we not interrupt the game? Because people don't want distraction. You're watching the game, you're actually engaged on the TV, on your connected TV, in your iPad or iPhone or phone. How do you do something different that does not involve distracting actually the game. And this is key because as we know, some placements and ad placements are finite. Traditional media is finite. So we have to enhance, generate relevance, but also not interrupt that key moment. Phil, why don't you take this?

All right, I'll give it a shot. I think we're fortunate at the WNBA. We're pretty much a blank canvas. There was no broadcast or streaming just 5 years ago. It was impossible to be a fan of the WNBA because we're finding our games on the hallmark channel, if we're lucky, right? Or on back then Twitter and which is great, but we've evolved tremendously in the last 5 years. So with that comes the opportunity to trial without, I guess, disappointing or frustrating our fan base because our fan base is growing every day.

Our fan base is coming from an environment where they've been watching other sports. And that's really who we're chasing every day is the casual sports fan who is dabbling in many different sports leagues and wanting to give the WNBA a consideration for engagement or viewership or just following because of the noise that's been created in our league the last couple of years. So we're attracting a fan who is familiar with other sports. They recognize the value of the data that they're getting when they're consuming other sports.

Partner that with the fact that we have tremendous broadcast and streaming partners who are really, really good at knowing what moves a fan, what adds value to a broadcast or a stream or a highlight. And so we lean on them tremendously because we haven't had this history of decades of trial and error where we are disappointing or shunning our fans because we've made mistakes. We are learning every day, and we lean heavily again on two things: fan behavior that comes into our ecosystem from other sports and what they're looking for, they let us know. And then our partners, like NBC, who provide us tremendous insights around what they've learned over time around what value add comes into the engagement or the viewing experience that we can then lean into.

And the final piece of this is we now have partners who are coming into our ecosystem, saying, I like being in your game. I like my 30-second ad, but how do I get closer to the game? How do I get my brand incorporate -- just like what Gina was speaking to earlier today, how do I infuse my brand into the actual game flow, into that 40 minutes of game time. I want my brand there beyond just an attribution or signage on the court, I want to be involved in the game. So they're challenging us as well, which is a great opportunity for us to think differently and again, use our partners like NBC to solve for that.

And I want to go with that topic. I want to stay with that topic because I think in terms of streaming and broadcasting, there's been a huge evolvement over the years, and I think that these -- and Kevin, you can share with so many years at NBC, how the industry has to evolve, how you guys often have to change that mindset, bring new canvases to life, work closer to everybody else. Before it was just you receive 30-second commercial, you put it out there, and that's it. Now it's collaboration, it's teamwork, it's let's look at my data, let's look at your data. How can we co-create together, how technology has also helped us. Look at, let's say, in NBC and Genius, we were doing augmentation for basketball games. So Kevin, I -- for me, it's critical like where do you see? How do you create these new canvases, new spaces, be creative, attract new buyers and brands without interrupting the game.

It's a lot. Yes. And I think when we look at sort of where we're going and obviously, streaming sports and where the marketplace is going, is something that sort of has been paramount to our strategy for a long time. We've been streaming live sports for over 15 years, and we've always had DAI in mind. So to start, we wanted to have the ability to kind of surgically target specific audiences. We know that, obviously, broadcast has that blunt instrument of mass reach and scale. But really when it comes to streaming, you have the ability, obviously, through ad tech to target those audiences. So that was sort of like the base level that we started at.

But now obviously, the table stakes of what fans expect, it matters, right? So whether you're watching an NBA game and you want to see performance view with dynamic stats, that is kind of in real-time happening with kind of overlays over players themselves or you want to watch all cams, specific angles of a pitch or there's -- you want to view inside the dug out and you want to see what's going on in the specific baseball game. I think those types of things are going to continue to evolve. We have a lot of different unique presentations that we bring to a lot of the sports that we have. We've done a Madden cast around our SNF games in partnership with Genius.

You just got [ nominated ]. Exciting time.

It is. And I think that, again, like that -- think about the different audiences that are consuming, you're going to have passive audiences, you're going to have super fans. So super fans may be more inclined to watch a performance view with those dynamic stats, a more passive fan may be watching a Madden cast to kind of watch it in a unique way, looking like a video game. So I think the way that you actually serve up content has to continually evolve. And obviously, from a streaming standpoint, the way you bring marketers in, I completely understand you want it to be less interruptive.

I think there's certain sports that cater to a less interruptive experience, like if you're doing golf and you do a double box or a break where you're actually showing live golf at a very base level, that's helpful to the fans that's providing utility or you're doing commercial free by Callaway or a different advertiser for an hour. Fans -- they recognize the fact that you're skipping an ad break or several ad breaks for more content. Not to mention there's all groups that you can show and obviously, different angles and perspectives you can show. So we need to continually evolve that. And from a streaming standpoint, just the canvas has actually expanded.

And obviously, I mentioned before, social and having the ability to actually really hone in on those zeitgeist moments and actually bring in new audience back to our platforms because an amazing game is happening and record may be broken. Those types of things and being able to use all the levers you have to kind of bring what fans expect is something that we're hyper-focused in on. And I think that, obviously, that will evolve and we lean on partners like Genius Sports and WNBA and our partners at [ OS ] to figure out what's next.

So like we're here, obviously, to evolve and really maximize our rights. Putting things on broadcast is not table stakes. That's a major part of our offering. But we need to figure out ways that we can actually expand on our rights and really hit a longer tail audience and actually get a little bit more granular with the opportunities for marketers.

How do we measure this? Past was viewership, viewership is not enough. How do we measure this and how do we generate value when a lot of the times we're sitting in desk and we're just looking at numbers and KPIs. Sam. Why do you take this one?

Yes. I mean reach is no longer enough. And I think if anyone's had a conversation with a CFO or someone from finance department, we need to talk in terms of full funnel measurement. It's moving beyond reach to things like relevance, resonance in the moment and then ideally, action after the fact. And that's the incrementality that is the ultimate goal here with regards to driving business results. And I know we at Omnicom Media have worked closely with Genius, you all on a study that we're about to see the final results on.

But from the sneak peek of results, we've seen strong data points that suggest all of these augmented live experiences that we're talking about are driving mid- and low funnel action. And ultimately, that is what is going to keep the lights on for a lot of our businesses. So when we think about reach, not that simple, but it's largely attached to investment. It's very challenging to buy relevance. And I know the tools that we're talking about here make that a lot easier. But ultimately, it ties in all of the messaging that we're talking about and responding to those signals in real-time that will drive that resonance and relevance for brands and ultimately, conversion in action.

Thanks, Sam. Well, we're short of time, but I want to leave -- before I leave, I want each of you to think of just one word, only one word because we don't have any more time, about what will happen in the future. How do you see this in 10, 15 years? Let's start with Kevin.

Yes. It's gotta be one?

One.

Customization.

Oh man. Synonym game we're gonna play? Personalization.

Globalization for me. Globalization, yes, yes.

That's great. Thank you. Thank you all 3.

All right. So again, we talked a lot about -- I love hearing Sam say nobody has a better BS meter than the sports fan. And so we want to know when we do things like augmentation, when we put overlays into live games, do fans want it? And more importantly, does it work? So as Sam mentioned, we partnered with Omnicom to launch a study that looked at the efficacy of in-game augmented ads by Genius Sports, and what we found was that first off, 83% of fans are already on their second screens searching for more information about the game they're watching.

And when we presented them with augmented sports, they enjoyed the game more. They actually said, it made the game easier to understand and 82% of fans liked or loved the augmentation that we put in the game. So if you haven't seen it, took out the sports bar on your way out. We've got it playing. And again, that's good. They want it. They're here for it. It makes the game better, but does it work for your brands? We continue that study and we looked when video ads were paired with augmented ads, did it deliver impact? And the answer is a resounding yes.

We saw 5x stronger brand lift and recall in favorability and more than 3x higher lift in search and purchase intent for distinct audiences when we paired an in-game video ad with Genius Sports augmentation. So it works. That's the good news. And we heard a lot about this BS radar. So we're going to go back into our locker room, and we're going to figure out how we game plan this, okay? So we've seen the game. We know how to find these moments. We know how to package them up. We know how to get them into the ecosystem. But if there's a BS meter man, we better know this fan, okay? And we're in New York.

This is going to be a Liberty fan. Here's our fan. We have got to know this fan. So how do you know the fan today? Well, you're probably buying some demographics. This is a male 25 to 34. We probably got their household income, maybe their DMA, but we got to be more intelligent. So we're going to layer on sports fan or maybe women sports fan, if we can. All right. Not bad. Maybe we've got a little viewership data. They're watching ESPN or NBC, okay? This is how we're thinking about targeting the sports fan today. That's okay, but that does not tell us enough of the story to be able to drive the relevance and the resonance that our panelists were talking about.

You've got to know how do they sport. All right, their favorite leagues with W. You've got to know that. You've got to know that they're a Liberty fan, but that also they travel regularly to Chicago because that's where they're born and they're also a Sky fan. And how do they fan? They love their merch. And we know with the Genius Fan Graph that this Liberty fan spends on average $270 a year on merch and their #1 merch provider is Playa Society. And we know when they stream, they're a parent. They've got a kid who plays youth sports. So they have a subscription to dribble up at $40 a month. This is how they sport.

This is the type of sports fan and women's sports fan they are. This is how you start to create relevant messaging, but that's still not enough. That's only telling you half the picture of who this fan is. You've got to know, are they values-driven? Well, women's sports fans are, they're 3x more likely to be buying values-driven brands like TOMS Shoes. Their concerts and festivalists. They love to go to places like Coachella. In fact, they're 2x more likely to buy concert and live entertainment tickets. And this fan happens to be also 2x more likely to be in the [ Silver Curious ] community. They love their NA beverages, right?

So now when we're looking at these moments when we can see the game and, oh my gosh, it's coming down to the wire and Natasha Cloud, there's like 2 seconds left. She shoots that well, it's going in there, oh my gosh, she scored. This guy is absolutely elated, you can serve him an ad that says, you know what, celebrate with the Heineken 0%. But if you don't know the fan, you cannot deliver that relevance which is why we've connected the Genius Fan Graph within the Genius Moment Engine to identify the moments, connect them with the right fan, deliver a deal ID that ultimately serves the right ad, all in your native ecosystem and ad buying infrastructure. So great. We've got it set up. You can go back, those deal IDs will be sitting in your DSP.

Now we wait for the moment. And like we said, all games aren't created equally, well, neither are all moments created equally. And sometimes you hit and you get a moment that is iconic, that changes the history of sport. And I want to talk to you about one of those moments today. And actually to come up here and actually tell us a bit more about one of those specific moments, those iconic moments, those history-changing moments, please welcome to the stage, Josh Walker, CEO of Sports Innovation Lab, a Genius Sports Company. Josh?

Thank you. All right. So I told Gina that I was going to mark up her whiteboard. So if you haven't taken a picture of this, get on it. Because it's about to get dirty. Where are my Patriots fans? Sorry about what's about to happen to you. Where are my Giants fans? All right. Those two groups of people absolutely remember Super Bowl 42.

But Josh said earlier, the moments that get felt get remembered. Maybe some of you didn't get all those fields in real time. Some of you didn't watch the game. So let me set it up for you. We're in Phoenix, Arizona. It's Super Bowl 42. Some games are built different. This one has the New England Patriots coming into Phoenix, 18-0. They haven't lost a single game. The only other team in history in the NFL to do that was the 1972 Don Shula, Dolphins. But this, this is the Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, dynasty, they're coming into this game. They just won 3 Super Bowls. They're at the peak. They want a 19-0 record on their resume. And the Giants shouldn't even be here.

Let's be honest, David. You guys were a wildcard team. Wildcard teams don't make the Super Bowl, let alone win them, so it seems like a foregone conclusion. This game doesn't even need to happen. The Giants are merely a stepping stone for the Patriots to march into history. There are two touchdown favorite, 12 points. But as the saying goes, that's why we play the game, and we do. And the game starts, it doesn't disappoint. We get out to a really slow start. These guys are beating the crap out of each other. It's a defensive struggle. The Giants score first with a field goal. It's 3 to nothing at the end of the first quarter.

The Patriots waste no time come back in the second quarter and now it's 7 to 3, and that's where we are at the half time, low scoring game, 7-3. The third quarter is not much different. Another defensive struggle. Nobody scores. Nothing happens in the third quarter, except really hard core defense. But then something happens that's never happened before in the history of the NFL. We have 3 league changes in the fourth quarter. This little heart rate is going nuts.

The first score in the fourth quarter, Eli Manning finds a guy named David Tyree in the end zone. It's now 10 to 7. If the Giants don't win this game, you will never know the name, David Tyree because nobody knows the name of a guy who caught a touch down for the losing team in the Super Bowl. And unfortunately, that looks like what's about to happen because Tom Brady's true form comes back on the field, finds Randy Mass in the end-zone and all of a sudden, it's 14 to 10. Giant fans are dying. They can't believe what's about to happen. There's only 3 minutes left on the clock. And for those of you who follow American Football, you know that the last 2 minutes are some of the most intense heart beating, nail biting action ever.

Why? Because they have to run the 2-minute drill. The quarterback has no room for error, screws up, get sacked, fumbles the ball, anything could happen. The clock ticks down game is over. So Eli Manning gets behind center, starts marching his team down the field. Not only is it the Super Bowl, he doesn't need a field goal, he needs to touch down. It's getting crazy. He's running around. He's absolutely frantic. There's only a minute and 15 seconds left, Giants fans are losing their minds. It's third in 5. And then this happens.

[Presentation]

Ladies gentlemen, I give you the helmet catch. If David Tyree doesn't make that catch, the Giants don't win the Super Bowl. The legend, David Tyree.

I got to hire you, man.

I don't know, man. I think I just felt like you just need a hype man. Some of those conversations before weren't doing you justice.

Love it.

That's a moment.

Hey, Boston fans.

One of the things I do love about Boston fans is that if you go back and you watch this on YouTube, all the comments just give you tremendous thoughts. It's like the UN of football plays. Like it brings everybody together. Like nobody can hate on this because it was so incredible.

Yes. I mean like -- I wish I can say I planned it all out. My whole life it is absolutely destined.

Yes. Well, I mean, I want to ask you probably a question you've been asked a million times, like the craziest thing about this play is it's lasted almost 2 decades.

Yes, pretty well. It's been a hell of a run. I appreciate it. It's working our for me.

And there are kids and mine are of the age where they weren't alive when the Super Bowl was played. And they still know this play because the NFL recycles. It's in the top 5 plays ever in the NFL.

Top number three. I did a 100-year anniversary. I felt like it was #1. But you haven't named like immaculate reception of [indiscernible] but no, it's been that unthinkable journey because even when you experience it, you expect to make the play. If you're not -- if you're a high-performing individual, you expect to get the job done, but you didn't know what the job was. You didn't know that it was to that magnitude, and it actually has taken years for me to realize the weight of that moment and the staying power, you never grow up playing sports and take it like hey, going to be a part of the story of the game that changed my life.

Do you ever get tired of talking about it?

Well, it's cool for me because I don't go home and talk about it. I have a built-in mechanism that makes me like no one, that's my wife. She's like, who cares? Yes. So I guess, for lack of better terms, like I said, people can find that I got 7 kids and when you go home, I'm just dad. And yes, so yes, I mean, like the helmet catch is high up there, but raising 7 kids was actually harder.

Yes. I was saying to David earlier, and he has a stat that puts him in probably the #3 or #4 NFL [ dad ]. Ryan Fitzpatrick was on stage with us once, and he has 7 kids too, and he's like "my wife can't keep her hands off from me because of the beard". So I ask David, what's his super power?

Yes. My super power, it's probably -- it's the Jersey [indiscernible].

It's the Jersey [indiscernible] and you have 7 kids. That's all it is.

Absolutely. Jersey swag is through the roof. [indiscernible] That's how we do it.

I know that athletes often get just defined by what happens on the field. Everybody is here because they want to hear you talk about this. So just ingratiate me for a minute. Alexis, can I see that helmet? I might -- yes, I might put this on.

All right, good.

Okay. The thing is about a helmet guys, and I don't know how many of you took physics. It's round, right? We can all agree on that. It's round, right? What is it football? Also quite round. There's not a lot of surface area. How do you do it?

Yes. So yes, so [ E=m c2 ] and the theory of relativity.

Yes, exactly.

When you talk about...

It makes no sense.

It makes absolutely no sense. And I think that's the glory of it. And people would ask -- I mean, they asked me at the end of day as I went up and I did everything I was trained to do as a wide receiver. You see a ball, you want a high point that ball, you want to reach it at the highest place and that's actually what you saw and nothing else [ Madden ] once I felt like I had it.

I love seeing your face. If you guys go back and watch this on YouTube, look at David's face. The determination on his face, you can't even in every acting class you possibly take, you could not replicate this. He -- you were not dropping that ball.

Listen, I had it. People asked me, I said, what is going on in your head? Catch the ball. And it was...

I had [indiscernible].

Once I had it, all I knew is I'm not letting it go. So you see a clinching moment. You see it in my face, and what I didn't know is that the ball was on my helmet. So what I did know is that there was the struggle, mentally I'm preparing for contact. So yes, there's things going on that prepared me for the contact, and I think that made it not a surprise. But yes, at the end of the day, it's just like I'm not letting the soccer go. I only get a few catches a year. So I got to make every single one of them count.

And I just shared with David, a Sport Science episode from ESPN, where they say that if Harrison doesn't cradle you like a baby, and carry you softly to the ground, you don't catch that ball.

Yes. So many different factors, right? And I think that's what makes the magic going to helmet catch it. It's the circumstance. It's the 2 hall of fame quarterbacks. It's the 2 hall of fame coaches. It's the undefeated narrative. There's the David and Goliath narrative. There is -- and I'm literally the guy out of nowhere. Going against the Goliath of the world or Rodney Harrison, you cannot create that many storylines in one moment for the most powerful potential moment within our league, in relation to a modern day team, free agency going forward [ undefeated season ].

And I'll say, no, the only way to get over it is to recognize that no one's perfect, right? Hey, New England, no one's perfect. I think every athlete is pursuing perfection. And in that moment, you realize you just have to meet the moment. And I think I was just fortunate chosen if I could be in a humble way, chosen to be a representative of all our imperfections, but rise into the occasion.

You were definitely touched that day. I mean, there's no question about it. Okay. So again, I've had the pleasure of talking to a few different athletes on stage. And again, I want to move past a little bit of this moment because you said something really cool when we were talking beforehand, you said, look, and this is for the advertisers in the room that are trying to figure out like how do they get ready for this. Like because this is completely unanticipated like how the heck did this happen?

What do we serve up now? How do we engage Patriots fans? How do we engage Giants fans? How do we take this thing that happened and bring it after the game? Gina's graphic is like, how do you tell the story after the game. How have you told the story now over the last few years, either with brand partners, you told me did some work with Amazon. Like how does this like come to life in the corporate world or in advertising where they're still leveraging the energy and the emotion of this thing.

Yes. And it's the story behind it. I would call it helmet catch for me. It was a memorial. But it was also a lifetime of preparation leading up to that moment. So for me, I think most people would know that I won the third wide receiver position my third year in NFL, which is the starting role. It doesn't go. That's young Eli, coming of age. It doesn't go as well as I anticipated for all the other reasons being a [ special teams ] player. So it's the lifetime narrative of never being good enough that -- but yet still being respected and being reliable when you have your opportunity, what will you make the most of it. So for my personal journey was embodied in one -- my entire journey, life journey as a receiver at the highest level was embodied and satisfied in one moment.

But it's a punctuation point because you're basically weaving together your entire journey and then you [ went winning ].

And I think that's what we have to kind of recognize is that everybody is looking for fire at a [ bottom ], right? I'm the microwave generation. Now we're -- obviously, we're in -- everything is at your disposal in a moment. But the reality is the moments that actually last, they don't come along that often. And the most meaningful moments. And we can talk about virality, but viral is happening every day. So just because its viral, it doesn't mean it's important, it doesn't mean it's lasting.

Well, the craziest thing about this, and this will make a lot of you feel very old in this room, is the iPhone went on sale for the first time the summer before David made this catch. More people had in their pocket of BlackBerry than they did an iPhone when he made this catch. So how do they get shared? How did they get hyped? 100 million people basically watch this Super Bowl. It was a record at the time. We've now exceeded that. But like how did you hear the buzz afterwards? Because I know you went to the sideline, I can see your face on the side and you're like, what the hell just happened. But like after the game, like now we have social media, now we have all that stuff. How did you hear and really start to appreciate the significance of what you did?

Yes. I think like, number one, in your mind, you're doing your job, I didn't see the replay. I actually didn't see the replay, so I got back to the hotel to celebrate post game. So I gave Eli all the credit post game. And it was like...

He didn't know where that ball was going. He did not know where that ball was going.

It was 2 miracles in 1 play, right, to be honest. And I think you got the black guy who can't jump, that's me. You got Eli, you could blow on him and he would fall back in the day. So it was -- so I would say it was slow in relation to like man. I'm the most content nobody in the league. I was the highest pace special teams player at the time. I'm like I'm living a dream. I got a wife who loves me. I got wins on the way. My twins born 2.5 weeks after Super Bowl.

So I'm kind of like -- but this just keeps happening, whether it's Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Kimmel. And that's kind of like the immediate effect, but then is -- I actually get recognized more now than I did the year or two after the helmet catch, and it's just because of the visibility of the Internet, the different breadths and ways that I've been able. So it's just a very interesting dynamic. And for me, I really would have never been a limelight guy. But I think I enjoy people, I enjoy holding court and allowing stories to have their impact. So being chosen in that moment just kind of meant the world to me because the game has done so much for me.

Well, I know you're not a limelight guy. You said like -- in just talking to you, you are an incredibly humble guy. This play meant so much to so many people, and it's awesome. And we talk a lot about our technology and our technology wasn't available in 2008 to do the stuff we do today. So with that said, what I want to do is I want to leave you because we really appreciate you coming here with your own highlight in the way that Genius would have done it back in the day. So here you go.

[Presentation]

David, thanks for coming, man. Guys, give it up for David Tyree.

All right. Thank you, David. Thank you, Josh. Let's get one for one more round. We're going back into the locker room. We've had a successful game. We've showed you how to see the game through the lens of technology and data signals. We've showed you how you've got to know the fan. And now it's time to put it all together and win that moment. And we've done that for you. When you leave here today, we have put together packages because you've got to combine all of these different moments, if you want to get scale and make sure that you show up in the moments that matter.

So let me give you an example. Coming up this summer, the biggest sporting event the world has ever seen. Do you know that the World Cup is going to be equal to 108 Super Bowls. For the host cities, it's going to be as big as running 8 SEC Championships in a row back to back. And so we've gone ahead and built packages around these moments that matter, including something like rivalries, every time, Messi comes up against Ronaldo or there's a big other player rivalry, your brand can show up. Any time somebody goes for a record chase or a record break, no matter what it is, let's say, it's an unbelievable header goal from a distance never seen before. And because we know the fan, if you've got that package, I don't know, maybe you're [indiscernible]. And every time there's a header, you're able to serve that [indiscernible] ad. We have packaged up all of these different moments into individual thematic Genius moment packages, each structured, as I mentioned, with its own deal ID to be pushed to your preferred buying platform to be combined with our dynamic creative optimization and our Genius Fan Graph to deliver that performance that truly makes the moments matter.

And so we started today talking about how we needed a new buying framework, how just relying on premium, live sports with limited inventory, not sure whether or not you bought the games or moments happen or rely on contextual ads running across sports content, targeting sports fans. It might give you precision, it might give you scale, but it doesn't give you emotion. Genius Sports gets rid of that trade-off. Our moments engine and our Genius Moments packages bring you contextual relevance with a programmatic deterministic audience connected to the emotional journey that aligns with your brand campaign, and it's scaled with precision. And when you leave here today, you'll all be sent access to a dedicated portal of our new front packages, dedicated to the World Cup with things like knockout round moments, record chasing moments, customized with your brand's audience because we have that graph connected to dynamic creative optimization to bring your campaign to life.

We've done this for the World Cup. We've done this for the NFL. We've done it for women's sports. All of the major 2026, 2027 sports calendar now comes with Genius moments deal IDs and packages. And that augmentation we talked about getting in the game, delivering 5x brand recall, 3x search intent and purchase intent. Our augmentation packages with NBC and the NBA are all packaged up together for you and coming soon, our partnership with Univision and Liga MX as well as our recent announcement to integrate moment-driven augmented ads into the Pac-12.

So I thank you today for being with us. We're spending your morning for helping you see the game, know the fan and win the moments that matter. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Genius Sports Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Results. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the call over to Brandon Bukstel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 14, 2025.

During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniussports.com.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Locke.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our Q4 results. On today's call, we'd like to cover 3 topics. First, we will take a moment to highlight the strong Q4 and full year results, which we preannounced last month. There are 2 main takeaways from our 2025 results. Revenue growth of 31% is our strongest annual increase since 2021. And our full year 20% adjusted EBITDA margin is our highest annual margin.

Second, both the Betting business and the Media business are on great footing, which enables us to reaffirm our 2026 guidance of continued top line growth and margin expansion, exactly in line with what we communicated on the Investor Day in December and preannounced last month.

And finally, I want to provide additional perspective on our recently announced acquisition of Legend, addressing directly the key questions raised by investors and discussing the confidence we have in the financial and strategic rationale of the transaction. I will come back to this later in the call.

But first, I will turn to Bryan to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Mark. First, we achieved group revenue of $669 million in 2025, representing 31% growth, as Mark said, our strongest annual increase since 2021. This translated to $136 million of group adjusted EBITDA, representing a 20% margin, also, as Mark highlighted, our highest annual margin as a public company. Group revenue growth was well balanced across Betting and Media.

Betting revenue increased 33% in 2025, marking its strongest year since 2021, our first year with exclusive NFL data rights. Our strong Betting revenue was primarily driven by growth with existing customers, who benefit from the increasing suite of innovative products such as BetVision, which is now available for NFL, Serie A, FIBA Basketball and dozens of other soccer, tennis and eSports competitions. BetVision is consistently increasing engagement and driving greater in-play wagering for our Sportsbook partners. So we are excited to continue expanding our coverage. 2025 marked another strong example of our ability to outpace the 24% growth of global online sports betting GGR, further demonstrating our consistent and predictable commercial model.

Our Media business delivered a strong performance in 2025, increasing 37% to $144 million. This represents our strongest annual growth since 2022, supported in particular by execution in the second half of the year where revenue nearly doubled compared to the second half of 2024.

While our fourth quarter delivered exceptional results, we do not expect that exceptionally high growth rate to continue. The second half benefited from a combination of new partner launches and market conditions that created a particularly strong comparison period. As a reminder, we are also making certain changes in how we recognize revenue in the Media segment, transitioning some arrangements from gross to net reporting. This will impact reported top line growth rates but is expected to improve our margin profile and better reflect the economics of those contracts.

We continue to partner with some of the world's largest advertising agencies, including PMG, Publicis and, most recently, WPP. We're also partnering with the largest independent supply side platform, Magnite. This partnership embeds our real-time sports signals directly into Magnite's platform, allowing advertisers to activate against official real-time sports moments inside a scaled programmatic infrastructure. Importantly, this places Genius directly in the flow of billions of dollars in advertising spend.

Additionally, we recently partnered with NBC Sports Regional Networks to power AI-driven augmented advertising across 600 live NBA games. Genius IQ turns real-time moments in the premium data-driven sponsorship inventory integrated directly into the broadcast. As you can see, Genius Sports is deeply embedded in the media infrastructure, controlling several of the monetization layers within live sports, a category that has quickly become a priority for the biggest brands and agencies. Overall, we are encouraged by the momentum in Media and the progress we have made in demonstrating performance outcomes for partners.

And lastly, it's worth highlighting the diversified growth by geography. While the Americas accounted for most of our growth this year, up 41%, our established European markets also delivered strong performance with growth exceeding 20% in 2025, up from 15% in 2024. We expect this momentum to continue into 2026.

As we said last month, we expect the organic business to generate between $810 million and $820 million of revenue and $180 million to $190 million of adjusted EBITDA. This represents growth of 22% and 36%, respectively, right in line with the expectations from our Investor Day, and balanced across Betting and Media.

On a related note, beginning in 2026, we will report revenue across 2 product groups: Betting and Media, which more closely reflects how we operate the business today. Our existing sports technology revenue will be allocated across these groups based on a thoughtful assessment of where each technology application is best suited to sit. To support this transition, we have included historical quarterly financials in the appendix recast under the new reporting structure.

And finally, we expect the addition of Legend to be immediately accretive to this guidance post close in Q2 of this year. On an annualized basis, we expect the combined entity would achieve group revenue of $1.1 billion, group adjusted EBITDA of $320 million to $330 million, with group adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 30% and free cash flow conversion of approximately 50%. This is an acceleration of our financial targets by 2 years.

And on that note, I'll now turn the call back to Mark to discuss Legend in more detail.

Thanks, Bryan. Before we conclude, I want to speak clearly and directly about our acquisition of Legend. Legend is not simply just a media business. It's a technology company that's built around large, loyal sports and iGaming audiences. Legend operates an audience monetization platform that's built off of 2 decades of technological investment. This is where the value of Legend's business is.

Legend's tech engine captures how users engage with content in real time. This content is not static information pages. They are environments that are built for participation around live sports and gaming experiences. For example, a user may analyze real-time data in a community discussion around a major sporting event, repeatedly explore new online casino titles, demoing the ones that best suit their taste, or follow specific personalities tied to teams or games, celebrating the latest win or jackpot.

These actions ultimately generate rich signals of intent inside environments designed for repeat interaction. Legend uses these signals to continuously upgrade the experience and recommend personalized transactions. When a user ultimately completes a transaction with a gaming operator or bookmaker, that outcome feeds back into the system. Over time, Legend's models get better at understanding which engagement patterns lead to action and Legend can rapidly optimize commercial models. That feedback loop is where long-term value is created. It's not about answering factual queries; it's about facilitating participation inside owned environments and continuously improving the economics behind it.

This technology is the result of 20-plus years of development and data training and over $300 million of invested capital. Outside of Legend's owned properties, the application of this technology carries enormous value to third parties. In one example, a well-known brand in the gaming industry integrated Legend's software into its own digital properties, and within 6 months, experienced a 50% uplift in revenue from higher conversion. This plug-and-play model is also proven with brands like Sports Illustrated and Yahoo! Sports, just to name a few.

When combined with the reach and distribution of Genius' network across the sports ecosystem, this can potentially be scaled and replicated hundreds of times. More on this later when we would discuss revenue synergies.

The value of this technology is further enhanced by engagement metrics on Slide 12. Legend has created a natural, organic destination for high-quality users who deliver long-term value for operators. In fact, one of Legend's top customers, a well-known global operator, has reported that customers acquired through Legend have a 60% higher value after 1 year, compared to all other customer acquisition channels. Because of the value that Legend delivers to its customers, they command premium economics.

There are 4 key components of its commercial model. First is sponsorship and ad placement. Operators pay a premium to have prominent placement on Legends properties because they want to be upfront and center to reach high-intent users. Second is upfront commitments. When a user makes a first deposit, Legend gets paid. Third is revenue share. Legend delivers quality users with long-term value. Once acquired, Legend shares in the operator's revenue from those users every time that they play the casino or bet on sports. And in many cases, Legend shares its revenue in perpetuity through lifetime revenue share contracts. This results in high-quality, predictable and reoccurring revenue.

Next, I want to be explicit about the comparison to traditional affiliate businesses. We understand that the word affiliate has been the simple default comparison, but that framing misses what actually drives Legend's model. The key issue isn't the monetization label, it's traffic durability and depth of engagement. Traditional affiliate models rely heavily on SEO and paid marketing, often spending between 30% and 40% of revenue to sustain traffic. Legend spends approximately 5% because its traffic is direct and repeat. Engagement is technology-driven, optimized in real-time and built on owned environments. That creates durable economics. The metrics very clearly speak for themselves.

Look no further than the data sourced from Similar Web comparing session depth and session time across Legend properties. As you can see, this level of engagement is more comparable to a Booking.com or FanDuel rather than a simple odds comparison website or even the digital properties of the most popular sports leagues. Again, we'll revisit this when discussing revenue synergies.

The last point that I'd like to address is the risk of disruption from AI, LLM or changing search algorithms. This is yet another key difference from a traditional affiliate business, which often rely heavily on search engine. If search visibility changes, their traffic can disappear.

Legend is different. Engagement is reoccurring. Revenue is diversified across operators and geographies and tied to lifetime value, not one-off clicks. The economics are built on participation, not page views. That participation takes place across a wide range of experiences, everything from tournaments to live dealer streams, community engagement and more. These are all deep, immersive experiences that cannot be replicated by LLMs.

So if you believe AI will make this kind of business obsolete, you should consider this. AI actually makes this model more valuable, not less. As LLMs commoditize information retrieval, competitive advantage shifts to owning environments where 118 million users actively participate, and to the proprietary intent signals that those interaction generate. Generic answers are free. Proprietary behavioral data is not.

Over the past decade, digital businesses have moved from monetizing attention to capturing intent. Advances in AI accelerate that shift, enabling better prediction, deeper personalization and more efficient commercial outcomes. In sports and iGaming, this transformation is now happening in real time. Legend operates at the precise moment when participation turns into action.

Based on this, we are very confident in Legend's proven business model. Our 2028 guidance is underpinned by the predictable operating leverage and increasing cash flow that both Legend and Genius can achieve independently. The combined business is expected to sustain 20% revenue growth, strong EBITDA margins and over 50% free cash flow conversion, and growing, a financial profile that is rare in public markets. And this is before we account for any synergies.

We have identified 4 specific revenue synergies that we believe are executable immediately post close and capable of driving incremental upside beyond our 2028 increased guidance. The first is customer cross-sell. Genius Sports official data rights and product suite will sit alongside Legend's scaled high-intent acquisition funnel. This unites premium content with proven customer intent. Upon closing, we can activate cross-sell across our sports books and gaming relationships, improving acquisition efficiency and increasing customer lifetime value.

Importantly, this positions Genius to participate in the large and growing iCasino market, expanding our total addressable market by approximately 70%. In addition, players who engage in both iCasino and online sports betting are estimated to be roughly 15x more valuable to operators than sports-only bettors. This places Genius at the center of our partners' highest-value customer acquisition efforts.

Next is monetization of the combined audience asset. Legend would materially expand our first-priority audience reach. Combined with Genius Sports' proprietary data graph, this creates a scaled, privacy-compliant audience asset that can be activated across the advertising ecosystem. This is expected to drive higher yield on traffic already within our control and allows Genius to bring a unique and powerful audience graph to other leading ad-driven platforms.

In other words, Legend further strengthens our value to brands and agencies. We know who the fans are. We know when and we know where they're engaged. And we are activating them at scale through FANHub and in partnership with large global agencies like Publicis, WPP and PMG.

Third is scaling Legend's technology across leagues and teams to monetize their underutilized digital assets. Legend's technology platform has demonstrated its ability to drive engagement and conversion across owned and operated properties. If you recall the Similar Web data, many of our 400-plus league and team partners face the same structural need to better understand and monetize their fan audiences. Applying Legends platform across our rights portfolio will extend the Genius model from data capture and distribution into audience activation and conversion. This shift is from selling audience access to selling influence over identifiable individuals whose behavior and propensity are measurable.

And finally, we'll be able to distribute Genius' data and products through Legend's channels. We have spent years embedding Genius data and products across the global sports ecosystem, from BetVision to broadcast augmentation and integrity services. Legend will provide a scaled, high-traffic distribution service. Integrating our data and product suite will further strengthen Legend's acquisition funnel, while expanding the commercial distribution of Genius' assets.

As we execute, we will quantify the impact of these 4 opportunities with discipline. We are confident that this combination will enhance both the growth rate and the cash flow profile of the business relative to our stand-alone trajectory.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this final thought. The future economics of sports will be determined by the infrastructure through which fan participation flows. At its core, that infrastructure is shaped by 3 elements: official data, authenticated identity and intent at the moment of transaction. Together, Genius and Legend operate across all 3 layers.

This acquisition is a deliberate acceleration of the strategy that we outlined at our Investor Day and have been executing for years. By integrating data, identity and intent at scale, we are positioning Genius to capture a greater share of the economic value flowing through global sports and gaming.

We have proven our ability to execute. And with this added scale and capability, we will have a business that we believe is built to continue that track record of execution and compound value for years to come.

And on that note, we'll now open the line to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Jordan Bender from Citizens.

I want to start on free cash flow. That was -- as a whole, that was down in '25. If we think through the stand-alone business, how much investment or onetime costs are in that number that might have held back free cash flow growth in the year? And you just went through the Investor Day back in December. Can you just kind of remind us the levers to organically increase free cash flow from here outside of the Legend acquisition?

Jordan, it's Bryan. On free cash flow, as we had announced that $281 million balance, and our focus is growing that year to year. As we defined at Investor Day, we take EBITDA minus the cap software and CapEx and PP&E as well as changes in working capital and taxes. And so for the year, that included some nonrecurring exceptional legal expenses or litigation related. If you exclude those, and I think you can see, that was about a $30 million swing.

The other thing we do adjust for is obviously M&A, like the Sports Innovation Lab acquisition, as well as the share raise, right? We don't want to take credit for that nor, on the M&A piece where those are longer-term strategic and so 1 year may have a bigger investment into that. But that's how we think about the free cash flow, and those onetime nonrecurring impacted the year about $30 million.

Understood. And I want to switch over to the Media business for a second. I assume you're not going to give us the actual numbers here. But maybe holistically, how much contribution did some of the new media agreements with like PMG and Publicis kind of add to the total growth in Media in the back half of the year?

Those scaled up and they're early into the -- we just announced those. And so those do take some time to ramp and work with them on onboarding clients and campaigns. So fairly muted, if any, impact on those.

Your next question comes from Jed Kelly from Oppenheimer & Co. Incorporated.

Great. Can you just give us an update on how partner conversations are going, particularly your media partner -- your media agencies following the Legend acquisition? And then just -- and then as my follow-up question, you did mention, expect some moderation of growth in the second half for the Media business. However, it does seem that there's going to be a decent amount of advertising around prediction markets just given what all the bigger players are saying. So can you talk about how much you've embedded that in your guide?

It's Josh. Yes. So on our sort of Media growth, we -- sorry, on the -- sorry, let me take it in reverse order. On the prediction market piece, we are already seeing spend flowing through from advertisers activating in that space. That is through the sort of historical Genius Media business as well as, obviously, when Legend closes, we'll have access to the activity that they're running there as well. So we expect to be able to capitalize on the spend boom around prediction markets as we already have with campaigns out in market. Now you're seeing a lot of the operators talking about how they're increasing spend on that activity, and we expect to be part of that.

In terms of the other sort of media partnerships and conversations that are taking place, if you're keeping track of the big agencies that are out there, like we've knocked a few down, there's a few more to go, all of those are progressing nicely. And I think the Magnite announcement yesterday is a testament to the ecosystem buying in on to sports media and people starting to develop technologies on top of the Genius infrastructure. So our expectation is that we continue to see more and more of the ad tech and media community building on top of official data and our fan graph.

It might be worth just taking a few minutes to just explain that Magnite presentation in a bit more detail and sort of talking through how the -- sort of how the economics work and why it's important and all those things.

Yes. I mean the way to think about our Genius sort of sales channel for the Media business is there's 2 parts in these brands and agencies world. We have the Genius direct sales team where we're out working with these agencies, working with their clients, responding to large campaign briefs. And then essentially, what we're establishing is a distributed sales channel through the ad tech ecosystem where we're surfacing all of the Genius data and audience intelligence that the agencies are looking -- the agencies are buying from us, but we're bringing that into the ecosystem where there is already scaled demand of billions of dollars and allowing our partners and their sales teams to take the Genius offering out to market.

Your next question comes from Bernie McTernan from Needham.

Maybe a good follow-up to that one. At the Investor Day, there was a target of slightly more than half of the $500 million in total ad spend for Media coming from self-service. How do you think this is going to break down between agencies and other ad tech players like Magnite? And are there any other buckets that are in there that are large that we should be aware of? And then I have a follow-up.

Sure. I'll take that one. It's hard for us to give an exact number on that at the moment because everyone in the industry works together, right? So an example is we might be working with Coca-Cola, that demand can come direct from the agency as part of a specific brief, but it can also come from other activity via the ecosystem. So our goal here is to capture as much demand flow as possible across the ecosystem by covering both the direct relationships with agencies as well as building into the ad tech ecosystem. So we're sort of indifferent where the spend comes from between those channels. Our goal is to be distributed as far and wide as possible. And as time goes, we'll be able to get more accurate on exact splits across those sales channels.

Understood. And then as a follow-up, I believe the expectation is that Betting tech revenue should grow faster in the first half of the year versus second half of the year. Can you just provide any commentary on how we should expect rights costs to grow maybe on a full year basis and the sequencing between the first half and the second half?

Yes. On the rates growth, and you saw some of the year-to-year impact, remember, we onboarded or acquired Serie A and EPFL in late summer. So that influenced Q4 and will influence the first half of the year. The other is also the first year of our new term on the EPL, so that impacts the first half of the year as well as Q4. But that is all phasing and inside of the strong guide we have for '26.

Your next question is coming from the line of Ryan Sigdahl from Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

March Madness, you guys have been partnered with PMCA for many, many years. You got the exclusive distribution last year. Curious how you think about March Madness this year from a betting standpoint, and then separately, also from a FANHub ad tech standpoint? And then maybe last point to that, also BetVision is potentially an opportunity there?

On the -- I mean, look, we see March Madness as a big opportunity. I think we expect consistency with what we've seen across the Betting business in previous years on betting activity for March Madness in line with market growth and things like that.

On the advertising side of the business, the fact that we brought our moment engine to market now with the first sort of major event that's been widely available is going to be March Madness. So it's sort of early days there, but we're expecting to -- we're essentially expecting it to be the first time that we're leveraging the official data feed in the advertising environment to power all this stuff. So we expect to pick up a few sort of -- test campaigns, it's our first year, with us going harder next year across March Madness.

It's also an interesting test as well because this is incremental revenue that's going to be monetized across multiple distribution channels for us with no additional rights fees. So I think from that point of view, it's quite a powerful endorsement of the strategy we've been outlining over the last few years.

And for my follow-up, just a quick one for Bryan, maybe how to think about litigation costs as we head into 2026, just given that was a pretty big onetime in 2025?

Yes. We will in our 20-F do the update on any litigation related activities ongoing there. Those are live and [ far be it ] for me to comment here. But as we say, we are focused on growing that cash balance year-to-year. And to the extent those drive swings, we will communicate that as such when we know it. .

Your next question comes from Clark Lampen from BTIG.

Maybe we could take a step back around the Media business and agency relationships. For a lot of us that are newer to this component of your business, and it's a very rapidly growing one, maybe similar to, Mark, what we did with Magnite a moment ago, we could take a step back and you could talk about, for a lot of us that are trying to digest to and sort of synthesize a lot of this information down into an Excel model, how do these relationships work and evolve over time? And how are they augmented by a lot of the things that you're doing with augmented advertising? But maybe just, I guess, from a practical standpoint, you're clearly going after more of the agency holdco ecosystem right now. You do have relationships with 2 of the big 5. I'm sure the count will grow. As we think about the impact on your business, maybe you could give us like a 101 of sorts, I guess, if possible.

Clark, it's Josh here. So I'm happy to talk us through. So the way in which we are building our advertising business here is, as I said, sort of twofold from a sort of channel perspective. Us going direct to the agencies and brands; the second is going into the ad tech ecosystem. But our ethos is the same across both, which is for Genius to be the infrastructure layer for all sports media.

And the way in which that is being commercialized and built into the industry is essentially we are taking media packages out to the market in the form of what's called a curated deal in a lot of instances. And what a curated deal is, is a package that contains audience data. So this is all of our fan graph and understanding fans, and it contains inventory. And that inventory can be inventory that Genius owns ourselves, like BetVision inventory and augmented ads, but it can also be third-party inventory from anyone in the ecosystem.

And then what sits on top of it now is our moments engine. And that moments engine is something that we've developed, and we have used it in-house historically for our sort of managed service business. But what you're now seeing is us externalizing our intelligence layer and our audiences and our inventory so that anyone can transact on it.

And the workflow of how that happens is we basically bundle those things together based on a brief from an advertiser and agency, and we give them a unique sort of code that they will then punch into any of their buying platforms in order to transact on the audience and media. And over time, what happens is you get a sort of portfolio of curated deals where there is just money flow going from all of these campaigns and advertisers across the ecosystem, buying across Genius audience and inventory.

And what happens as we continue to expand the Media business is you get 2 things. You get an increased number of active deals out in the market, of us tapping into demand flow. But you also have, as Genius acquirers and build [ more unique ] inventory we will move that inventory into those deals, which allows for revenue and margin expansion as well. So there's sort of 2 growth levers in that. It's more deals out in the marketplace, but it's also more scale of our inventory within those deals.

Very helpful. I appreciate you laying it out.

It also -- you might want to give them a bit of a download on how the buyer -- how the actual media buyers work, what they actually do and how that effectively -- how we see that evolving into [ a new business play ]. That's an interesting thing.

Sure. Happy to. A lot of these buyers in the agencies will be buying across multiple platforms, multiple advertisers, right? And as they continue to expand their campaigns, what they tend to do is they tend to duplicate campaigns over time, which means our DL IDs get carried across. And that's sort of the building blocks of having them continuing to be live, right?

And the other thing I just want to touch on these building blocks of the Media business is obviously the Legend acquisition and some of the rationale around that. Because what we gained from Legend is obviously we gain a whole new host of intent signals and audience data that can be fed into these curated deals to help them perform better and to help them -- to help us respond to a wider variety of campaign briefs.

And of course, coming back to that piece I said around unique inventory, as we create more unique inventory with the Legend tech stack, we're able to feed that into the deals to help monetize it. So we have an instant monetization path as we expand the Legend technology portfolio.

Really helpful. And if I could just ask a very quick follow-up on Legend. It feels like you guys have a couple of opportunities that feel like they're going to be potentially more rapid in terms of things you can address that would augment the revenue stream for Genius or Legend independently, applying some of the Legend tech to your properties, bringing new properties to market, backlog monetization. As you think about sort of 3Q and 4Q, maybe this is a question for Bryan or Josh, which of those feel, I guess, like the sort of lowest-hanging fruit or potentially easiest ones to address per se?

Sorry, can you just say the end of that again? I may have missed it.

Yes. So there's a couple of levers, I guess, for revenue synergies with Legend. Tech application to GENI properties, expansion of sort of GENI and Legend properties, and then backlog monetization. I'm curious as we think about the second half of the year, is one or sort of all of those -- or would you drill down on one as more addressable or potentially more accretive in 2026?

The revenue synergy that will have the most immediate impact is the cross-sell of the existing customer base. But then from a technology perspective, it's the access to the audience data that we have through the Legend stack, right? You saw it in the Magnite announcement yesterday. As soon as the deal closed, we expect that audience data will be flowing through to help power the -- to power the moment engine.

I'd say the revenue synergies with slightly longer tail is the integration and building of sort of hosted solutions with our league partners, just because the integration time there is a bit longer, there's an immediate opportunity. But the time to get that done and out in market has a slightly longer lag than sort of audience data being integrated.

And just since this question has become a bit more of a teach-in than normal -- than a normal question, it's probably worth sort of bringing it back to our core business as well. So one of the media applications of the Legend engine is going to be the implementation of it in BetVision. And if you remember, going back to our original economics, we get 3x the amount of money for in-play betting. We're obviously driving BetVision very aggressively through all of our sports books that we're doing deals with -- we've now got knocking on the door of 25,000 events. All of those services that BetVision presents as a layer to the customer is going to be touched by the Legend engine, at which point we're going to be optimizing our BetVision property in real time for -- to maximize the commercial returns that we're getting on it in terms of the sort of 3x the amount of money we get paid on in-play.

So we're hoping to see fairly quick that acceleration and increase of the proportion of in-play betting that you're -- that's coming through the business. And again, reminding people, I think we're a bit over 30% of the markets, in-play betting at the moment. You look at Europe, again, it's going back to what we've been saying for years, it's sort of 70%, 80% in some cases. So we expect to be able to accelerate that 30% towards the levels that we're seeing in Europe more quickly, which then gives us that compounding effect on the revenue shares that we're getting.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Handler from ROTH Capital.

Two questions. First, with regards to advertising inventory and the importance there, you've got a good amount of first-party inventory, you've got some third-party inventory with Yahoo! Sports and SI. Do you have enough inventory at this point to achieve your financial targets? Or will you need more inventory? And are you talking to any new meetings or teams about that inventory?

Eric, the short answer is we always want more unique inventory because it gives us a competitive moat in the ecosystem. Do we need more unique inventory in order to deliver on our numbers? Not necessarily. Like the beauty of the moment engine is that we're able to apply those models across our own inventory as well as third parties. So what we're seeing is we're having a number of premium publishers reach out to Genius saying, can they run our moment engine across their inventory? And that, again, brings us back into the demand flow.

So we always want more unique inventory. It gives us a more competitive offering. Do we have to have more in order to get to where we want to? Not necessarily. We have other ways to commercialize our media product portfolio.

And I'm sure it's not missed that Legend gives us a massive, massive amount of unique inventory that we own and control, so.

That's helpful. And then with regards to BetVision, I think you said you're now around 25,000 events. How much more do you think that could grow to over the next, let's say, 12, 18 months? And where other sports are you looking at for BetVision?

Sorry, can you just repeat that again? The line wasn't great for us again.

With BetVision, you said you're now around 25,000 events. And as you look out over the next couple of years, where do you think that number can go to? And what sports do you think you can add?

Yes, Eric, I think in the materials, we mentioned 300,000. A big driver of that difference is eSports competitions. But we recently added tennis. We continue to build out even across FIBA Basketball and others. So we're always, as Josh said, looking for more ways to exploit it and grow our owned and operated inventory. So there's definitely more upside there. But even the eSports thing, it's an easy bolt-on and delivered significant number of events.

Your next question comes from the line of Trey Bowers from Wells Fargo.

Any chance you could just dig in a little bit, again, another BetVision question, on what you learned from this most recent NFL season, just around engagement, interaction, kind of how that progressed as the season went on? Any metrics you guys could provide us would be super helpful in kind of understanding the opportunity and what you've learned thus far.

We continue to see year-over-year engagement and improvement there on NFL. And in the natural ramp of getting it launched and implemented and as players and fans and bettors get more familiar with it, they do spend more time with it. So we continue to see the ramp there. And as we say, if we keep adding more events, then we can build in more repeat visits with longer session times. I think also, we saw a 32% increase in unique plays on NFL and 62% across football -- soccer.

Great. And then just a follow-up, a question for Bryan, I guess. There was a question about kind of onetime legal costs and you would say you'd address them as that comes up. But could -- at this point in time, any sense of what one-timers might look like for 2026 free cash flow? Just so as we go through the year, we're not kind of caught by surprise. Obviously, I would assume you already know some sense of what the kind of M&A costs would be. But anything you guys know at this point in time that we should think about for free cash flow impacts for the year?

Not at this time. I mean we, again, are focused on continuing to grow that year-to-year balance. We've given the annualized impact of the pro forma business, which is strong and getting to the 30% EBITDA margin on an annualized basis with near 50% free cash flow conversion. It would be too early to say. Would there be any one-timers to articulate today? Not yet, no.

Your next question comes from the line of Barry Jonas from Truist.

Wanted to go back to Legend. Can you just maybe talk more about the reaction of your lead partners to the deal, and maybe specifically address Legend's work with prediction markets and sweet stakes and the comfort level there?

Yes. I think there's sort of 2 distinct parts to that. I mean the reaction of our lead partners to having the ability to potentially drive their viewership wider and get the messaging out to a much larger audience that we control is obviously something very attractive. And it's something that was one of the big reasons and one of the big attractions for us to do it. If you're a league summer and you want to access a sports fan, say, in North America, the chances are we have -- we can talk to them for you. And that's a very attractive thing to do.

I think the prediction market is separate to the league partners. I wouldn't conflate those 2 things. The prediction markets, as I think I said at Investor Day fairly repeatedly and again on some of the calls, we see the prediction markets, the advertising opportunity is quite significant. And clearly, from our point of view, with Legend as sort of in terms of taking marketing spend from the prediction markets, that's something that I think is pretty clear. But if you look at any of the sites, we're -- we've already got an eye and it's something that we'll be focusing much more aggressively on over time.

And on a more general point on prediction markets, I think one of the questions I always think it's interesting for you guys to ask yourselves is that if you agree or not that, as a result of the prediction markets, more people are making wages on sports in the United States. And I think if you sort of follow that logic, that means that the answer is clearly yes. And that's clearly a good thing for our market, a good thing for the business, increases the TAM. And it means that there's going to be an increased requirement for the data, not only on the marketing making side, but clearly from the prediction markets. And obviously, we're watching a very rapidly evolving regulatory transition there, which we think has got a fairly obvious outcome over the sort of medium term.

And again, from that, we've sort of seen this journey before. And if you look at the value of our data 10 years ago, it was a fraction of the value of our data now to sports books. So on a general thing, we see the prediction markets, outside of the marketing spend that we've talked about and outside of the market making, which we've also talked about, we see that as a very interesting opportunity. You heard what Jason Robin said on his call the other day, and so we see the opportunity to distribute that data whilst when regulation becomes more evolved to be a very significant opportunity for us. And clearly, our data is needed.

Your next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon from Macquarie.

Great to see that you guys continue to outpace the betting market. From a lot of your partners, we've heard about the high hold and kind of how that impacted lower volumes across the NFL this season. But wondering if you can talk a little bit about what you're seeing from an engagement standpoint, if this worries you at all that some of the volumes have decelerated. Do you think it could be a concern? And how this fits into your '26 guidance for the Betting segment.

Sorry, I didn't hear the last bit about concern. Can you just repeat that bit again?

Sorry, if the volumes are a concern and if that could come in maybe below expectations for NFL for your Betting business in '26.

Yes. So just on that last point, I mean the short answer is no. And I think the proof is if you just look at our numbers, we're not seeing an impact on that and don't expect it to. On a wider point, you've got to remember, we're a global business as well. It's -- we're not just U.S. focused. We have a very wide global reach. The South American market is growing very quickly. European markets are growing nicely. There are a lot of opportunities globally. So we're not particularly concerned about that at all. We don't think that effect has us. As we've sort of said a number of times, we see ourselves as the picks and shovels and we're sort of somewhat immune to that.

And I think that sort of segue nicely into sort of your original point, which is we are outpacing the global market. I mean our Genius global Betting growth, just to remind people, was 33% in 2025. Our U.S. Betting growth was 50% in 2025. And if you compare that to approximately 30% in the U.S. market, I think that says an awful lot about the messaging that we've been putting out into the market the last few years about how this is really a hedge from the sort of handle volatility you may see in the U.S. market as things evolve.

And I think the reasons for this are pretty clear. We've got additional products, BetVision and in-play. We've got increasing content, things like Serie A, EPFL. And clearly, we're also taking price. So I think all of those things -- all of those things are sort of proving out what the things that we've been saying over the last few years about our ability to run a sustainable and stable, predictable business in the sector.

And then, Bryan, just a housekeeping item. What are the final steps in terms of closing the Legend deal? I believe you said Q2 is pretty imminent here, but just wondering what needs to be finalized before that comes across the line.

Yes. Simply, it's regulatory approval.

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Bazinet from Citi.

I just had 2 quick questions. You mentioned migrating from gross to net revenue recognition. And I just wonder if you could confirm that that was already contemplated in the guide since you didn't change the guide. And when does that go into effect? And what's the magnitude of that adjustment?

Jason, that is in the guide. We spoke about that at Investor Day as well. And as Josh said, some of these curated deals include placing -- using our IDs and our moment engine on third-party engines or sell-side platforms that we're plugging into. And so there, it's a lower take of the overall campaign, but higher margin. That's what we mean by that, but it is in the guide from Investor Day and it's in the guide from a month ago today in regard to '26 and '28.

Your final question comes from Greg Gibas from Northland Securities.

I wanted to maybe get a little bit more color on Legend's kind of revenue breakdown in a way in terms of how much is maybe derived from media or advertisement placements versus kind of the revenue share and then lifetime revenue share model.

Yes. I mean, roughly speaking, it's about 50-50.

Okay. Fair enough. And I apologize if you mentioned this, but kind of self-serve versus managed trend in Q4 versus prior periods?

In terms of the split between it? I mean self-serve still a much smaller share of the revenues. You have to think about it a lot of the growth -- a lot of growth revenue that we are adding is coming out of the sort of self-serve business. So it's still relatively in its early days.

As we said, we're talking about curation and building that up. It takes time to build that portfolio up. So in Q4, we had -- we still had a decent amount of sort of managed service business as we picked up scatter budgets at the end of the year. So as we build more sustainable growth over the long term, it will be sort of building blocks of distributing those curated deals and slowly the mix between managed and self shifting over a longer period of time.

Thank you for your questions. There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect.

Hello, and welcome to today's call where Genius Sports Management will discuss its acquisition of Legend. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks.

[Operator Instructions]

Also as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time.

Genius Sports, you may begin.

Thank you. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that today's presentation will include certain non-GAAP measures, and you can find the definitions in the investor presentation available on our website. We will also make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and should be considered in conjunction with our risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC.

With that, I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Locke.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. At our Investor Day, we laid out a clear long-term vision for the company, how we capture next-generation sports data and monetize it across an end-to-end platform spanning leagues and teams, betting, media, advertising, sponsorship and fan engagement. That strategy underpinned our confidence in the targets we shared on that day, $1.2 billion of revenue, $365 million of adjusted EBITDA and 60% free cash flow conversion by 2028.

Our business is on remarkable footing. We finished 2025 with estimated group revenue of $669 million and $136 million of adjusted EBITDA, delivering 31% revenue growth, 20% adjusted EBITDA margin and record free cash flow generation. Importantly, our Media segment achieved 37% year-on-year growth in 2025, a phenomenal result for our highest growth segment.

Today's call is to announce a transformational transaction for Genius Sports. I'm delighted to announce that we have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Legend, a global digital sports and gaming media network that's built to monetize attention. This acquisition will deliver exactly what we said we would do, both on strategic and financial execution.

Sticking with financials, the scale and profitability that we previously expected to reach in 2028 will be largely achieved in 2026. That means for 2026, on an annualized basis after giving effect to the acquisition, we expect to deliver approximately $1.1 billion of revenue and $320 million to $330 million of adjusted EBITDA. As we execute towards 2028, we believe that this acquisition will allow us to achieve $1.6 billion of revenue at an approximate 35% adjusted EBITDA margin and with free cash flow conversion of over 60%, all of which exceeds what we previously shared with you.

As a reminder, the goal for our media business is to be the buying platform for any advertiser trying to reach a sports audience. This transaction supercharges the drivers of this strategy, more data, more audience, more inventory and more monetization pathways to deliver returns for our customers. At the core of Legend is an AI-powered platform that captures real-time user intent, and it converts it into revenue across sports and gaming. This is the same model used by companies that build products around decision-making moments, then monetize them at scale.

Today, Legend owns industry-leading media brands, for example, Covers.com and Casino.org. These properties provide direct audience relationships and full control over user experience and monetization. They also provide hosted solutions for some of the biggest names in media and syndication for Tier 1 publishers. Examples include Sports Illustrated and Yahoo Sports. This allows publishers to increase yield through Legend's plug-and-play solution. Underpinning all of these products is a rich data capture and analytics stack that provides audience intelligence and further strengthens our understanding of sports fans and gaming customers.

Legend is a global business with over 800 customers and more than 800 people in 13 countries. It is led by an exceptional leadership team that will join Genius Sports and continue to drive the business forward following the acquisition. Legend operates a familiar flywheel. The way Legend engages and monetizes its premium audiences is similar to retail media networks because they sit inside moments of intent, not passive consumption. Users arrive with a job to do, buy groceries, order food, book a ride or in this case, make a sports or gaming transaction. This is how we define intent. That intent shows up in the metrics, high frequency, repeat usage, deep sessions and closed-loop measurement. That is why Legend has scaled efficiently and delivered outsized returns for advertisers.

Once the player is converted through Legend, revenue is generated from the player's lifetime spend, creating long-term predictable revenue with minimal incremental cost. While our sports betting business primarily earns revenue share from betting-related content, Legend expands this model by enabling Genius to participate economically across the full spend of both sports data and iGaming content, further strengthening our picks and shovels approach.

Legend has an unrivaled scale. In 2025, Legend generated more than 320 million annual visits from 118 million unique visitors. To put that in perspective, one of the leading rideshare apps reaches 151 million unique users, while a major U.S. food delivery app averages closer to 53 million. The visitors on Legend's owned and operated products have an average 75% return rate and spend an average of 9 minutes per session engaging in its best-in-class content. This is product-led engagement, driven and sustained by premium owned and operated experiences, not reliance on single traffic sources. That depth of engagement translates into more than $2 in revenue per unique visitor.

By comparison, that represents greater than a 4x uplift on average digital publishers who monetize a unique visitor at only a fraction of that level, typically less than $0.50. That gap is not accidental, it's structural. Across every metric that matters, Legend operates well above category norms. Repeat visitation is higher, sessions are deeper. Engagement time is sustained. More pages are viewed and more revenue is generated, resulting in strong revenue visibility. For Genius, the impact is immediate. Remember, more data, more audience and more inventory drives the Genius Media network. At the center of this network is FANHub, the engine that turns fan engagement into revenue.

As you saw at Investor Day, it is our unified activation platform for media and advertising. With this acquisition, Legend will not sit alongside Genius. Its platform, data, audience and inventory will be fully activated within the FANHub platform. This unlocks true performance synergies. Legend's owned and partner inventory can now be monetized through one system across sportsbooks, gaming and broader brand advertising. It also materially strengthens our value to brands and agency partners like PMG and Publicis by giving them access to high-intent sports audiences in one place. Beyond this core accelerator, the Legend platform enables additional growth drivers into new partners, new surfaces and new monetization use cases.

Firstly, Legend materially expands our ability to help leagues, teams and media partners monetize digital inventory while embedding Genius deeper into their core digital ecosystems. We moved beyond content and inventory creation with Genius IQ to full stack execution, distribution and optimization. The result is that Genius Sports is at the center of our sports partners' digital strategies.

Secondly, owned brands like Covers give Genius a more direct, scalable path to fans. This creates real optionality by allowing us to distribute, test and monetize exclusive Genius IQ content. This is symbiotic because Genius' products distributed across Legend's vast global brands will further accelerate their core metrics. For example, we will be able to help leagues like the NFL immediately reach and expand and monetize further international audiences in line with their stated goals as well as providing an enormous platform to many of the European leagues who are looking to enter the U.S. market.

Finally, by integrating Legend's technology directly into partner environments, we can optimize our media flywheel without relying on paid audience acquisition. This is the same playbook that we have already proven with BetVision now applied to a much broader footprint. Put another way, we now have massive distribution scale. With this acquisition, Genius expands its structural advantage, now operating 2 full-service synergistic businesses, a proprietary sports data engine generating approximately $600 million in revenue and a performance-driven content, media and advertising engine generating approximately $500 million. We are the only company operating across both official sports data and AI-driven media monetization. No other platform spans 2 large, fast-growing and interconnected markets in this way.

What further differentiates Genius is how these engines work together. We acquire data once and monetize it across betting, media and advertising. That structure unlocks substantial value. More data improves performance, better performance attracts more spend and higher spend strengthens the network. This acquisition highlights the continued evolution of our strategy, business, capabilities and relationships. We now have the most powerful end-to-end performance-driven sports and gaming media network in the world. With our unique data, insights and partnerships, Genius is the full service platform, connecting advertisers with high-intent incremental fans. Our leadership position across these markets is now unmatched and hard to replicate.

Commercially, the combined Genius and Legend business has substantial value. The combined company will serve more than 2,000 customers globally, spanning leagues and teams, sportsbooks, gaming operators, media companies, brands and agencies. This will be a diversified enterprise customer base with long-standing relationships and multiple expansion paths. Legend's commercial performance is a clear strength. On a stand-alone basis, Legend pioneered market-leading commercial terms because of the results that they deliver. Demand for placement on Legend's owned and operated properties is strong with operators often competing for premium exposure across its highest intent inventory.

When customers are onboarded, they choose to stay for a long time. Revenue is a mix of upfront payments and ongoing performance-based earnings which leads to stable, secure and recurring revenues. Legend also strengthens our commercial attractiveness to operators. Genius' ability to cross-sell and compete for a larger share of operators' marketing budgets will increase with this acquisition. And this is a revenue synergy that works in both directions. Genius customers gain access to high-intent media inventory and perform-driven acquisition.

Legends customers gain access to official sports data, deeper audience insights and differentiated media activation powered by Genius. This is an example of an immediate synergy that is realizable in 2026 and would represent upside to the forecast. iGaming is a particular strength of Legend. While Genius participates in adjacent aspects of this space today, Legend immediately enables a significant expansion into the growing iGaming TAM, particularly in North America, which is Legend's largest market. While we are talking about expanded TAM, Legend also accelerates our participation in emerging gaming categories, including prediction markets.

Legend has consistently identified and monetized new gaming categories early, including daily fantasy sports, the expansion of regulated online sports betting, new operator formats and new geographic markets. Prediction markets are just the latest example of this. They create immediate demand for education, comparison and decision support, attracting marketing and acquisition spend. Today Genius already monetizes this demand through media and advertising activity. Legend will materially amplify this opportunity, enabling us to participate economically across the curve from early market emergence through to maturity. So to recap, together, we have a larger TAM, multiple revenue accelerations and a further ability to capitalize on fast-moving market dynamics.

Financially, there are 3 pillars of the Legend acquisition will enable us to deliver. First is revenue acceleration. That is everything that I've spoken about so far. Second is margin expansion. Media monetization carries structurally higher incremental margins than our core business. As media becomes a larger share of the mix, we expect group EBITDA margins to expand beyond the 30% level outlined at our Investor Day. Third is cash conversion. This business benefits from strong operating efficiencies and limited incremental capital requirements. As media scales and joint opportunities are realized, free cash flow conversion is expected to reach approximately 50% on an annualized 2026 basis and exceed the 60% level that we previously guided. This combination arms us with even stronger economics to continue executing against our long-term strategy.

Now I will hand over to Bryan to expand on this further.

Good morning, everyone. I will now spend a few minutes on the financials and how this transaction fits into our growth outlook and capital allocation framework. First, I want to be very clear, stand-alone Genius is performing exactly as we outlined at Investor Day in December. Our strategy is unchanged. Our execution remains strong, and our financial framework is intact. As Mark said, this acquisition is attractive strategically and financially. Acquiring Legend presented us a compelling opportunity to accelerate our revenue and margin growth at a disciplined cost of capital and with an attractive free cash flow profile.

On a 2026 annualized basis, with Legend, we would expect $1.1 billion of revenue and approximately 30% adjusted EBITDA margin and approximately 50% free cash flow conversion. To note, our free cash flow conversion metrics cited here for 2026 and going forward will, in light of the Legend acquisition, exclude interest and be based on unlevered free cash flow. That said, even on a levered free cash flow basis, we expect free cash generation to be ahead on 2026 and materially ahead on 2028.

Beyond 2026, on a pro forma basis, we expect the combined business will deliver revenue growth of approximately 20% on average with EBITDA margins expanding above 30% and free cash flow conversion increasing to over 60%. Importantly, this puts us at or ahead of the financial profile we laid out for 2028 much sooner than we originally expected. The deal economics in isolation are strong. Given the complementary overlap of our businesses, we expect modest cost synergies. However, we believe that revenue synergies to cross-sell and expand our customer base will prove significant and further enhance margins, which would be upside to the numbers we have presented today.

On structure, the transaction reinforces disciplined execution, performance-based incentives, team continuity and founder leadership staying in place. The upfront consideration represents $900 million at close, comprised of $800 million in cash and $100 million in stock with an additional earnout of up to $300 million split evenly across year 1 and year 2 post close. The earnout is tied to profitability and cash flow metrics and is payable in cash or stock at Genius' discretion. We believe this structure appropriately balances risk, alignment and long-term accretive value creation. From a financing perspective, the transaction is supported by committed debt financing led by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

At closing, we expect to incur $850 million of secured debt and our revolver will remain undrawn. Pro forma leverage will be below 3x with a clear path to rapid delevering by more than half by 2028, driven by our strong and visible growth trajectory.

Finally, our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. We will continue to generate healthy free cash flow, reinvest organically in the business across Genius IQ distribution and further products, pursue disciplined inorganic opportunities where returns are compelling and opportunistically return value to shareholders. Overall, this transaction reflects exactly the approach we outlined at Investor Day, disciplined growth, improving margins, strong cash conversion and long-term value creation.

And now I will turn it back to Mark quickly before opening the line for questions.

Thanks, Bryan. As we said at Investor Day, our M&A bar is incredibly high. We reviewed nearly 100 opportunities over the last 1.5 years and chose Legend because it exceeded our key acquisition criteria on every measure, strategic fit, clear operational integration and accretive economics. These statistics exemplify how patient and focused we are on the long-term success of the business and our approach as custodians of shareholder capital. We have not and we will not enter into acquisitions unless we have total confidence of that business' ability to deliver at the level that Genius expects.

The market has been volatile over the last few weeks for reasons that have very little to do with our underlying business strength. Our equity is precious. And as such, we have intentionally kept dilution minimal in the transaction with a contemplated leverage level that we are extremely confident that we can minimize through growth immediately. We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Legend to Genius Sports. We have known the team for a long time, a combined 46 years in the industry between the Legends founder and myself. And as a result, we avoided a formal sale process once it became clear how together, we could meaningfully increase the pace and scale of our execution.

This is how upsides are realized even beyond the numbers that Bryan has just described. This is exactly the type of acquisition that we said that we would pursue. This cements our unique position as the only player in sports data and media-driven monetization, 2 synergistic pillars powered by 1 shared data layer. This is how Genius will continue to unlock value through 2028 and beyond. And we look forward to delivering against this opportunity over the years ahead.

With that, we will now open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

We'll take our first question from Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer.

Can you hear me?

We hear you, Jed.

Okay. Great. Yes. good acquisition. Just a couple of questions. Just looking at the valuation, it looks like you got it around like 8.5x EBITDA. So can you just talk about the growth profile? And then just with some of these media businesses, we have seen in some other verticals potential disruption from new agents, Google changes, these new AIs. So can you just talk about how you view the risk profile of some of these publishing businesses and media networks?

Jed, thanks. It's Bryan. I'll take the first part, and then I'll turn it to Mark and Josh for the second part. That's right. I mean you deduced roughly what the multiple is at. This is a business that we've known a long time. They've been 20 years in the making, have a solid track record, have had strong growth over the last few years. And going forward, we continue to expect high double-digit growth. And as you can tell from the numbers we gave you, our overall profile is still 20% CAGR. So we're excited about it. And we think it's, as you can tell, highly accretive immediately and a lot of opportunities for synergies.

Yes. I mean Jed, it's Mark. Happy to take it. On the disruption point, I mean, we're pretty comfortable with the risk profile. I mean the distinction is that Legend's not a traditional publishing business dependent on an SEO or arbitrage or single traffic sources. It's genuinely a performance-driven media network that owns many -- owns and operates many sites, has lots of partnerships, large distribution channels, huge of users. I think in the call, I mentioned we have about 380 million unique users compared to some of the very large rideshares that are around 150 million.

So it comes out with a massive network and the demand is coming directly from sportsbooks and advertisers who are buying outcomes and not impressions. And I think the key thing that we want to focus on is what we're really driving at here. We're focused on attention, and we're focused on intent. And that's the thing that this gives us because it has a lot of these owned and operated sites because it owns and produces the content. It's very, very high quality. It's very organic.

We get an average of about 9 minutes, I think, of dwell time on -- for each user. And what that does is that gives us the ability to collect a massive amount of data, create enormous amounts of understanding of what the intent is. And that attention and that intent is the thing that's driving it. If you think about things like BetVision and what we're doing there, the ability to distribute and test with those products gives us a huge ramp for growth.

Our next question comes from Jordan Bender with Citizens JPMorgan.

Yes. So the take on leverage is a change on how the company has traditionally looked at the balance sheet. You've laid out why the acquisition is the right fit. So can you maybe just talk us through how you've taken on your level of comfortableness around the leverage and the trajectory path to kind of get back down to somewhere around 1x?

And then just a follow-up. Your business is traditionally lumpy with free cash flow generation, just given the NFL. Should this transaction smooth that out quarter-to-quarter?

Yes. No, I'll take it. On the leverage, and again, like our capital allocation and approach to M&A has not changed. We always said we would look for compelling opportunities that beyond just our organic investment inorganically would allow us to accelerate our growth, our capabilities and as you can tell, our financial targets. And this checks the box on all 3 of those. And so we feel good about the leverage, the starting point based on the growth trajectory, which predictable, visible, we do expect that to come down by more than half by '28. And so the leverage, we believe, is more than manageable. And it still puts us ahead on every cash metric we had. Meanwhile, Genius continues to perform on its own. So it's really complementary in that regard.

I think it's also probably worth mentioning, we've been extremely disciplined in making sure that we've got flexibility. We've got strong liquidity, covenant headrooms and good optionality around capital allocation, which was a key sort of underwriting consideration for us.

Great. And then just on the cadence of the free cash flow moving forward.

So it's largely, as you would have seen, Genius in prior years. We do have some seasonality to it in the back half just around the timing of our business. But having said that, this is more than manageable and the coverage is strong through the year. And we're confident again on that leverage from where we start in the even and predictable path down.

Our next question comes from Clark Lampen with BTIG.

I've got 2. Maybe the first one, Mark, this seems like it has the potential to take you guys meaningfully forward as a sports-focused performance marketing platform. I wanted to see if there's any way of basically just contextualizing for us how much different maybe the Legend tech stack is versus your FANHub product, if at all? Are both of these sort of AI-powered models? Do they have sort of full DSP, SSP technology? How different are they?

And then I guess, maybe second question, more of a financial one. Relative to the 21% sort of pro forma CAGR that you guys now expect for the overall business through 2028, how is media going to grow in relation to that? Is it going to be meaningfully faster? Any context that you can provide for either the CAGR or '26, I think, would be really helpful.

Clark, it's Josh Linforth here. So the way to think about it is that Legend gives Genius a number of additional sort of technologies and assets that we're able to leverage through the FANHub platform. So the things that we talked about on the call a little bit were the fact that it gives us a ton of unique sports-focused inventory, and it also gives us access to another 118 million uniques per year that will be integrated into the Sports Innovation Lab acquisition. And together, that will be packaged up within the FANHub platform for us to take out to market for our partners to transact on the platform or through deal IDs, but all the sort of traditional programmatic mechanisms that are available to monetize both audience and inventory.

And then from the technology standpoint within the Legend tech stack, what Genius is gaining here is an AI engine that understands and infers context in real time across all of the digital properties. So it opens up a ton of advantages for us. It enables us to measure attention and intent and feed those unique signals into our platform to inform decisioning and pricing power for all of our inventory and audience data.

And it also enables Genius to push more broadly out into the premium sort of digital ecosystem to create new content and to extend our reach into digital properties like league assets and websites as well as working in the sort of broader traditional publishing space to help distribute Genius content through -- taking all the stuff that we're building through Genius IQ, BetVision. This just enables us further reach for content distribution to pull it all back into the FANHub platform and use the models that Legend has built that's made them so successful in driving revenue out of engagement.

And I think a few examples over here in terms of the sports acceleration. If you think about what a lot of the European leagues are trying to do, we always think about our betting business. We always talk about the additional services that we can provide to sports leagues to help them achieve their goals. We're obviously doing a lot on the marketing. But on the data side, that's a big part of our business model, having Legend allows -- if you're a European sports league and you want to expand the number of eyeballs that you're getting on your sport and distribute it, Legend in the U.S., for example, is a really, really good option for them to do that. If they want to attack the U.S. or Legend in the European country, they want to attack the European country. So it gives them a larger base of distribution for their products, which is really important.

And again, if you look at the NFL relationship, which is obviously key to us, and I remind you all that the NFL is a sort of large shareholder in Genius, their goals are very clearly to be internationally focused. And they've just announced new NFL games in France and a number of other European territories, Spain included. And so from their point of view, having this distribution network that we own and operate, having this data, having these eyeballs at our fingertips allows us to very quickly help them sort of achieve their goals.

And also, it's probably worth touching on the AI piece as well because, I mean, both the Genius platform and Legend both use AI extensively and specifically Machine Learning. And we're not just slapping AI labels on products. The Legend uses models to optimize traffic allocation. It improves the pricing and the conversion in real time. And we use the models to generate and interpret sports data, fan behavior. So combined, it gives us a full closed-loop system, which is really, really key to what we're trying to do these days, which is, as I said before, monetize attention and intent.

And on the -- sorry, the growth profile question, I guess I'm just curious, is this -- I mean, all of that stuff sounds very, very meaningful for this business going forward. So is it right to infer that media on a go-forward basis is probably going to outpace the sort of 21% average? Or maybe as I mentioned before, is it possible to give us a little bit more detail on '26 betting tech versus media or others?

Yes. Look, I mean, I'll sort of answer more generically because clearly, media is a huge focus for us here, and it's what we've been doing. And if you recall back to Q2 2025, I rather controversially at the time, said I think our media business will end up being as big or bigger than our betting business in the medium term. And I think that, that's really what we're delivering now. We're delivering a business that is faster growing, higher margin and eventually will be materially larger than our sports betting business. So I think it's a very fair assumption for you to make that this will outpace that growth. And the focus on our media is -- really is working, and we're really delivering these results with this.

Our next question comes from Michael Hickey with The Benchmark Company.

Mark, Bryan, hopefully, you guys can hear me. Congrats guys on this transformative deal and also nice to see a strong finish to '25 and a good guide for your core business on '26. Just 2 questions. One, I guess, just a clarification on Legend here. How much of the fan journey begins in search, I guess, versus maybe direct? And the other piece would be just on the catalyst you guys see forward here on '26. You've got the World Cup. I imagine that would be meaningful, especially with your larger scale now on the ad piece.

And on prediction market, I'm on the Covers.com, I see a Kalshi ad. I imagine now what was sort of a threat, maybe a big opportunity for you on the ad side with the prediction market. So curious how sizable you think that is. I'm guessing there will be a lot of competition here for the World Cup, but certainly into the next NFL season and other sporting events. And I guess you're also sort of less focused now just on your specific data rights. I think this would be a bigger opportunity for you across all your -- all the different sports, domestic and international.

Yes. I think Josh and I'll split that up because there's a lot in there -- which is worth picking up. I think I might actually take the last point first just because I think it's really important that whilst the media business is obviously a massive opportunity, I think it's really important to understand how synergistic they are. And so we won't be reducing focus at all on our data rights business, on our data business in any way. In fact, that's one of the core drivers of the revenue synergies, which we think are very significant, and we will come out of the combination of the businesses. We're going to be using the sports data.

We're going to be using the relationships with the leagues. We're going to be using the synergies that, that provides in a very, very real way. And it's something that, to be honest with you, we're incredibly excited about. I mean I'm happy to -- I mean, Josh, do you want to take the search or shall I take the search?

Yes, I...

You take the search.

Yes. I mean I'm happy to take it. Like the vast majority of the people that visit Legend's digital properties come direct. which gives us a huge -- the people that visit the digital properties essentially have built up large communities in which they're sharing content and it is a continuous flywheel of driving more and more people back. And our goal as a business is to be able to reach fans wherever they are. And this only strengthens that proposition essentially because Genius is now integrated across league properties, news organizations as well as owning our own digital properties.

It allows us to capture the full fan journey and to be able to monetize them effectively with a whole host of partners. I mean you touched on Kalshi being there, like Genius already works with them on -- within the marketing business, and we see that to continue to grow. This allows us to expand that relationship further, and it's been a big growth area for the Legend's business over the last 12 months, and we'll be able to capitalize on more of that marketing spend. I'm sure you're seeing it on TV and in digital, we're tapping into all of that already. And with Legend, it only strengthens the proposition.

We'll take our next question from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital.

I want to stay on that same question that Mike just asked, but dive in the predictive markets, I mean, it's blasted all over the front page of Covers.com. Curious, I guess, your conversations with your league partners, which seemingly had been kind of the biggest block to you guys entering in a bigger way to the predictive markets and monetizing there. I guess curious if you've had a change in comfort or conversations with them or how you feel at the moment?

Yes, good question. I think if we look back to the Investor Day, I mean, we were pretty clear on Investor Day that the prediction markets was a big opportunity for us, and it's something that we were already generating revenue from. If you remember, we mentioned the significant revenue that we're generating from the market makers in the U.S. markets from prediction market. You also recall, we mentioned that our ad tech business was benefiting very nicely from the prediction markets.

And I think that this is just a way of further strengthening that, gives us more data, makes us a bigger, much more significant partner of the prediction market because the combination of the sports data and the fan data gives us much higher ROIs and much deeper relationships. So we see this as a compounding transaction that allows us to go deeper into the prediction market, money pools that are available for advertising and for us to really drive the growth of that business alongside our league partners.

And just for my follow-up question, on the 2028 financial targets, did you basically just layer on top Legend on top of what you guided for a couple of months ago on the core Genie business? Or were there any changes to the existing business? And then how are synergies considered within that?

Yes. Listen, we took our 2028, which was strong and had very strong top line, bottom line cash conversion. Certainly, we layered on Legend, which also strong on all 3 of those fronts. As we said earlier, there are meaningful synergies that would be upside to that. And so you can tell that the '28 came up significantly and the years after also come up significantly, the margin and the cash flow conversions.

Our next question comes from Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo Securities.

Lots of questions, I think, more from your kind of consumer-focused analyst and portfolio manager base of exactly what Legend is. Could you guys just maybe kind of simplify for everyone how for such a high-margin business, Legend makes their money? Is it selling advertising on Covers and Casino.org? Is it selling kind of the data to the different online sports betting platforms? If you guys could just kind of break down how those revenue dollars are generated a little bit further, I think that would be super helpful for a lot of the people on this call.

Yes. So the way in which sort of the simple version of Legend is that it has an AI-led technology stack that produces digital content. So it basically builds a load of premium publishing websites for itself to own and operate, and it also does that for its partners. And we gave examples of Sports Illustrated and Yahoo!. And it essentially networks all of that together. The way in which it generates revenue is through really deep strategic commercial partnerships across the regulated betting and gaming space. And what they do is they take a share of lifetime revenues of players that come through from their properties. And they have another -- a number of other commercial instruments in terms of paying for things like homepage takeovers and cost per click and all the traditional mechanics that you expect from a digital media business.

I think it's worth talking a bit more about the revenue profile of the business. It's one of the things we like about this business so much and one of the reasons that we're so excited about is we've got very predictable revenues from it. We know exactly how much money we can make per user. And obviously, we touched upon that in the script that we sort of had earlier. And a lot of this -- the sort of historical revenues that are coming through the business give us a huge amount of predictability about the future growth. So I think that's really kind of important to highlight.

The other thing that is worth mentioning is the reason that the margins are so high is its technology enabled. So it's got very, very strong operating leverage. Once the platform is built, the incremental revenue just scales efficiently through the platform. So from our point of view, it's absolutely cutting-edge technology. It's the way that the media world is moving. It's the way that the market is evolving, focused on, as I keep saying, on intent. And I think that's something that you'll see.

One of the interesting comparables, I guess, if you're talking to a retail guys is happened in the last few days with Disney. Disney have come out with the announcement of their new CEO, and there's a lot of analysis on their business model, where they're pulling in somebody to watch frozen at $8 and then that person buys -- a child buys a doll or a costume and that then creates a sort of affinity to the Disney brand, which they then monetize over the lifetime of that customer. And really, what we're seeing is we're seeing the same opportunity in sport. You have a customer that comes in, they're interested in a set of data or some information or to watch a game through BetVision on our Legend distributed sites.

At that point, they're coming in, they're watching it, and then you have the opportunity to continue to monetize them through their lifetime. And I think that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about monetizing attention and monetizing intent. It's a really tangible and real opportunity for us to put our data sets and our technology together with Legends to really drive that growth.

Our next question comes from Eric Handler with ROTH Capital Partners.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay. Sorry. So sort of following up on Trey's question. I'm curious, is there a way or is there a path for Legends to open up its network to non-online sports betting brands to increase -- have a more broader customer base sort of like what you're doing now on the Genius side?

Yes. Is the short answer. That's one of the rationales for us doing this transaction is it gives Genius sort of plug-and-play ability to extend Legend's reach well with outside the betting and gaming space. When you think about Genius' customer profile, we've got 400 leagues around the world that we work with and an ever-increasing number of media organizations who need help in monetizing their content.

So when you think about Genius bringing that distribution of the Legend technology and its ability to understand intent and attention and being able to monetize it and you layer on top Genius IQ and all of the rich content that Genius has across BetVision and all of our statistical content, and we bring that across the world to league partners to help them grow their audience and to media organizations, it creates a massive path for expansion for us, giving us additional access to audience data to understand sports fans better. And more importantly, it helps us achieve our vision, which is to build the go-to destination for any advertiser who's looking to reach sports fans because it will give us a whole host of new advertising inventory and experiences that we can offer up to the broader advertising market with all of the new agency partnerships that we've recently established.

Great. And then with regards to capital allocation, the leverage that you're taking on isn't particularly onerous. Your net leverage will be less than 2x. You generate a lot of free cash flow. So that will come down quite quickly. Given where your stock price is right now, do you feel like -- does it preclude you from being active with your buyback program at all?

Yes, great question. I mean, look, our equity is super precious. And it's been something that we've been very, very conscious about in the negotiations, which is why we feel like we've struck the right level of incentivization and making sure that we're good custodians of our equity with $100 million of stock as part of the transaction. I think we have a buyback program in place. It's -- we've been pretty vocal about it. We feel our stock is one of the most valuable things that we have. So it's definitely going to be something that we're focused on over the coming period.

Our last question comes from Barry Jonas with Truist.

Congratulations. Just a couple of quick ones. Can you give a little more color on maybe the revenue mix for the stand-alone Legend's business? Curious what the geographical mix is? And then within performance, like how much is rev share versus CPA?

The vast majority of it is North America. From North America over the last sort of 2 years for Legend has grown by over 75%. So it's an ever-increasing area for them. And that's pretty well distributed of a mixture of -- we've got some other European countries in there that are regulated and a good mix across betting and gaming.

Okay. Got it. And then just yesterday, an operator noted increasing CPA trends given prediction markets entering the fall. So just curious as we think about the stand-alone growth opportunity for Legend's, how you sort of frame pricing versus wider reach.

Yes. Look, 75% of the contracts are recurring revenue. So that's been a big focus for us. And it's one of the main things that differentiates Legend's business model from other media players in the sector.

Thank you for joining today's call with Genius Sports Management. This completes the allotted time for questions, and we will now conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Please welcome to the stage, Investor Relations Manager, Brandon Bukstel.

Okay. Good morning, everyone. It's great to have you with us today. Before we begin, I just want to very quickly discuss a few housekeeping items. First, I just want to point out the location of the restrooms, which is just through this door in the back to my left. Second, in case of an emergency, fire exits will be through the maintenance behind you or through the exit near the restrooms. Third, I know a few of you have asked for the Wi-Fi. The -- we're going to be using the Genius Sports' Wi-Fi, and the password is intelligentsports.

Now for the event itself, we expect this will be about 3 hours in length, including two 10-minute breaks in between. At the end of the presentation, we'll have time for Q&A. So we ask that you just save any questions for the end. And lastly, today's presentation will include certain non-GAAP measures, and you could find the definitions and reconciliations in the Investor Day presentation, which will be available on our website.

We will also make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and should be considered in conjunction with our risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC.

So with that, I am now pleased to welcome to the stage, our CEO, Mark Locke.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us here in the room and on the webcast. Today, an important moment for Genius, not because of where we've been, but because of where global sport is going and the position that we now occupy at the center of that shift. When we listed nearly five years ago, many people still thought of Genius as a rights holder or a betting supplier or a data vendor. They didn't see what we were actually building, the foundational technology layer that would one day underpin the digital transformation of sport. That digital transformation is no longer theoretical. It's happening now at full speed and it will only happen once. And because of the last 25 years of work, Genius is built for this moment. So let me explain why.

The architecture of sport is being rewritten every part of the ecosystem, leagues, broadcasters, sports books, teams, advertisers. They're all facing the same reality that sport is becoming digital. Fan behavior is becoming data-driven. Engagement is happening in real time across multiple devices. Betting, media, advertising, content and commerce are all converging and none of the legacy systems were built for this world. Leagues are running on outdated siloed technology. Broadcasters are adapting to streaming. Sportsbooks want richer, faster data and advertisers need precision, not guess work. Fans want to be active participants through personalized experiences, not passive viewers. We anticipate these market shares before anyone else, and it's the reason that we are built for this moment. We believe that there is only one successful path forward, a single connected technology platform that captures the action, understands the fan, distributes the data and powers every touch point where sport is consumed. That platform is GeniusIQ.

The league or venue. The work of that league and venue becomes -- sorry, one that is installed in a venue or leagues workflow, it becomes the operating system that they build on. And it's very difficult to replicate. Once GeniusIQ is in place, it captures richer data faster. That data is crucial for coaches, officials and leagues. It powers next-generation betting products. It creates new forms of broadcast. The broadcast itself being the advertising inventory. Every element that you see, players, kits, boards, the pitch, a digital render of data, perceptually identical to real video, meaning that it can be changed or personalized in any way. And because these elements are interactive, they become the channel through which viewers connect directly with the advertiser. The broadcast becomes both the inventory and the interface. And it gets even better, crucially, that inventory gives us audience data, the most granular data on sports fans anywhere, and that audience data drives more personalized advertising and generates unrivaled results. And those advertising dollars flow back through the ecosystem across the infrastructure that we control. It's not a theoretical flywheel. It's happening now live in markets with real revenue attached. And because this model compounds more venues, more data, more apps, more integrations, our advantage expands every year. We don't need to own the sports fan. What matters is that we own more of the revenue pathways of modern sport, betting, media, advertising and data. Because our technology is embedded in those pathways, we can extract value every time they are activated without paying to acquire the fan ourselves.

So where are we today? Well, over the last four years, we've renewed every major lead partnership and added new ones. Our media business, once misunderstood, has now nearly tripled in size. Our technology is now deployed in over 300 venues worldwide, with hundreds more planned, now unlocking even more revenue pathways from a wide range of products. We have consistently outpaced the growth of regulated betting markets. And that heavy investment period is now behind us. We're now cash flow positive with expanding margins and rights that are secured for most of the decade, giving us exceptional visibility into the long-term economics. And most importantly, our technology has caught up with our vision and the market has caught up with the need for it. And this brings me to the exciting part where we're going. Every major shift in sports content reinforces the same conclusion. As sports consumption becomes digital, it generates more data which drives deeper personalization, powering greater engagement that creates stronger monetization and ultimately, more value flowing through the ecosystem, all of which powered by GeniusIQ. This is why we say we want our technology installed everywhere. Because when it is, Genius becomes infrastructure, not just a vendor, not just a rights holder, the platform that the ecosystem depends on, the operating system of modern sport. This is what the next decade looks like, a connected, intelligent, real-time sports ecosystem built on GeniusIQ. I'm excited for you to hear from our leadership team, who will showcase this in more detail and some of our key partners who will share their perspectives as well.

So today's Investor Day is structured as a journey. Matt will show you how GeniusIQ captures and generates next-generation data. Jack will show how that data powers our betting products and strengthens our long-term value with sports books. Josh demonstrate how we combine this data with audience intelligence to build the next area of advertising and fan engagement. And finally, Bryan will bring it all together with our 2028 financial outlook for $1.2 billion in group revenue, $365 million of group adjusted EBITDA at a 30% margin with a 60% free cash flow conversion. And by the end of today, you will understand that GeniusIQ is the operating system of sport. We believe the data it captures cannot be replicated without our platform. The applications built on top of it open entirely new revenue pathways, and how we are positioned for sustainable revenue growth of 20% for the foreseeable future, continued margin expansion and increasing cash flow conversion.

But for now, I'll leave you with this final thought. For 25 years, we've built the foundation. Now the world is moving to the model that we always knew was coming. The digital transformation of sport is here and GeniusIQ is the platform that will power it.

Thank you, and I'll hand over to Matt Fleckenstein, who will take you through.

Thank you, Mark. For those who don't know me, my name is Matt Fleckenstein, I'm the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Genius Sports. I joined Genius 2.5 years ago coming over from Disney ESPN. But throughout my career, I've worked on the leading edge of technology, helping companies to innovate and lead in times of digital transformation. From using Beijing algorithms to help hedge fund managers develop new automated trading strategies, to developing LinkedIn's friend and content recommendations to outfitting the U.S. Army with mixed reality headsets for better training and performance. I've seen how technology can help shape the way we learn, work and play. And throughout my time leading product at major companies like Salesforce and Microsoft, I've learned that in times of digital transformation, platforms always win.

As you heard from Mark, the sports industry is entering a pivotal period of transformation, ushering in a new wave of technology, but technology is only as good as how we use it. [ Cake ] fan engagement, it's at a crossroads when chasing the latest shiny object often conflicts with investing in long-term fundamentals. Every month, there's something new. Rev cams, VR headsets, smart jerseys, AR activations, fascinating, yes. But they raised a critical question, are we making sport better? The more time spent chasing technological first, the less energy invested in the foundations that build sustainable fandom. So the question really becomes, how can technology amplify what fans already love about sports. When technology blends into the background and the game remains center stage, that's when it delivers on its promise to make sport even better.

At Genius, we used three core principles as a guide. We aim to build fan experiences that are first immediate. They happen as the action unfolds with no delay and no disruption. Second, they're intelligent, they're accurate, smart and insightful. And third, they're immersive. They allow us to feel as though we're in the experience, enabling us to evolve from passive viewers to active participants. But this can't be done in isolation. Today's fans aren't engaging in a single experience. They're watching sports on TV or in the stadium while placing bets, checking stats and watching highlights on social media. To optimize fan engagement and maximize revenue, these experiences must be immediate, intelligent and immersive, but they also have to be consistent and connected across the entire fan journey. The alternative is an unsustainable cycle of chasing shiny objects, creating a fragmented ecosystem of disconnected point solutions. This is not the path forward. When transformation happens, consolidation follows and platforms emerge, and we're seeing this play out across sports today. Leading leagues, teams and media companies are moving away from siloed point solutions and turning to Genius for a single system of intelligence, powered by the richest fan and match data to fuel and connect every interaction across that fan journey. This is how we transition into the future of fan engagement and monetization, making sport even better. Let's take a look.

[Presentation]

You heard Mark talk about GeniusIQ, and you just saw it in the video, but let's dive in a little deeper. GeniusIQ is the data layer of our technology stack. We use computer vision, machine learning and AI as the underlying singular platform upon which we can build multiple products, one platform, endless solutions. We start by installing a [ mission ] network of iPhones in sports stadiums around the world. Legacy optical tracking relies on a network of clunky, costly cameras and servers, but iPhones enable cameras and compute on a single edge device. This not only saves money, but it lets us run our AI models at the point of capture, on the edge, reducing latency, which is foundational for live sports. So with iPhones permanently installed in venues, GeniusIQ is our way of seeing understanding and capturing every action a pitch, field or core. As a data in AI layer, it provides four foundational capabilities that together are powering next-generation of sports. The first of these is optical tracking. We now capture thousands of surface points per player alongside movements of the ball, all of which is refreshed hundreds of times per second. The output is what we call mesh data, which produces the next level of tracking data to power innovative apps and experiences that I'll discuss shortly. As has always been the case in Genius, real-time game data is the lifeblood of everything we do. And that data is faster more granular, more accurate and more sophisticated than ever before. The second capability is auto eventing. We're capturing billions of data points across the entire game, which is no easy feat, but simply tracking player in ball movement is not enough. We've also taught machines to understand these data points at the most granular level translating every moment into the key statistics of the game. The semantic understanding is critical to power modern sports and to automatically translate this rich tracking data into real-time insights. In doing so, we're modernizing the language of sport. It's worth noting that the more granular and sophisticated the data, the more we've been able to teach the machines about the game, making this even more difficult to replace as it continually learns and builds upon itself. The third area is auto produced video. With iPhones deployed in stadiums across the globe, our proprietary algorithms create a dynamic understanding of which cameras have the best view of the action, optimizing the view with no manual intervention. This results in video angles and viewing experiences that are unlikely to be found anywhere else, paving the way for automated broadcasts of the future. And the fourth area is digital twins. This ability to triangulate cameras focusing on players in the ball enables a live 3D digital twin of the action on the field. These 3D recreations of players in the playing field can be zoomed in on, viewed from any angle and used to capture replay -- it capture and replay the key moments of the match. It's difficult to overstate the importance of this capability and what it means for the future of fan experiences, especially for younger generations who grew up playing 3D games in living in virtual worlds. These digital twins will become the viewing experience, which enables innovative advertising inventory that Josh will discuss a bit later. Together, these four foundational capabilities become the building blocks upon which an entire ecosystem of apps and experiences are built.

I'll pause here quickly to reflect on this. These four capabilities are transforming how data is collected, and how data is defined. We're not only automating data capture in replacing human statisticians with low-cost, high-powered computer vision systems, but we're capturing a level of data that cannot be replicated without this technology and the rights to deploy it in venue. When coupled with our global distribution network, this builds sustainable shareholder value and unlocks new revenue by monetizing the countless apps and experiences built on a single platform. And already, we've built a variety of apps and experiences being used by the biggest leagues, teams, sports books and media companies in the world. We organized these apps and experiences into three groups.

Let's start with Genius Perform. The first application is Performance Studio. GeniusIQ enables us to pair tracking data with AI to automatically index video clips across more than 100 metadata points, creating the most filterable video insights and analytics in the sport used across leagues such as the Premier League, the WNBA and the NBA. Our next-generation data insights give coaches and analysts a deeper understanding of player and team performance, all in an easily filterable, customizable interface. For example, recently, when asked about his 3-point shooting, and how he improved, LeBron James mentioned using this data to improve his form from shooting on the left side of the court. With Performance Studio, teams and analysts have almost endless insights at their fingertips to optimize performance, while sports journalists say -- rely on our insights to add depth and credibility to their content.

But let's take it a step further. If I want to see what the player saw an open lane or a defender in the way, I can surface the full 3D recreation of the moment, captured with our data and reproduced in a digital twin environment. Another application is semi-automated offsides or SAOT. In this case, we're taking the same digital twin environment and running rules-based engine over the semantic layer to immediately flag an offside's call in the field. Because we have such granular data and a system that understands the game, we're uniquely positioned to make those calls. This is why top leagues such as the English Premier League, the Belgian Pro League and CBF, the top Brazilian league, along with others rely on Genius to make accurate officiating decisions faster.

Take a look at how officials use this technology behind the scenes.

[Presentation]

Moving on to Genius Bet. Let's take a look at BetVision, our award-winning interactive betting experience integrated into more than 500 global sports brands. That vision leverages our full stack of technologies to deliver the first of its kind in-play betting experience. In a single platform, we integrate real-time stats overlays, broadcast augmentation, touch to bet functionality, yes, I can touch on a player and place a bet. Personalized contextual bet suggestions and now advertising, all integrated into a video stream with latency of just 3 to 5 seconds, making it the fastest stream available anywhere. The end result is an immersive intelligent interactive tool to convert traditional fans into high engagement in-play betters, which as Jack will explain shortly, are significantly more profitable for Genius and for our Sportsbook partners. For those who haven't already experienced it at home, here's what it looks like.

[Presentation]

And finally, let's talk about Genius Engage. We're automatically integrating these next-gen data points into the live sports viewing experience. Media companies such as CBS, ESPN, Amazon, Fox and many others use our broadcast augmentation capabilities to embed next-gen data such as shot probabilities or shot speeds into their broadcast and on-demand streaming, or what about [Audio gap] in sports, yet highlights really hasn't changed since the days of black and white TV. That's why we're building a new AI-driven tool called Genius Reels. Soon, you'll be able to see the broadcast of your favorite goal being scored and then watch it from the shooters point of view as well as see it through the eyes of the Defender, all with integrated next-gen stats to transform key plays into smart story-driven content that captures modern audiences. We're also enabling third parties to come in and leverage our capabilities to build their own experiences. An example of this is the recent 3D highlight series developed for Man City and their sponsor Etihad, created by our partner, Trick Shot, it leverages our mesh tracking data and digital twins to bridge the IRL in the virtual world, showing a recent goal that extends from the pitch to one of Etihad's travel destinations and back to the pitch again. Let's go ahead and take a look.

[Presentation]

As we just saw, our vision is to create a robust ecosystem of first- and third-party apps and experiences, all built on top of GeniusIQ with access to the best data and the smartest insights to engage modern fans across their journey.

Let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture though. At Genius, our tech stack allow leagues and teams to create a single system of intelligence, one that leverages the power of AI and computer vision to capture what's happening on the field, build apps and experiences to engage sport fans and monetize those fans through advertising natively built for sports. We're focused on enabling the future of sport built around one really simple premise, one platform, endless possibilities. It should be clear now why leagues around the world are investing behind this technology. GeniusIQ is purpose-built for making sport even better. It powers the entire sports ecosystem, enabling a coordinated and cohesive strategy that's not distracted by the shiny objects, but rather focused on delivering the immediate, intelligent and emerging experiences that fans really want. More GeniusIQ deployments means more data, the data fuels the suite of products you've just seen and in the future, hundreds of third-party applications that we've yet to imagine, every one of these generating revenue for Genius, feeding and accelerating our flywheel. This isn't product vision. This is product reality. We're bringing our competitive advantages, having deployed GSIQ in more than 300 venues in nearly 60 countries around the world, with 400 more planned and in progress. So when you see press announcements, including the distribution of GeniusIQ, you should now have a greater appreciation for why it's so strategically important and how each installation lays the foundation to support endless revenue opportunities and long-term relationships with our partners.

In the next few seconds, you'll hear exactly how we're generating revenue through each of these applications. For example, you'll hear from Josh later today about the Genius Sports Media Network, combining real-time game data, audience intelligence and innovative inventory, all powered by GeniusIQ. This is just one important example of how the GeniusIQ stack is fueling new monetization engines in media and advertising, one of the most exciting opportunities for our business. We aren't just expanding our revenue streams we're planning our technological routes even deeper into the sports ecosystem in partnership with top leagues around the world. Every league and federation across the globe, no matter how big or small is increasingly focused on maximizing revenue opportunities in a world of rapidly evolving technology. Even the NFL, the most forward-looking and commercially minded league in the world must think about the modern fan, and what the future of sports content looks like. And to discuss that, I'm pleased to introduce our next segment of our presentation, we will welcome the NFL Commissioner himself, Roger Goodell, alongside our very own Mark Locke and Steve Bornstein.

Good morning. I'm Steve Bornstein. A good question is why am I up here with Commissioner Goodell and Mark Locke, and I'm going to try to explain why I am up here.

I worked for Roger Goodell for over a dozen years, before he was the commissioner and then subsequently after became commissioner and I spent a lot of time with the NFL and contributed a bit to their media strategy and sponsorship strategy. About 5 years ago, I was on a board of a high-tech company called Second Spectrum, which was a target of Genius Sports, they wanted to acquire it. And I got to meet Mark Locke, and they eventually did acquire Genius Sports, and a lot of what we're talking about today and a lot of technology that you're going to see today is from the Second Spectrum acquisition. So it's been pretty successful. We integrated into Genius Sports, and now I work for Mark Locke. He asked me after we closed the deal, if I would consult with him in his senior leadership team. So I eagerly said yes to that. And consequently, two of the senior leadership team thought it would be a good idea if I interviewed two of my old bosses, one current and one old boss. I won't mention any names of who they are, but they run IR and communications for Genius Sports. And if this goes well, we'll see if it was a good idea or not.

So with that caveat, I'm going to start the first question and go to you, Commissioner Goodell. I want you to go back five years. Sports legalized gambling was just coming on. You were in the -- had the ability to bid out your data rights and your technology rights. You had a lot of different companies all wanting to have the #1 entertainment product in North America on their books, and you picked Genius. So I was curious why you picked Genius Sports.

Well, I guess, first, we were looking much more at how data is going to change our future and change the relationship between at and our fans. And we saw that as a connection that was incredibly valuable. So it was beyond sports betting. Obviously, that was a period of time where there's a lot of focus on that. But we really -- we want partners. We want the best partners in the world. That's what we look for. We're only as good as our partners. And we need partners who are innovative, who are aligned and interest with us have experience in wisdom in the areas that we want to partner with and can ultimately make us more successful. So we did a pretty robust process, as you know. And it was clear that Genus was the right partner for us. I think we have tremendous respect for the management from Mark on through to you and to so many that work with us. But you also brought a tremendous perspective for us about how to look at the future. The technology you have, which is what we ultimately were interested in is how can your technology help us with our relationship with our fans. And I think we're just scratching the surface right now. I think we're really back on our own 10-year line, to be honest. And that means we got a lot of field to play with. And I think we're growing in a great way. We're investors also. So I think that -- and just extended with you recently. So I think from our standpoint, I think that speaks louder than anything I could tell you right now.

So you're happy with the relationship first five years.

Yes. We are very happy.

Typically, my experience is that the NFL doesn't extend unless they are somewhat satisfied.

And we certainly don't invest if we're not satisfied.

Mark, let me ask you this question. it's important to the people in this room that sports integrity monitoring it is a critical issue going forward. Can you talk about how Genius Sports supports that?

Sure. I mean, it's topical at the moment. I mean -- and fundamentally, everything comes down to integrity and consumer protection. Really, that's the fundamental premise that the sports are operating from when it comes to the sports betting market. And all of that really stems from regulation, a good regulatory framework. Ultimately, you cannot achieve that sports leagues without the regular companies like ourselves, all being aligned and working hand in hand. And ultimately, if you look at the sports betting market in the U.S., that's why it's been such a massive success. You've had the sports leagues, you've had the regulators all working together, all pulling together to create that very, very well-structured framework. And I think the interesting thing at the moment is to look at what's going on with prediction markets. That space is evolving very, very rapidly. But I think it's fair to say that regulation is not clear. So I think it makes it very difficult for the leagues to engage in that without that regulatory framework. And I think what we've learned from what's happened with DFS back in 2017, that this will eventually normalize. Regulation will come in. And ultimately, that will come through partnerships with the NFL through partnerships with the regulators to build that trusted ecosystem. And to create the guardrails, which ultimately protects the integrity of the sport and to protect the consumer. And so from my point of view, when we think about it, the opportunities that this this new evolution and this increasing TAM present, Genius is very, very well placed to take advantage of it. And no matter how that regulation evolves, whether it's very rapidly, it's slowly or fragmented. And we talk a lot about this we do a bit of a teach-in session on prediction markets because we think they're fairly misunderstood. Genius is extremely well placed to win in every single outcome.

Steve, I'd just add one element to that because integrity, obviously is incredibly important to us, particularly when it comes to sports betting because that's the backbone of our success is making sure that whatever you see play out on the field, is not being influenced by any outside influences. And we've seen that in sports, and it's a risk that's out there. So our partners help with us. So the ability for you to help us maintain that integrity and use the technology to do that is really valuable to us. On the predictive markets, I'd go the same way that you go, Mark, for us. That's not something we're about to enter into. We are going to see how things play both from a regulatory standpoint a lot of legal challenges going on right now. We'd like to be first in the market in a lot of things, but a lot of things we're willing to say we're going to let things play out. We're going to decide is this something we want to do. The risk to the brand is something that we take very seriously. And we won't risk that brand in something until we feel confident that we can do it. And if we see it play out in a way that works for us, whether that's private equity and ownership of the NFL on our teams, whether it's technology issues and sports betting and/or the predictive markets. That's how we're going to play.

That makes a lot of sense. When I was there at the NFL, we didn't always have to be first. We just had to be right when we made those kind of moves.

We don't mind being first off, sometimes.

Fair enough. Let me tell you one that we were first on and it's innovation. I mean one of the things that I think is a hallmark of your tenure is innovation. And I don't know if you remember this, but 20 years ago today or this season rather, we launched the Red Zone channel. You approved it, and we incubated that on DIRECTV, and now I think it's an essential part of Sunday afternoon consumption of NFL programming. My question to both of you is, is BetVision, the next Red Zone channel?

That's a good question and provocative. I mean look, BetVision for us is has been an enormous success. I mean, we've got such a huge amount of empirical evidence, and we'll talk about this later. We'll go through some statistics about how much the NFL fans really do love it and really do engage with it. And I think from our point of view, it sort of showcases the things that Roger is trying to achieve, which is the gold standard innovation. This is really the accumulation of the most modern technology, understanding the score understanding the game and integrating the fan experience. And ultimately, this product, which we launched with the NFL, we were running 250, 260 games, initially. We're now running 23,000 games on it through, I think, over 100 sports books globally. So we're in a very, very strong position because of the innovation that Roger and his team have driven through the NFL.

Yes. And I'd say for us, hitting the bar is it the same -- is Red Zone. I think Red Zone is one of the greatest innovations in sports from a consumer standpoint. So it's a high bar, but I do believe this has the potential to be there. And I think with the partnership we have and the technology, I think we learned a lot. I think we're able to adapt a lot, and we're able to find what the consumers ultimately want. And I think it's got that kind of potential.

It's sort of interesting how the broadcast space is changing as fans one that, it's becoming about personalization, personalized products, making sure that fan is getting what they want, when they want and how they want. And I think ultimately, that's what drives the next generation of NFL, it's what drives the next generation of engagement and ultimately, technology is providing the opportunity to be able to do that.

Well, that really was my next question. I mean we're trying to express to you here that this is not a betting company, this is a technology company. And how do you see partnering with the NFL to actually increase not just fan engagement, but the broadcast experience itself.

Yes. I'm happy to take listen, our relationship with our media companies, we don't even call them broadcast relationships anymore and you're later today, you're going to see some ratings numbers from last week and Thanksgiving that our -- they are going to set records. So let's just put it that way.

Can you share any details with this group here?

They will break [indiscernible]. It will actually smash records. It's -- and I think it's a combination of factors that we come into. One, we are still believers in the broadcast platforms to be able to bring together large consumers -- a large number of consumers. We also -- we really work to event everything that we do, right? And Thanksgiving is obviously has a tradition for football. But I think we've been able to work to even make it a greater event and a bigger event. We're doing it with Christmas with Netflix and Amazon this year, which we're really excited for. So -- and the broadcast partners, I think, use and see a lot of the technology that you all create. And that technology then gets adopted into the broadcast. And I think that changes their experience. technology is helping us even in the measurement side of this. As you know, particularly because we are such an event, a lot of people watch either co-viewing or out-of-home. And I think that's one of the reasons there is now a measurement tool to be able to try to identify that is one of the reasons why we think we're getting closer to finding what is the real number of folks who are actually engaging with our games through medium platforms. So I think all of it works in an ecosystem that the technology gets people more engaged. They want to watch it more. They have other reasons to watch it, whether it's sports betting, fantasy or they just love the technology to find out, wow, how fast is that guy running or what elements that now are being brought in with technology you all are creating where I can see what's the probability which linebacker is going to blips. And when you see that kind of technology, it's just another way for fans to engage in a stickiness. So technology is fundamental to what we do, and that's why the selection of you all was a big step for us and [indiscernible] of our technology partners.

Yes. I mean the other way that we're seeing the evolution. I mean we obviously run the [ maiden ] cost immersive experience over Thanksgiving. But the thing that we're very heavily focused on is driving value for the NFL sponsors. As the personalization engines come through as we're able to work more closely with the advertisers. And again, to your point, we've got better metrics coming through. We can drive real value for the sponsors. We can make sure that they're being promoted and given exposure at the right time and really generating improved ROIs for them. And that's something that we're seeing increasingly working across our platform.

And it improves our game. I mean, there's still people who think the first are they. And it's just such a part of our game, and it improves the way people experience our game and understand our game. So all of that is, I think, a part of that's how we measure it ultimately. Does it change the experience for our fans and our consumers and our partners. That's a good thing.

Well, I'm going to -- I have to say, I'm proud at ESPN when I was there, developed the first in 10-line despite what David Hill often flags out there, that's it, more inside the beltway comment. The other thing I would add, and I'm not supposed to be asking the questions, but I also think this technology helps you serve new platforms extremely. I think the TikTok and the YouTubes would generate -- benefit greatly from the technology, and how we provide this sport.

Well, one of the things that was so interesting for me at least was the latency, low latency feed is critical for us, whether it's sports betting or whether it's any aspect, consumers want to see it live. They want to see it live, not 60 seconds later. And the speed of everything is improved and engaged our fans in a different way. And you've changed that game for us. The technology you provided is reduced latency for every one of our platforms. And that's a really important thing for us.

Well, let me ask you a question. Do you see the Sports Genius technology helping expand the global footprint of the NFL?

Absolutely. As many of you may know, international is really one of our highest priorities right now to take our game to the globe. We played seven games last year, likely to play 9 next year and continue on to 16. And who knows where that goes at some point in time. But the basic medium to grow the game is not playing the games. It's a limited amount of inventory. It's really the media. It's what built us here. It's what made the NFL successful, it's a great early days broadcast satellite, now obviously, streaming, it's a great media product. And so we want to use that same platform and that same game plan to bring our game overseas. And if you're working with fans who may not be as well versed in the game, which they are obviously here in the U.S., we need to engage them in different ways. We need to help them all broadcast, which you guys help us do, whether it's the [indiscernible] or prime vision, it gives us an ability to be able to reach fans who are at different levels of understanding of the game, and then how do we bring them into that game and build the fan base that way. And so it's an important element for us in our growth international.

Will GeniusIQ mark help people outside the U.S. understand the game?

Yes. I mean the NFL has done a remarkable job of driving the international expansion. And in some interesting statistics. If you look at SkyBet in the U.K., one of the biggest sportsbooks over there. NFL is now the third largest sport for Scott. I mean it's down from, I think, eighth in 2021. So I think that shows how successful the NFL are being penetrating that international audience. And I think from a sports betting point of view, to bring it back there, the evolution of BetVision, the fact that you can, as you say, educate the fan, you've got the most engaged sports fans. Ultimately, that's what a sports better is, is the most engaged sports power available. And using that engagement and the personalization and the BetVision product to really sort of educate and drive that has proven to be very, very successful in Europe. So we have a huge -- we think we've got a huge opportunity ahead of us to really drive that within our firm.

I agree.

Thanks to listen. I will wrap it up with this. As we conclude our fifth season of a relationship with -- between Sports Genius and the NFL, what do you both see as the big opportunities in the next season or two for us to accomplish?

You want to go first?

Look, I think international expansion is a very, very exciting area. Personalization of the broadcast, making sure that we're distributing lots of different alternative broadcast to the world and really driving value for sponsors. We see a massive opportunity of integrating the advertising platform, the products NFL and really driving that value for sponsors on a sort of U.S. but also global basis.

I'd agree with that. I'd just add a latency issue in there. I think that opened so many doors to opportunities for us because I don't think we can imagine today what five years is going to really bring. I think technology is moving so quickly and GeniusIQ and so many other things that we're all working on, that incubation period is becoming more and more condensed. And I think what's exciting to me about our future together is that we're in that space in a partnership that I think the world is something that we're going to be able to exploit in a way that I can't think we can even imagine today, but I know I'm incredibly optimistic that you guys are going to open doors for us. And hopefully, we're going to open doors for you that we could only dream of today.

Well, thank you for taking the time, Commissioner. I know you have a busy schedule. It's been, I think, pretty exciting to have you here and share your thoughts.

Mark and I appreciate it. So thank you.

Thank you.

Now I turn over to Brandon .

Thank you, Commissioner. Mark, Steve, very insightful conversion. Hopefully, everybody enjoyed that. But for now, we're going to pause here. We're going to take a break, and we will be back in 10 minutes. So we'll take a 10 minute and then we'll continue.

[Break]

Welcome back, everyone. I'll just let everyone have 30 seconds to squeak their chairs. Great. Well, thank you all for coming. For those who don't know me, my name is Jack Davidson. I'm the Chief Commercial Officer, and I've been with Genius for almost 14 years. In that time, I've seen the business evolve at breakneck speed into new markets with new products with increasingly higher levels of ambition, much of which you've heard about already this morning. But the one constant in all of this has been our crucial role and continued growth in the global sports betting market. And this success is because of four pillars that are very simple to understand. The quality of our content, the strength of our products, the scale of our distribution and the growth of the market itself. That's what I'm going to run you through today.

So let's start with content because it remains the foundation of everything that we do. We provide real-time data for more than 300,000 events a year, across a 24/7 global schedule of wheel professional sports. And we can only do that because we've built one of the strongest rights portfolios in the industry. For example, football data co, including the Premier League, covering 4,000 of the most bet-on sporting events in the world. Serie A, the most important property in Italy, Europe's largest betting market. 8,000 soccer matches across 46 competitions in our groundbreaking European Leagues partnership. 200 FIBA basketball leagues and federations, men's and women's NCAA March Madness tournaments, major rights across Latin America and Asia, and of course, the NFL, the most important U.S. sports property, and rapidly growing in international markets. We spent the last few years locking in long-term stability with most of our -- with our most valuable partners, and we're now contracted through to the end of the decade. This gives us predictability and a platform to continue to scale our products. But the most important point is this, the nature of sports data is changing. As Matt showed, GeniusIQ allows leagues to collect and distribute far richer, far faster and far deeper data than ever before because we create more value across more parts of their ecosystem, we're securing rights on favorable terms and with deeper integrations. This, combined with data providers consolidating over the last few years, strengthens our position even further.

The second pillar is product and this is where we're driving outsized value. Our goal is simple, we build products that help sports books increase handle, improve margins and engage and retain players. GeniusIQ sits at the heart of this because it allows us to build tools that respond instantly to what's happening in the game. I'll start with the data feed itself, which is of extreme value to our Sportsbook partners. Official real-time data is critical for Sportsbooks to offer live betting markets to their customers. Live betting already represents 60% to 70% of total volume in mature markets and an increasing share in newer markets like the U.S. In combination with real-time data, our products allow Sportsbook to keep their markets open for longer, meaning more time accepting bets rather than rejecting them. This simply equates to more handle. For example, for the English Premier League, we delivered 97% market uptime. With our newly acquired content like the European football leagues, uptime is up to 95% from a historical 91% for Serie A up to 97% from a historical 92%. If we multiply this across tens of thousands of matches per year for hundreds of customers, the long-term financial impact is significant. Increased market uptime is just one way in which we are helping Sportsbooks to maximize revenue. We're also empowering them to improve their win margins, our automated pricing tool edge blends machine learning, which live data feeds and complex correlated liability calculations to instantly provide optimized pricing tailored to each operator. The results is improved win margins, greater efficiency and ultimately, more revenue for Sportsbooks. For example, Edge improved soccer win margins by an average of 16%. For one particular European Sportsbook, Edge improved win margins by 23% for the Premier League and 19% from France's League One, two of their most valuable sports betting properties. These are not marginal gains. These are structural improvements to the economics of in-play trading. And another way, we're empowering our Sportsbook partners to maximize their revenue.

And now moving to BetVision. As Matt demonstrated earlier, Bet Vision is the best example of how our content, technology and product come together. It's the first truly integrated watch and bet experience in the market, delivering ultra-low latency streams for the likes of the NFL, for Serie A and hundreds of other basketball and soccer matches. Our total portfolio in BetVision now is in excess of 20,000 events a year, and the engagement numbers are strong. We compared the same period from 2025 versus 2024. In this period, we've increased the number of unique devices from 6.2 million to 11.1 million. In the NFL specifically, we've seen a 38% increase in plays per device and a 22% increase in minutes per device. And when our customers integrate the full BetVision capabilities versus a standard streaming experience, the number of unique plays increases by 32% in the NFL and 62% in soccer. The value of BetVision is proven in these results, and it's reflected in the global adoption. What started with a handful of Sportsbook operators in 2023 is now live with hundreds of global Sportsbook brands. BetVision is scaling because it materially improves user engagement, and it sits entirely inside the GeniusIQ stack. So we've got premium exclusive content. We wrap that content in value-enhancing products.

And now I want to highlight our enormous global distribution, allowing us to monetize at scale. We sell this package of content and product to over 650 licensed Sportsbook customers in regulated jurisdictions across the globe. Our network of Sportsbook customers ranging from the largest global operators like Bet365 and Flutter to U.S. leaders like DraftKings and Hard Rock to European giants like TIBCO and Lottomatica to local heroes like Caliente in Mexico or Australia Bet in Brazil. We are serving sports books in every corner of the world, and we're continuously driving greater value every year. To put it simply, we have built a massive advantage through content and technology and distribution that is enormously difficult to replicate. We've seen numerous businesses try, and they've failed to do so. This combination is extremely powerful and continuously builds on itself to support greater size and greater scale.

Let's now discuss how we monetize through our two commercial models, revenue share and fixed fee. Starting with fixed fee contracts, is a very, very straightforward and present about 70% to 80% of our betting revenue today. Think of this as a subscription model with price escalators, which reinforces our revenue reliability and predictability.

Moving on to revenue share, which is typically a share of GGR or NGR, which we adopt in the U.S. and other high-growth markets. For example, last year, we renewed all our major U.S. contracts. In doing so, we diversified revenue share across not only GGR and NGR, but also handle -- we also added larger fixed minimum guarantees, and we staggered contract term lengths. The result of this refined commercial model is simple. It leads to greater predictability and further insulation from any individual game outcomes. To put a finer point on this, despite recent customer-friendly outcomes, we still delivered consistent and predictable results in our betting segment over the last two years. We are protecting our downside while still enabling us to share in the upside. So any sensitivity analysis related to win margins should point to very little downside.

In both commercial models, we've also demonstrated our ability to grow revenue for price increases as we provide more content and more products and as contracts are renewed. This is brilliantly demonstrated on our net revenue retention over the years. As you can see, this is the case for any customer cohort for our top 25 global customers, our top 10 U.S. customers, even our smaller emerging customers. This is evidenced across the board. Putting this all together, as Mark highlighted earlier, our betting revenue consistently outpaced the growth of the broader sports betting market, both on a global scale and in the U.S. This is just another example of how Genius is the best way for investors to track the long-term tailwinds of the sports betting industry. This brings me to the growth of the market itself, which continues to expand and continues to evolve.

Global GGR has grown 24% CAGR since 2021, and it's expected to grow 15% CAGR through 2029. And the U.S. market is expected to nearly double over the next five years. And as we have done so historically, we expect to continue outpacing the growth of the market. The in-place shift is also playing out as expected. To remind everyone, in the U.S., Genius typically earns a 3x higher revenue share on in-play versus pre-match. In the NFL, in-play betting was around 20% of handle at our last Investor Day. It's now circa 30%. In mature markets, said at 60% to 70%, indicating there is still significant growth ahead of us. This is a major structural tailwind for us.

While we are discussing our expanding betting TAM, I want to turn to prediction markets. Prediction markets are a hot topic. And if you saw poly markets feature on 60 minutes feature last Sunday, you saw a mainstream example of that. The key for Genius is that the rise in prediction markets expands our total addressable market. No matter what the future holds with the industry, we are positioned to win in every scenario. From a European perspective, none of this is new. We've seen this model before. In our view, the closest and clearest equivalent is Flutter's Betfair Exchange. And as we'll show you, when it comes to sports, we believe there's practically no difference between Betfair and the U.S. production suppliers. The only meaningful difference is regulatory wrapper and naming. Europe calls it an exchange, the U.S. calls it prediction market. But functionally, structurally and economically, it's the same thing. And that matters because the economics of exchanges have clearly understood limits. This is why in the U.K. Flutter chooses to heavily promote SkyBet and Paddy Power and not the Betfair Exchange.

So let me explain how U.S. prediction markets work. At the top, you have consumer-facing platforms. Those are already active in the market, like Robinhood, Kalshi the Crypto native venues, soon to be joined by FanDuel, DraftKings and Fanatics. Below this, it's the brokerage layer, the CFTC license holders. These companies offer consumer-facing products but also expose integrations for more sophisticated participants. But fundamentally, they're all trying to do the same thing, and that is capture liquidity. That liquidity comes from three main sources. First, and by far the largest are the professional market makers. There are few in number that make up the majority of the liquidity. Exchanges take only a small commission from them, but they are the backbone of liquidity. And importantly, they all want high-quality data. That's where Genius plays today. We already sell data to these types of firms globally. They always invest in the best data. This revenue for Genius is real, it's recurring, and it is growing.

Second is Sportsbook hedging. In mature markets, Sportsbooks may decide to hedge unwanted risk onto an exchange. This is because exchanges and prediction markets run thin unit economics, low take rates. Hedging on these platforms is cheap. Again, the books used data, again, juniors participates.

Third and smallest by liquidity is the consumer. They behave much like they would on a bookmaker. They take a position, they speculate and move on. The consumer share of volume is modest. This is exactly the pattern that we see with Betfair. So structurally, what you see in Europe is exactly what is moving in the U.S. And the key point is this, the prediction market ecosystem is already a genius data opportunity today. Beyond the liquidity flow that requires good data, prediction market operators behave like Sportsbooks, they need to acquire and retain players. That means investment in acquisition marketing where we already play. It also means delivering best-in-class user experience, which requires live data, league IP and logos and any of our products that increase engagement. All of these are incremental revenue opportunities for Genius. Ultimately, whether we transact directly with the prediction operators will come down to regulation. The framework that gives all stakeholders the integrity protection that they need.

In the guidance, you'll see later today, we have built a cautious level of growth from this market into our numbers because the outcome of long-term regulation remains fluid. But we believe each possible scenario is a net positive for Genius because our TAM just expanded with no incremental cost.

I've just walked you through the opportunity, but let's talk about why sports betting remains the economic north star. In mature markets where both products exist, prediction markets exchanges settle into low single-digit market share. They have a place, but they're small. The economics simply can't compete. We know that lifetime values in exchanges are around 15% of Sportsbook customers. Our our data tells us only 9% of prediction market users return within 12 months. And when they do, they deposit far less than a sports better. So the commercial implication is clear. Sportsbooks will always outspend prediction platforms in acquisition because their users are worth multiples more -- and the business model reinforces that. Exchanges take low single-digit commissions, Sportsbooks run double-digit margins. They simply have more room to spend. Our data also tells us that users of Sportsbooks and production platforms are fundamentally different. There's almost no overlap. And that brings me to a discussed concern that the low margins that production markets offer will drag down Sportsbook margins. We believe that this is simply not true. There is no evidence of that in Europe where exchanges and sports books have coexisted for decades. Why? Because it's a product difference, not a pricing difference. Sportsbooks serve sports fans. People who want to casually enjoy the game and place a bet. They are not hyper price-sensitive market makers. Consumers don't shop for tiny price differences. If you're betting $20 in play, you're not switching apps to save $0.03 on the line. The only people who do that are the ones [indiscernible] million dollars.

Our audience data supports this. We see minimal overlap between production market customers and Sportsbook customers. Sportsbook margins are improving because operators are getting better at managing their customers, managing their books and managing their risk, powered by high-quality data and products. That's exactly what Genius delivers. Nothing about prediction markets treats that. So prediction markets aren't replacing sports books. They're not even competing with them. They're a different product for a different customer. And for Genius, that's good news. Prediction markets are additive, the market just got bigger.

Let me finish by talking about what happens next because we've considered all the regulatory outcomes and the headline is simple in every scenario, Genius wins. Scenario one; prolonged uncertainty, conflicting rollings, multiple appeals, potentially pushing this to the Supreme Court in 2028. In that environment, platforms don't disappear, they adapt. Importantly, they don't materially impact the core sports book model and the prediction market TAM that Genikus can play in will still exist. Scenario two; fragmentation. Some states allow production markets other shut them out. Take Nevada or Massachusetts, early losses, no bone stays and the operating footprint narrows, painful for them, but liquidity consolidates. Sports betting remains largely unchanged in regulated states. The border TAM still exists and Genius continues to benefit. Scenario three; federal clarity. The courts or congress open the market, more states, more markets, more liquidity. In that scenario, prediction exchanges still do not replace Sportsbooks, but the ecosystem becomes larger, again, positive for Genius. Scenario four; accelerated sports betting. Existence of prediction markets push or encourage some states to move towards regulated sports betting. We think this is unlikely, but if it happens, it's a major win because sports betting remains the north star. So we will continue to see headlines around prediction markets, but whether it leads to more uncertainty to fragmentation, to clarity or even acceleration, the outcome is the same. Every path creates a larger TAM for Genius than we have today. The only unknown is the speed. But whichever way it goes, our opportunity just got bigger.

So to summarize, we strengthened our place in the industry through the four pillars I outlined at the start. We have premium exclusive content. We wrap it with market-leading product. We distribute it on a global scale, and we do all of that inside a market that continues to grow and evolve. This sort of scale is extremely difficult to replicate. And every new product we launch strengthens our position further. And as we look ahead, the growth drivers for the betting business are the same as they have always been. First is TAM growth. Second, new customers as the market expands and new regions launch sports betting. This will lead to new customers and larger contracts. Third is in-play growth. Fourth is content and product cross-sell. No one partner of ours is taking 100% of our product and content portfolio, leaving significant room to provide additional value. Lastly, price increases. We now have a proven track record of excellent net revenue retention across every customer cohort.

Finally, as we transition to the media and advertising section next, I want to highlight one last point on provision. There are now many millions of people watching the NFL, Serie A and hundreds of other leagues with [indiscernible]. And because we control the video player, we know who's watching, what bets they place and how they engage and can now also serve advertising to them. So BetVision is not only a betting product. It's also a major media product.

And with that, I'd love to invite Josh to the stage, who's going to talk you through this opportunity and many more in our media segment. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Josh Linforth, Chief Revenue Officer here at Genius, and I'm here to take you through our media business.

By now, you've seen what GeniusIQ can do, not just the depth of data it captures but the deep fan engagement unlocks. Our differentiated technology is already pushing our advertising business into real growth as demonstrated in our Q3 results. I'm now going to show you how GeniusIQ data turns into advertising dollars, and why our media business is a high-margin growth engine for Genius. I'm going to cover three things: First, the shift in the sports media and advertising landscape. Second, the assets only Genius can bring together. And third, how our managed and self-serve models scale to a projected $300 million of media revenue by 2028.

Sports remains the most powerful live medium, representing over 90 of the top 100 U.S. broadcast last year. But fan behavior has changed. Modern fans watch the game on one screen track fantasy on another and debate plays on social in real time. They don't watch sports. They absolutely live it. And that pattern translates into spending. Sports fans spend roughly 80% more on retail, streaming and entertainment than the average consumer, but they're also the hardest audiences to reach with decision. Digital ad spend passed $700 billion last year. It's estimated that global spend on live contextual sports advertising is expected to exceed $100 billion by 2028. The opportunity is massive, but the tools for it are outdated. They see channels, not people, touch points, not a motion. That is the gap that Genius has built to solve. And that is exactly why we built Fan Hub, our fan activation platform. It solves the marketer's core challenge, reach the right fan in the right moment with the right message. Think of it as retail media for sport, the same way that Amazon Walmart use their shopper data and controlled inventory, Genius uses 3 unique advantages. GeniusIQ, the fastest, richest real-time game intelligence in global sport spanning over 300,000 games annually. Fan Hub ID the only identity graph built for the modern multisport fan, providing insight to over 200 million fans globally. I want to pause here for a second and highlight that scale because this combination creates the most powerful sports-focused data set in the world.

And then third, our unique advantage is our exclusive inventory, augmented ads, Betvision and other data-driven premium content. These advantages are the foundation of the Genius Media Network, a system no one else in sport can touch. And Fan Hub is the platform that connects it all.

[Presentation]

So the first key advantage is our real-time signals allowing us to respond instantly when a buzzer beater touchdown or goal happens, an advantage that is measured in milliseconds. The GeniusIQ goes beyond the scoreboard. It detects the emotional moments that never show up in the box score, a near miss, a lose ball, a momentum swing a comeback. We've built the first AI engine in sport that links the in-stadium official data to the physiological truth of how actually react in real time. We've trained models on synchronized streams of play-by-play, tracking and contextual NFL signals alongside biometric inputs from fans such as heart rate variability, micro-expressions, galvanic response, attention patterns during the live moment. This gives scientifically validated map of emotion from excitement tension, anticipation, frustration and a momentum response. This isn't inferred, it's not guest, it's measured. Our models understand which game events reliably trigger which physiological states and which creative message generates the strongest behavioral lift inside each one of those states. And here's the part no one else a market can touch. This training data is only possible because of our official rights. Competitors can copy the language but they cannot replicate the training sets, the emotional baselines or the predictive accuracy of these models.

Looking ahead, we can scale these models across a variety of sports compounding our advantage even further. This is what allows GeniusIQ to shape creative, pacing and targeting in real time, delivering advertising that truly moves with the rhythm of the game. But it goes further. Our view of the modern fan is built on deep first-party data across our whole ecosystem. For example, our free-to-play games with trivia, brackets, daily fantasy and more. These experiences give us direct insight into the teams, the players, the competitions that fans care about most. Then with BetVision, it adds another dimension with Nielsen integrated directly into the player and bet slips built into the viewing experience. We know who is watching. We know how they're betting. This is why scaled global distribution of Bet vision matters. It produces a layer of audience intelligence no one else has. Then the Sports Innovation Lab acquisition further strengthened our leadership in audience intelligence. It gives us transactional level data for more than 200 million U.S. adults across billions of purchases. The same way as many investors in this room track consumer spending patterns to predict a retail company's earnings, we now have the same insight but we index it to sports fandom. So we know far more than if someone is a WNBA fan. We know if they're a WNBA fan who flies American Airlines, stays at a Marriott hotel or orders Sweet Green for lunch. When you understand which audiences aligned with which brands, you drive better results. And we know that fandom is not fixed. It's fluid. It shifts across leagues, platforms and players as the emotion and the story line change. Our data is built to follow those shifts in real time and allow advertisers to tap into those emotional moments. Fan Hub ID is the identity spine that unifies these signals into one privacy safe view, letting advertisers follow fans wherever their passion goes.

Let me bring all of this to life with a few examples. Wendy has partnered with us to reach college football fans during the NCAA season. As part of their partnership with Big New kickoff on Fox, we identified and reached viewers of the marquee game each week. Using our dynamic creative tools and official NCAA data, we triggered real-time sourcing [ nugs ] ads every time a tumble happens, the crystals tied to the teams playing. A great example of how Genius ties brand messaging to live game moments and fandom motion. And this resulted in a 120% lift in view-through rates versus the baseline. This is just one example of the hundreds of campaigns we have executed across our diverse customer base. And we're not just redefining where and when ads appear. We are redefining what an ad can be. Through our augmented ads platform, brands show up inside the action, embedded directly into replays, highlights, live feeds with no disruption. This inventory is created in the moment inside the content that fans care about most.

Look at our work with the Los Angeles Rams and Verizon at SoFi Stadium. We placed branded replay graphics directly on to the larger screen in sports. As a result, fans looked up, not down. We captured attention that would normally disappear into mobile devices and turned it into premium measurable inventory. We're also leaning into the surge of [indiscernible] that makes commentary advanced graphics and immersive visuals. For the NFL Thanksgiving game, we teamed up with EA Sports and Peacock for the second edition of the Emmy-nominated Madden cast. It used live football with a video game feel and a new Sky camera that pulled the classic EA point of view straight into the real world. We're even redefining what is possible on the main broadcast. For WNBA on FanDuel Sports Network, we brought advanced stats into the game and integrated Shopify in a way that added to the moment rather than distracting from it. These are only a few examples of how Genius is creating entirely new advertising inventory. And rights I'll just see the opportunity. I recently signed deals with FanDuel Sports Network and NBC demonstrate that. Across these deals, Genius now holds exclusive augmented ad sales rights for 14 NBA teams resulting in 600 games a year. This is our technology reshaping the ad market. We are building the next generation of live sports ad formats. The momentum is real. Broadcasters and brands are leaning in because augmented ads deliver more revenue and stronger reach. Every piece of it is powered by Genius IQ. Alongside this, BetVision is establishing a new category of immersive viewing. As you heard earlier, this year, we streamed approximately 20,000 live events across football, basketball and soccer. And fans on BetVision are 3x more engaged than the average sports viewer. That attention is only available through Genius. For advertisers, this is premium inventory with no equivalent anywhere in the market that we're aware of. And every viewing experience we touch becomes new, high-value inventory from bet vision, augmented highlights, branded replays. All of it becomes new monetization for broadcasters and leagues and a new way for brands to show up where fans actually pay attention.

Before I move on from our unique inventory, I want to come back to something you heard from Mark and Matt. GeniusIQ doesn't just analyze the game. It creates a 3-dimensional digital twin of the game built in real time from mesh data as and actually take that in because this is 1 of those ideas that sounds so simple until you realize just how enormous it is. In the future, people will not watch video. Provocative, yes. But once you understand the technology underneath it, the scale of the opportunity becomes impossible to ignore. I want to explain how all of the products you've heard about today act as the building blocks for the future monetization of sports fans. We are not creating veneer. We are creating a digital recreation of sports, a true digital twin. As you heard earlier, that means a complete graphical reconstruction of the match, generated not from cameras, but from hundreds of millions and soon billions of data points. And here's how it works. Our iPhone mesh capture network, film the match inside the stadium. On those devices, footage is processed on device, turning every frame into tens of thousands of data points. That stream of volumetric position data, body positions, limb angles, ball trajectory, that's mesh. That mesh feeds into graphics engines, owned or third party. Those engines render an environment that to the viewer becomes indistinguishable from video. A fully synthetic broadcast generated from pure data delivered instantly to any screen TV, mobile, console, headset. That is the viewing experience of the future. And let me be crystal clear. This is not vaporware. This is not a concept. This isn't some fantasy pitch deck. What comes next is execution. Rolling this out sport-by-sport leak by lake, enabling Genius and our partners to build on mesh data. And once sport becomes fully digital, everything changes because every surface becomes potential inventory, the players, the pitch, the ball, the signage, the crowd, every pixel becomes personalized, clickable and measurable. And for fans, this unlocks behaviors that don't even exist today. Choose any angle, watch through the eyes of the referee, the Stryker or the ball itself, fly the camera anywhere, blend fantasy, gaming and betting layers directly into the match, change the perspective and change the experience all in real time. This is the ultimate sports advertising platform, fully personalized, fully measurable, fully interactive. And because the entire experience is digital, we know exactly who the fan is, what they care about and how to connect them to the right brand at the right moment. This is where sports consumption is going and GeniusIQ is the infrastructure that makes all of it possible. Everything we build from GeniusIQ to fan hub to BetVision, centers on one principle, connect every signal of sport into one intelligent media network. Advertisers get the richest real-time data and creative tools. Broadcasters gain new monetization and inventory, leagues capture more value from every moment of live action. It's not a marketplace. It's an ecosystem where Genius connects data, media and emotion to deliver compounding value across sports' global audiences. Put these capabilities together and the value unlock is clear.

We've built an ecosystem that is unmistakably unique in this industry with data, live signals, exclusive inventory, distribution, all in one place, and the monetization is already designed to scale. We monetize this through two engines. First, manage spend. Advertisers give us a budget, we run the campaign end to end. Revenue is recognized on a gross basis. Second is self-serve packages. Advertisers purchased curated deals of audience data, live signals and exclusive inventory, all activated inside their existing buying platforms. Revenue is recognized net at nearly 100% incremental margin. This is the model that unlocks hyperscale. Historically, most of our media revenue came from managed spend, but global agencies who control the majority of advertising dollars to self-serve. Fan Hub puts us inside that flow for the first time. That is why the model matters. One system, two monetization paths, both growing, one with nearly 100% margin. We expect $500 million of total ad spend to be flowing through Genius by 2028. A growing share will shift to self-serve, dramatically lifting margins. Every dollar that moves into self-serve contributes at nearly 100% incremental margin. And this is how we expect to achieve $300 million in media revenue by 2028.

And I want to be clear about how everything you've heard today fits together. Every product in our stack is a building block for the future monetization of the sports fan. None of these products stand alone. They are steps in -- they are deliberate steps in progression. We operate on a simple framework.

Now next, later. The now products drive our revenue today. The next is already scaling through augmented ads, BetVision and Fan Hub. And the later, the fully digital synthetic bookcast is not in our financials, not yet. But every investment we have made is designed to bring the industry to that point. And when that shift happens, Genius is not scrambling to catch up. We are already sitting on the infrastructure that makes it all possible. The biggest opportunity now and in the future is the global agencies. They control most of the world's advertising spend. That is where we're focused and where we're winning. We have partnered with PMG, one of the leading independent agencies with clients like Nike, Peloton and Beats Badre. And we recently announced our partnership with Publicis the largest agency in the world by a wide margin. So what do these announcements mean? It means that each agency partnership we signed places Genius directly into the demand channels that control billions in spending power, unlocking access to thousands of brands around the world. This translates to everything from 5-figure test campaigns tied to a particular sporting event to multimillion dollar strategic partnerships with brands and their respective agencies. These are the building blocks of our media business. The momentum is real. Everything is now coming together. The customer base is growing Inventory is expanding, demand is rising. We are winning because our outcomes be alternatives. When new clients see higher ROI with Genius, they increased spend. It's predictable. It's repeatable. It is the growth engine. The trajectory is straightforward. Advertisers see stronger ROI. Spend consolidates with Genius, we execute more campaigns, credibility compounds, growth accelerates. Others watch sports. We read it. Others chase fans. We understand them. Others sell impressions. We are creating moments. This is the value creation in sport, and only Genius has the infrastructure to deliver at scale.

In our next session, we will move from talk to proof. I want you to hear directly from our customers who are reshaping the sports advertising landscape.

But for now, let's take a break, and we'll reconvene in 10 minutes. Thank you.

[Break]

Welcome back. So now we're going to have our media panel for the day. So please join me in welcoming our panelists to the stage.

We let everyone do a bit of a self introduction here. So I don't know if Sam, do you want to kick off for us here.

Yes, Sam Bloom, I am with PMG. I lead our partnerships.

My name is Gena Walton. I'm the former Chief Marketing Officer of Sports Innovation Lab, now SVP of Marketing and Advertising at Genius Sports.

Hi, all. Eric Strada, VP of Product and Measurement for Publicis Media within Publicis Sports.

Great. One of the topics today has obviously been streaming the fragmentation of sports rights moving from linear to digital. Eric, can you maybe just walk us through how Publicis approach to planning for that shift in environment has evolved within the agency.

Yes. Great question. I think we've all experienced kind of different platforms, and we're trying to keep track of our own log-ins within Netflix and Prime and all those things, too. So we hear kind of the challenges. We kind of caught it early on. And within Clovusys Group, we've kind of developed a way to kind of really look at the migration from linear to OTT, CTV and addressable TV as well, too. So what we've done is kind of create a unified currency to kind of address this kind of shift. And what we've done is also kind of create bespoke integrations with our distribution partners to help navigate whether investments go to certain platforms, too. So within that kind of we call it Lyft with Implosys Group. And within Lyft, it helps us kind of determine where these investments better lies within those platforms there.

Interesting. And then Sam, obviously, with [Audio Gap]

So when you think first is every brand has fans -- they have their own consumers and of course, they're connected to sports in some way, shape or form. So first is on covering those insights. The second piece is then being able to activate upon that data. And when you think about traditional ad platforms, it's almost impossible to connect in the moment, particularly what you were talking about, that those moments in a match or a game, for Nike, for example, when LeBron breaks a record or something along those lines like being able to do something with that kind of precision for a Nike really important and then being able to bring measurement to that to be able to connect those moments to outcomes for clients huge. So it's literally across the board for us.

Yes. Excellent. Really interesting. And as you touched on that. So on the product side of things, and Gina, I know we spoke a lot about this during the process of Genius acquiring Sports Innovation Lab with yourself and Josh Walker and Angela, the co-COs, how -- one of the interesting things that we learned through the process was how we had this shared vision of measurement, right, in sports. And it's always 1 of the biggest challenges particularly in sort of sponsorship. And we've got this opportunity now where more sports is turning digital and that essentially drives a massive shift in sort of sponsorship measurement and just measurement in sports advertising in general. Can you maybe just talk about like how you think -- how that is evolving, right, in terms of the combination of something like a Fan Hub ID with sports data, and what it unlocks?

Absolutely. So I think what's fascinating is this isn't new to brands and agencies and advertisers. A lot of this precision performance-based rigorous ad technology has existed in retail media as you mentioned, in e-com and even CPG, right? These are advanced precision-based performance targeting that exists in other industries that had not been brought to sports. Sports was kind of looked at as emotional brand building. We'd love some measurement, but that's not really why we're doing it. But as the industry has evolved and Genius Sports, and we've brought in Sports Innovation Lab brought this technology to sports, now as you say, we can add a whole new layer of attribution of ROI measurement to truly understand and evaluate sports media against other traditional digital media channels. And so we're welcoming in a whole new host of brands who either may be kind of stepped away from sports because they were missing that precision accuracy and targeting. And for those legacy brands who spend hundreds of millions on these sponsorships, we're now unlocking a new level of attribution and measurement for them that can continue to help them optimize the deployment of their sponsorship portfolio into sports.

Interesting, interesting. And so I might just come back to you, Sam, briefly, one of the things that I know we've talked about a lot is the shift in your clients and how they are becoming more and more interested in sports. I think one of the conversations we had at one point was that sort of brands historically thought they needed to make a big bang moment in order to enter the space, right? And that is shifting. Can you maybe just talk through how you're seeing that evolution with your partners.

Yes. I mean, look, the reality of it is, is that not every -- I mean when you think about the broadcast buyers of TV, it's 300 to 500 brands, they're basically advertised on national TV in some way, shape or form. And so when you think about advertising as a whole, not every brand -- I mean when you think about brands, they don't all have national presence when you think about the penetration of these customers. So now we have platforms like Fan Hub that will enable us to basically action on sports in the places against the fans in the places that are most important to those brands. And so -- and when you think about digital consumption, when you about TV consumption, it's usually the diehard fans, but Fandom is a much broader thing. And so we've been able to use those insights to be able to activate fans in the places where they consume sports and some of it is the broadcast, yes. But oftentimes, more often than not, it's digital. And that is extremely important. And then for many of these brands, they're very outcome focused. And so as Gina mentioned, one of the things that is really impressive about the data set, it's sort of like having Google Analytics for the real world. So if you have a retailer or a QSR brand, and you're trying to measure your association or your ads in a -- with a particular sports team or IP or an athlete, you're able to connect that to an outcome is wild. And it's enabled a lot more brands jump in because they see it no different than they see their meta and their Google and the other platforms, but they're used to seeing those kinds of outcomes.

Yes, great. And speaking sort of data and tracking outcomes, Eric, obviously, Publicis has Epsilon, right? And that is sort of the core for the agency in terms of data and understanding. Can you maybe just sort of talk through how you're leveraging multiple data sets from partners like Genius in that environment to drive outcomes for your partners?

Yes, super important for us. As Gina mentioned, there was enough data, but enough wasn't enough for us. We wanted to expand on that. So within Epsilon, we combine different attributes and data sources to give us an idea of behaviors, preferences, and what we were missing a lot more was that fan dynamic, not only what they understood, but what their behavior was before, during or afterwards as well too, which is why this unique combination of Epsilon and Genius Sports data gives us a unique advantage to support our clients. We want to, in the future, kind of help understand for our clients, how fans feel, right, during the game or after the game. I'm a Jets' fan. I lose a lot. But what has happened, or what I eventually want to recognize is, how do I feel when I lose and how our brand is going to react to that. Usually, when I lose, I try to order some food and you might not see it, but hopefully, other fans kind of divulge in different ways. But those are the things that we want to help understand so that we can help our brands target the real fan itself a little bit more. So that's kind of how we're using Epsilon and kind of the unique partnership that we have with Genius to help kind of activate a little bit more. But not only kind of reach the fan also kind of look forward, right? We always want to -- I think the goal was try to attack the fan of kind of where they are, but let's attack the fan of where they're going, and that's kind of what we want to try to reach.

Jets' fan are an easy segment for us. They don't move around much.

Yes, we're there, we stay there, sooner or later, we move it around.

Going next. We talked about local sort of advertising this. And one of the things that we've talked about today is our relationships with FanDuel Sports Network and NBC for this new sort of set of augmented inventory for 600 games. Can you maybe sort of just talk through -- I know we've done some work together in augmentation. Maybe touch on particularly around how your partners are reacting when they see that as this new format. And what does sort of the local -- the ability to network loads of local content together and bringing that into the sports fandom?

Well, I think it's huge. I mean one is what's crazy is it's enabling an entirely new set of inventory, I think the first piece. And I think that's huge. I think the ability to localize, customized, personalized. That has huge implications because with fandom, it really -- you have to speak to the fan in an individual way. And to Eric's point, talk to a Cowboys' fan is very different than talking to Jets', even though we're equally as -- but I think, when you speak to people in their -- that common language of love around sports, it has an amazing impact. And particularly what I'd sort of say is it translates over just about anything. I mean sports really is the lingua franca, and it's also one of the few things in our media business that still has water cooler talk. And so it's the theme that connects us, but it's also the thing that motivates us and drives us.

And the sort of the -- from the technology side of things, right, like Genius is really driving a path here with GeniusIQ and the MESH data that unlocks, right? And we've talked a lot about it today. You've seen the experience when you came in and sort of what it looks and feels like. And we're obviously laying this road work, this sort of pathway, this foundation, right, for this future where video becomes indistinguishable from the broadcast, right? And graphics ultimately meet to the same standard as what a video feed is today. We believe that creates a massive amount of opportunity in the advertising ecosystem, right? Like when you think about someone like Genius bringing you that technology as an agency and being able to leverage that across your full portfolio and taking that to your partners, like what are some of the opportunities that you think that unlocks in terms of sort of new inventory, new ways to interact with fans?

Yes. I think this marks kind of a creative point for us and partnering with somebody that gives us the ability to do so. Obviously, we've done it with the ads front kind of leading the way from our side, Publicis Media with a lot of our clients and now knowing the importance of sports and where it's been and where it's going. We want to be able to create new inventory and not only kind of rate in inventory, but customized into [indiscernible]. Nobody has been able to do that within the sports front. So I think that's kind of the importance from our side, really understanding kind of where this partnership can benefit both of us. But unlocking new things and thinking new ways. I think that's really important kind of on the brand side. Obviously, sports right now is very much crowded and fragmented as we all know, but let's get creative out there with the types of inventory that we can create together, understanding what a fan wants, and what a friend needs.

Yes. And I'll just add on the inventory you're describing is personalized and it's customized and it's built from the ground up, and it is premium. And we are entering a new age of the Internet, where over the past several years, there's been a tipping point and consumers are spending more time with premium content with the top 100 publishers than inside traditional walled gardens, Google, Meta, they're spending their time with premium content, and they want premium. They want pertained, they want brand safe. I mean that's critical. I know you guys are getting asked for that all the time. And when you think about real-time premium, customized, brand safe, you are describing sports. So to have the ecosystem and the technology to see the game like nobody else, know the fan down to the fan that orders the food or the fan has high propensity to spend on wings and then connect those two sides and unique environment is just perfectly positioning Genius and our partners for this coming of a premium internet age where consumers are hungry for this kind of content.

One thing I'd sort of say is I think there's a common belief that young people aren't sports fans. And that is category falls in this tech is really unlocking that across social across creators across all the broadcast, we're seeing it across the board. And from our perspective, I think when when the tech is in the hands of what we think of as our operators or people that operate in certain channels, they're starting to translate it for those channels for those audiences, and that is huge. Because at the end of the day, we're trying to meet the fan where they are, not necessarily recreate the broadcast. And today, sports is consumed. We were talking about this last night. You open up the athletic on a Monday morning, it's better than sports center used to be because you're getting the highlights and everything in there and the breakdown of it and the gifts themselves are some of the assets. And you see some of the stuff with the mesh, my gosh, I mean, if you're a Madden fan, and you grow up on Madden, I mean why would you watch football any other way?

Totally agreeing, totally agreeing.

So on that point, Sam, I'm going to make my kids suffer with me and -- as a Jets' fan. So they brought up Sports fan too, but I just want to add one thing more going back to premium and basically what you said. Premium, we want to determine what premium looks like to you. One thing that we're looking forward to is looking at the betting data and kind of where those spikes are to determine where people are interacting a little bit more than usual, where the games are getting close, where the interests are, so they would create a little bit more customizable premium inventory, but aligns with kind of what Gina mentioned, so great.

It's interesting what you touched on there with betting data, right? Like, obviously, Genius is tracking all the financial transactions that are going on across sports fans. But when it comes in particular to betting data, betting transactions, understanding the value of a bedding consumer, like as an agency, when you think about that as a data set you can pull in, like how valuable is that to you?

We've been doing that. By the way, we have one client in particular, who is pretty lean then on sports and betting. And we've made a ton of our placements based on that and based on the volume, the velocity of the betting data and some of it is that we know that means that game is going to have attention and it matters. And so that -- by the way, that's -- it's a massively interesting data set and can -- I don't -- I dare say it's not Nielsen, but it tells you it's very predictive of the outcome of a broadcast to a large extent.

Yes. Yes, agreed. I think it gives us a fuller idea of a fan graph that we want, right? So this is what a friend would say, I'm not a big better, but you could see where I tend to go, which is tenants football and soccer, but it also builds out that kind of profile that's needed in order to kind of try to predict or try to get a better view of who, where an ad should be placed, or who those assets should go to, depending on kind of what sports you're into or what last-minute interest or last-minute parlay you're trying to put in there.

Great. We're coming up on time. So maybe one last question for each of you. How -- as we look to 2030 and beyond, right, how does the agency's relationship in sports evolve as you have more brands coming to you looking to tap into the sports fan base? Where do you see it going?

Well, look, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, I think that the biggest piece for us, the biggest transformation is moving from static data sets to what I'll call actionable identifiable kind of data sets. And I think as we move along, I mean, sports to me, I mean we've seen year-on-year growth in just about every major sport. It commands so much attention. It's going to be at the heart of the planning and the buying and the measurement process from here on out. And for me, what's really interesting, and this is the conversation that Gina and I've had for the last couple of years is, we may start with the endpoint, with just who you or consumers are and back into the fandom. And you might find that the fandom for Pickleball, the fandom for women's sports, the fandom for a lot of sports that may not have the broadcast audiences, but may have mass an appeal drive incredible anti-transactions, large AOVs, that to me, that's the piece that I see going forward is that it will be the connector to find those passion points and potentially find emerging trends as they occur.

Yes. I think agencies are going to set up performance buying teams for buying sports, whereas traditionally, that would live kind of completely with the sports and the sports entertainment and the sponsorship teams. They're going to have the measurement, the attribution, the data, the insights to deploy that sponsorship capital in meaningful ways to drive actual performance of their business, and that's a different model than we've seen in the past.

Yes. Spot on, last one for me. It's relationship of the fan and team, more emphasis is going to be put on that, understanding where that lies, how it would happen, how it's moving and where it's going. That's kind of where we're focusing on from an agency point of view.

Excellent. Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you again to our panelists for taking the time and sharing the insight. We had a Jets fan and a Cowboys fan. I don't think things are much easier for me as a Dolphin fan. But anyways. I'd now like to welcome our next session, which will be presented by our CFO, Bryan Castellani.

Okay. This is the beginning of the home stretch. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Bryan Castellani. I joined Genius in October, while I'm the newest person on the stage, I come with a long history across sports, media and entertainment at Disney, ESPN and most recently, Warner Music. I'm excited to bring that experience to Genius Sports, particularly given the opportunity we have across the sports ecosystem and in media and advertising, in particular. And I'm fortunate to step into a finance team, a company with a strong track record of execution. But what really defines execution in a business like ours, what makes those numbers tell a story of consistency and growth. In the next few minutes, I will take you through our financial execution our growth algorithm, new 2028 financial targets and our capital allocation priorities.

First, how have we done this? Our performance to date has been built on multiple sustainable revenue growth drivers, a largely fixed and predictable cost base consistent margin expansion and cash flow growth and the flexibility to invest for disciplined long-term growth. This is theoretical. It's in the numbers. So how have these principles translated into tangible results? Let's take a look. Since going public, group revenue growth has exceeded 20% each year with a 26% CAGR from 2021 to '25. That growth, combined with cost discipline, has driven group adjusted EBITDA from breakeven in 2021 to $136 million this year at a 21% margin. This has been powered by high-quality revenue embedding and media, both of which have more than doubled since our last Investor Day 4 years ago. The growth is geographically balanced as well. Americas revenue has more than tripled. Rest of World has nearly doubled and Europe is up over 60%, and well above market growth in that time. In short, this business has come a long way since the last Investor Day, and we've built a consistent track record of financial execution. And based on everything you've heard today, the runway ahead of us is long. I feel we're just getting started. And that's why I'm excited to have joined Genius and to be here today. So what's fueling our next chapter of growth. The building blocks for betting and media should now be clear. We see a path for each of these products to contribute meaningfully to achieving 22% group revenue CAGR through 2028. You'll notice we're only providing bedding and media revenue projections. Historically, growth and profitability have come from these two betting and media product groups, not from sports. So beginning in 2026, we will simplify our revenue reporting to align with how we manage the business. We will consolidate sports revenue in the betting and media and report only those two segments. We will work closely with you, investors and analysts to ensure a smooth transition, but wanted to highlight this today.

Moving on to costs. Our largest expenses are fixed and highly predictable. As you heard from Jack, our major rights agreements are secured for the next 4-plus years. And the annual fees for those data rights are entirely fixed with predefined annual increases set from the start of each contract. That gives us strong visibility into our rights fee cost base over the next 4 to 5 years. We have the personnel and overhead in place to support the next stage of growth, and therefore, we do not expect material increases in operating expenses from here. That predictability has allowed us to demonstrate operating leverage every year since going public, and we see a clear path for that leverage to continue. The operating expenses shown on the slide reflect cash expenses, which align with our 30% group adjusted EBITDA margin target by 2028. This brings me to our new 2028 guidance. At our last Investor Day, we set a long-term target of 30% group adjusted EBITDA margin. Given the visibility over our model, we expect to reach that target in 2028. With $1.2 billion in group revenue and $365 million in group adjusted EBITDA. And while adjusted EBITDA is important, our long-term goal is to become a free cash flow compounding business. In 2028, we expect 60% conversion of adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow which equates to approximately $220 million of annual cash flow. To be clear, our bridge from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow, as illustrated on the slide includes capitalized software development costs, CapEx and taxes and net working capital.

This shift towards cash generation is a core part of our story going forward. Because what's the ultimate measure of value creation, cash generation that funds its own growth. With increasing cash generation, we want to also take this opportunity to reinforce our capital allocation priorities, which fall into three categories. First, organic reinvestment. We will continue investing in Genius IQ, both development and global distribution because as you've heard throughout the day, it is strategically and financially critical to our future and our growth. Second, M&A. As the market moves towards single connected technology partners, we believe Genius is in the best position to combine sports data and technology. Our bar remained high. Any acquisition must be accretive to growth, margin and our cash flow trajectory. Third, share repurchases. We've authorized $100 million [Audio Gap] also be used to offset share count dilution, and we expect net share dilution and to remain a low single-digit percentage per year going forward. Finally, everything we've outlined today reflects our base case assumptions. But we also see multiple revenues for upside, both through 2028 and beyond. For example, our high-margin self-serve advertising model has significant room to scale, and we have the talent and partnerships in place to accelerate that shift. As you heard from Josh, the Genius Media Network has real momentum and the potential to drive upside. Online sports betting could exceed our current assumptions, whether through regional expansion, in-play adoption or adjacent opportunities like prediction markets, as you heard from Jack. Genius could, as Matt highlighted, enable third parties to build applications on our platform creating high-margin incremental revenue streams. And as we expand GeniusIQ globally, we expect increasing data collection efficiency and auto eventing, removing the manual efforts of statisticians and on-location personnel, which could further reduce costs and improve margins. So while we are confident in the guidance we provided today, the potential for upside is real. And under Mark's leadership, this company has delivered on every major financial commitment it has set.

With that, I'll hand it back to Mark to share his closing thoughts. Thank you.

Thank you, Bryan. Let me start by reinforcing what you've just heard. Our 2028 outlook is not an ambition. It's a clear line of sight. The strength of these targets come from three things that are now firmly in place; a scaled platform, a disciplined operating model and far greater visibility across our ecosystem than at any point in our history.

Bryan has articulated the economics of this business with clarity and predictability. His model reflects the underlying performance of the platform, not blue sky assumptions, not the uncertainty but the fundamentals that you've seen across every part of today's presentation. And I want to be explicit that we have high conviction in achieving the 2028 outlook because our platform is delivering exactly the dynamics that we designed it to deliver. And the strategic context behind these numbers is exactly what I want to close with, because it's where the next decade of this industry is heading.

So let me do that. Let me close by shifting the way that we all think about rights because the definition of data rights is expanding faster than at any point in the industry's history. For years, when people said data rights, they were really talking about one thing, sports betting data, a narrow slice of what's really happening. But everything that you've seen today shows that this definition is now updated. GeniusIQ is redefining what data is, how it's captured, and how it's monetized, and how it powers the entire sports ecosystem. MESH data automated capture 3D Digital Twins, zero latency event streams. This is not just betting data, it is quite literally a new asset class. And that new asset class unlocks applications far beyond betting; broadcast enhancements, personalization -- personalized viewing, real-time advertising, sponsorship optimization fan engagement and content creation, all built from the same foundation.

So the real question for the leagues become, what does the future data rights model look like? They will no longer be able to limit themselves to a narrow betting-only construct. They will need to embrace next-generation data that underpins virtually every revenue pathway in modern sport. The answer is clear. Fan behavior is changing digital, interactive, personalized consumption is becoming the norm. And as a result, the traditional rights model is coming under pressure, and you can see this evolution everywhere across global sport. Our deal with the European League signed this year focuses on the long-term value of GeniusIQ Tech rather than the rights fees alone. French League One shifting towards direct-to-consumer to Zone choosing not to continue with the Belgium Pro League, regional sports networks in the U.S. under sustained pressure, Apple shortening its MLS deal and IMG Arena exiting the space. These aren't isolated incidents. They point to a fundamental shift in how sports content is valued, distributed and monetized. Outside of the NFL, every league is reconsidering how value flows, how engagement is captured and how stable their model really is in a fragmented digital first world. And all of this leads to a simple conclusion. Leagues must live in that digital world. They must adapt to new expectations, they must find new ways to monetize and engage their audiences. And this is where Genius comes in. Today, you saw how GeniusIQ elevates every part of sporting experience, and how it powers personalized viewing experience for fans how it drives deeper fan engagement and new advertising inventory, and how it improves targeting increases ROI and lifts the value of lead content. Every component feeds to the next, more engagement creates more data. More data creates more value, more value increases the total flow of dollars across the sports landscape. By plugging into GeniusIQ, every part of the league's ecosystem becomes connected and each partner benefits from the others. This is why leagues are taking a holistic approach to their rights, and why Genius Sports is the end-to-end platform capable of monetizing this next generation of data across betting, media, advertising, sponsorship and fan engagement. This is the foundation of long-term mutually beneficial partnerships, a rights model built for the next era of sport. Everything you saw today sits on GeniusIQ, and the future will demand even more from this foundation. We won't build every new application the ecosystem will, teams, brands, developers, innovators. But every future application will need the same foundation real-time data, AI and a unified operating system and that is GeniusIQ. And it means that we can share in the upside of everything we've built on top of that platform. Think of Genius, the app store of sport, a platform that will do what the sports industry -- what the App Store did -- sorry, a platform that we'll do for the sports industry, what the App Store did for mobile. It will unlock an entire new economy. The guidance that you've seen today reflects the opportunities directly ahead of us, the even greater long-term upside comes from everything that's still to be created. If you believe in the long-term growth of global sport, there's no better way to participate in that upside than investing in Genius. We don't rely on subscribers, don't rely on customer acquisition. Our model scales with fan engagement and sports fans always come back. Global sports consumption more than doubled in the last 10 years to 3 trillion hours in 2024. And this is expected to increase to 4 trillion by 2034, digital already accounting for 40% and rising fast. When leagues grow, we grow. When digital streaming expands, we expand. When imply betting accelerates, our financial performance accelerates. When advertising becomes more data-driven, we monetize more pathways. And when new applications emerge, they're built on our platform.

Owning Genius means owning a share of every major revenue pathway in modern sport without carrying the cost structure of any of them. It's a hedge against rights volatility, a hedge against fragmentation and a pure play on the digitization of sport. If you believe the world will keep watching, betting, streaming, sharing and engaging with sport, then Genus is the company that you want to own. Because every time the fan shows up [Audio Gap] our economic scale and sports fans show up forever. The future of sport will be built on Genius and so will the returns. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. So that's the end of our prepared remarks and presentation. What we will do now is bring everybody back on stage, and we'll open the room to Q&A. If you do have a question, we ask that you just raise your hand and someone up here will point out who gets the microphone. We have a microphone on each side of the room. So just wait until the microphone is passed to you and then you can ask your question. So we'll welcome everyone back on the stage now.

I can repeat your question for the audience, just...

I'm going to start with Bryan, just because you ended on the free cash flow, it's been something that I think investors have certainly pushed back here on the company, meaningful conversion of 60%. My math implants all the incremental EBITDA is going to free cash flow. So I guess you laid out the building blocks in there, but I guess the confidence, the visibility and kind of walk through, I guess, why now the EBITDA is going to meaningfully convert to free cash flow and then that path over the next couple of years.

Thanks. It's really about that operating leverage and over the next few years being able to scale and getting both the revenue flow-through as well as the operating expense efficiency. It's not a straight line to 60%. There's certainly a ramp there, but it's not all [ hockey ] stick either and feel confident about it because we have a model that is predictable on the cost and the investment side and also gives us flexibility, as you saw in some of the bridge from EBITDA to cash flow as well as just the space, we continue to see great growth and headroom for us to outpace that growth.

Jed Kelly, Oppenheimer. Great up today, especially around some of the near-term debates in the industry. Just looking ahead, over like the next five years, you've obviously done a good job expanding your soccer rights, deals with the NFL. Can you just talk about where you think your rights portfolio is now or any other sports you think about as potential opportunities?

Yes. It's a good question. I mean, I tried to touch on data rights in the sort of closing remarks, but I think what's happened is you're seeing this very significant fragmentation in the market and the major leagues and the likes of the NFL who obviously have a very strong position in the market. But I think underneath that very, very, very top layer, you're seeing a lot of the sports leagues really struggling. I mean, I reeled off list. French League One, Belgium Pro League, MLS shortening their deal with Apple, all of those are examples of where the rights model that has historically existed in sport has really come under a lot of pressure. So what we are seeing is we're seeing new deals that are coming up and examples of them are the EPFL deal we did early this year, Serie A, also with IMG exiting the market, all of them are examples of that change that's going on the market. And what sports leads are having to do is look much more holistically at the market. They're having to understand that they've got to look for new revenue pathways, they've got new ways of monetizing that fan because those old rights models are not working. So from our point of view, we feel very, very confident about our position in the right space. We've got long-term locked in major rights deal with NFL. And I mean, hopefully, you guys understand how close that relationship is with the NFL and how much opportunity we've got there. Outside of that, we've got a very, very strong portfolio of rights, and more importantly than that, we've got a massive amount of technology that we've now started to deploy across that network. If you look at fiber in 170-odd countries, you've got our technology that's going to be distributed there. EPFL, we're rolling out over 400 stadiums and I think, 42 different leagues. We've got an enormous distribution network as part of that. That will take our technology and allow us to really lock in that long-term position in the market to get access to the data and really push that evolution in the rights model. So we feel very good about it.

Can I jump in on as well. On -- I guess on some of the things I was saying today, like a bit more near term in our kind of core betting bit, which happens today, the betting rights that we acquire and things like that. Like we've got this solid footprint that's really, really great for us. What it really means is we can be circumstance about other stuff that comes up. There will be right. There are rights that's going on all the time. There's some stuff going on the time. We can make decisions to say, you know what, we don't want that. We don't need that. We've got enough in our business, and we can make sensible decisions about how we do that because we can show a bit of discipline. The other thing going on is like when I talk about distribution and the product power and that when I look at the competition, it don't have that same level of power, right? It don't have. There's some radar of good distribution, but there are low bothers who play in this space, but they don't have anything like the power, right? And so it's kind of where you see RMG, [ Rena ] and where that ended up because it didn't have the distribution power, it didn't have the technology stack. So eventually, the stuff will evolve my own view is actually consolidation will continue. And actually, the historical heat in that betting market rights is going to come right down.

Mike Hill, [ Crisman ] Capital. Mark, when I think about your ad platform, the bill...

Sorry, can you speak up a bit?

Yes. Sorry. Mark, when I think about the ad platform that you've built, it reminds me a lot about AppLovin. AppLovin a few years ago, created an ad platform to go after. It started small. They were very disciplined about rolling out their technology. But the mobile gaming market is much smaller than the sports betting market. So it seems to me that that would be an interesting analogy to consider. I was just wondering how you're thinking about that.

Yes. I mean I'll take that and talk about the sort of size of the market. I mean, obviously, the size of the advertising market that we're targeting is enormous. It's anyone in the world who like sports, which it's a pretty decent TAM for us to go after. So we're looking to target that user base. And I think we're very, very well positioned to do that. In terms of AppLovin, I mean do you want to pick up the...

Yes. I mean I'd happy to. I mean it's fair to draw comparisons to what Genius is doing in AppLovin, right? We're incredibly focused on building not just today's sports experiences, but the next generation of sports experiences. And our whole model is taking our data, building these experiences and then embedding them into other people's apps, right? And we're already in thousands of apps around the world. And the two things that AppLovin has is unique distribution and audience data on the consumers that are in those experiences. So that is exactly the same path that Genius is on because we have our identity solution, and we're creating experiences that people are desperate to have in their apps, which we create new inventory on to monetize. So we're on a very, very similar path in that regard.

I also think it's fair. It's a very good comparison on another basis, which is that fundamentally, why is that love been so successful. It's because it's able to use a huge amounts of data, not everybody totally understands exactly what that data is or where it's available to make very, very good investments in the inventory. And I think that's something that's very analogous to Genius. We have a very, very strong data pipeline. We have a massive especially with the addition of Esper Sports Innovation Labs, we've got an enormously powerful view of the customer. And bringing that together, I think, gives us quite farther the strongest view of sports fans anywhere in the world and the moments of sport. And I think that plays a very strong part in us being able to generate very high ROIs for our customers.

Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Really appreciate this very helpful presentation. I especially thought the deep dive into prediction markets that Jack gave was extremely helpful. I just wanted to clarify is there anything embedded assumption-wise in the guidance around prediction markets and how they may play out? Are there any risks in any of those scenarios to hitting your targets?

Do you want to start?

Yes. I mean I'll target from a big picture level. I think I laid out in my prepared remarks that it's it's pretty fluid, right? It's pretty fluid in as everyone knows and what can happen can change in quite a short period of time, but it exists. It's there, it exists. It's wheel, things happening, people are placing production but people are trying to acquire customers, production contract is not bet. And -- so it's real for us. We're taking a really cautious view of that. Like as we've modeled out over 3 years, we start really small 2026, are really, really small in terms of how we're thinking about in 2026. If it flies and some of the scenarios that could play out, play out, will massively outgrow where we've put in our models today. But there's quite a lot of stuff which is really fluid at the moment. So it's very so hard to be super specific on it, but our approach has been a consistently cautious one on it. So if anything, I will be thinking about different developments in the market. It create accelerated sports betting is a massive major upside from the numbers you asked that you see.

I think the other thing as well is worth noting, you probably saw cash announcement you had certainly raised $1 billion. And if you actually look at what they detailed that they raised that money for, it was for data and apps. When you think about our business model, and again, if you sort of go back to the diagram that Jack put up on the -- I guess, on the wall behind us. It sort of -- it showed you the market, but it also shows you where we're already playing. We already sell data to the market makers. We already work with each of these companies on a marketing basis. So the money that they're raising and some of the momentum that's coming in that market is already coming into our business, and we'll continue to do so. And again, that evidenced by the announcement that was put out yesterday by cash. I mean they're going to need to press that product, drive all marketing. So we feel that we're very, very well placed. We already have the relationships. We have the technology. We have the data. We are extremely sensitive and extremely conscious to work with the regulators and to work with the leagues, as we always have done, if any -- you guys have followed us over the time, you'll know how cautious we are in terms of regulation. But that puts us in a very, very strong position. work with those regulators and see that evolution through in a really cautious way while still benefiting from the space with our other product sets.

Bernard McTernan from Needham. A great job by the whole team here. This is a great presentation. Josh, I was hoping if you could maybe take us under the hood a little bit in terms of the assumptions that go under the or the assumptions of going bring advertising media spend from $135 million to $500 million. I think the chart in the presentation had like a 50-50 split between the gross and net spend. Is that the right way to think about it? And what should we think about the contribution from the existing two agencies that you're signed up with or signing on more agencies to get to that $500 million?

Yes. Okay. I might take those in reverse. In terms of the agencies, as we said during the presentation, right, these agencies and other agencies in general have hundreds of customers, hundreds of advertisers that they work with. So we're tapping into those demand channels, where we're able to work with those. And those come through as sort of advertising briefs based on the seasonality of sports and different things that are going on in those cycles. So our focus with our partners is ensuring that all the different clients across the organization understand the capabilities of Genius and for us to be receiving all of those briefs that are available. And that is essentially how we scale those agency partnerships. And as we said, those can be everything from a 5-figure sort of activation through to a multimillion dollar strategic partnership depending on the needs of the client. In terms of the sort of revenue split between the sort of managed service activity and the self-serve activity, I'd say it's early days for us, right? We're very early on in this journey of self-serve. But as we have said, with the agencies, that is the monetization path that they tend to want to take with Genius. So over time, we expect our margin increase across the blended margin across the media business to increase. I think it's sort of a bit too early days to put a stake in the ground in terms of exactly what that mix will be, but we're on the right path for that to materialize over the next couple of years.

Jordan Bender from Citizens. You picked up another win yesterday with Vandal and the NBA. Just curious how much investment opportunity there is out there for weeks that you don't actually have the data rights for moving forward?

So I couldn't hear that. If you guys did.

I think the question was around how much opportunity is there for leagues where you don't have exclusive data rights? So we talked about kind of FanDuel, NBA. We've got opportunities on the advertising side of the business, and I get questions around what's the upside there?

Do you want to take or...

Yes, this is a great example. I mean, with the product sets that we offer are extremely wide and varied. So it's a really great example of we don't have a data rights betting partnership with the NBA, but we still exist in lots of touch points within the NBA. So we work with us of their teams. We're working with lots of their partners and the fine sports network being a really good example. So not everything that we do, not every relationship that we have with a sports organization is always anchored in sports data rights. Sometimes, our relationships will go whites first and they evolve into a much wider product set. That's kind of well-driven path that we've done. But we'll also see it go the other way around as well. So our relationship with the CBF in Brazil is a great example of the CBF factor. Don't own the data rights. We don't have the data rights for Brazil for betting, but it's two different organizations because of how that -- their governance structure. But that is fundamentally a performance deal about semi-automated offside, right, which is great. They're paying some good money to deliver some technology into that in terms to fulfill an immediate need. But once we're there, we can then go and create lots and lots of opportunities. So to answer your question, there was loads of opportunity for us that isn't -- with lot of sports that isn't centered on having betting data what [indiscernible].

Yes. And I'd probably just add to that from a sort of advertising standpoint, right? Like particularly with our identity solution, because we're distributing content into a ton of apps and experiences, we get the visibility of the full sort of fan spectrum, right? And we're able to understand NBA fans, NHL fans. Premier League fans, and it's all from leveraging our sort of technology distribution across the board, particularly with SIL, what we're doing there in terms of indexing sports fandom means that even at the moment, every day, we've got NBA campaigns live when MLB season starts, we'll be running MLB-based stuff. And that the media business in particular is not limited by it. We are when we have official rights, we're able to do even greater things, right? But it does not preclude us from being able to run advertising activity with our partners across every sport in the world.

And again, bringing back to where we started this today -- I mean, started this Q&A certain, the anchoring of our technology in these leagues to provide other services across a backdrop of a very, very dynamic and changing rights industry. just puts us in an unbelievably strong position when those rights renegotiations come up. And you get -- examples of that things like the EPFL Serie A, those are opportunities where those rights deals have been gained materially, but the technology has anchored us in a really strong position Mike?

It's Mike Hickey from Benchmark. Great presentation. Awesome. Just curious on digital twins. I don't think that's in your '28 guidance, but listening to your agency partners, seems like that could be a huge unlock for you in terms of growth of your media business. So just curious sort of how you see the path to commercialization for digital twins and if there's any gating factors in terms of technology or what needs to be done to get completion?

Yes. Look, I'll take it from a technology perspective. And I hinted a little bit of my background, whatever I kind of introduced light self at the beginning of my presentation. But I spent five years at Microsoft, kind of leading product for their augmented and virtual reality group kind of creating industrial digital wins, right? So it's a space that's fairly near and dear to my heart. I think if you -- one of the big lessons I learned when I was there was that digital twins are fascinating in terms of the opportunity in the future. You think about kind of headsets that become form factors like glasses and all of the opportunity that exists. But I think what sometimes people look past is the value that you can create from a 3D digital plan even on a 2D screen today, right? And we talked about it in some -- when you look at something like SOT, the ability to have that digital twin and spin around and see that plan from any angle is really, really critical, really important, right, and really valuable. And I think you'll see us from a technology perspective, there are some things that unlock bigger and bigger opportunities as we look out on the horizon and you look at all the developments that are happening with the different form factors of glasses, but I think even in the interim, from a technology perspective, we're well suited to kind of take advantage of it today. That example of trick shot that I showed, right, with [ Etion ] and kind of that example is a great example of how you start to create new inventory that extends beyond the field that extends beyond the traditional broadcast to embed your advertising, your sponsorship into right, to start to reach sport fans across kind of the various short-form content medium, right, that they're consuming today. And so I think there's nothing blocking us from a technology perspective over time, it will continue to evolve, the opportunity will get bigger, right? But I think we're well suited to start realizing that sooner versus later.

Just to add to that as well, I think one of the reasons why we're so excited about the agency partnerships that we're striking is that these agencies have massive creative teams, right? In Genius is fundamentally a technology company. And what we're doing in those relationships is we're going in. We're educating the agency on the MESH data, and we're letting the most smartest mines in the world who come up with some of the coolest creative concepts that you see on TV and various experiences, right? They are the guys who are cooking up all sorts of use cases for this data as well in partnership with us. So that's also where in the future, they are the guys who are also helping us cook up some of these concepts, and they're the ones that will ultimately buy it from us for their clients and run activity.

Look, and you can't understate, I don't think how important those innovators are who look at these new medium and come up with new ways to engage. I think back to like in-game advertising, when game advertising first came into being, it was thought leaders like Publicis, right, that were kind of driving new ways to think about that opportunity and then everyone else kind of followed. And I think these recent announcements we've made have shown these innovators, right, these thought leaders leaning in and saying, hey, we want to be on the forefront. We want to lead. We want to drive, and I think you heard that from the wonderful panelists we had.

Jason Bazinet, Citi. I just had a quick question. You're a relatively young company, and you're navigating a very complicated space and your revenues have been predictable and consistent. But when I think about all of the rights that you have, whether they're official data rights or AV rides or exclusive rights or the rights to put cameras inside a particular venue, it all seems already fragmented to me. Is there an example of maybe a Tier 3 or a Tier 4 sport where you sort of have the end to end, you have all of it. You have the cameras. You have the data rights, you have audio visual that you could point to where you sort of maybe in dollar terms, it's not large from Wall Street's perspective, but the growth that you've been able to generate has been significant. I don't know if that makes sense. Don't paint a picture of what this could look like as it all gets fleshed out.

Yes. So it's interesting, right? If you walk out into our lobby, right, you'll see kind of the Genius logo in front of this ecosystem that kind of ties us all together I'm not sure that I'm allowed to say the actual name. But like if you think about one of the top, arguably, maybe the top football league in the world, who we've talked about a lot today and partnered with. If you look at the interactions and engagements we have with them, we're engaged with them at the foundational data collection layer. We're engaged with them at the performance layer. Every single team, actually, it's all public...

English Premier League.

Yes, English Premier League. Every single team uses our performance technology, right? We are actually integrated into their live broadcast, partnering very closely with primarily productions as they decided to kind of take their own production in-house last year. We're engaged with them on sponsorship activation. So across the board, if you look at kind of them as the prototypical customer the arguably 1 of the top 2, 3, 4 leagues in the world, like this is not -- again, it's kind of why I said in my in my talk. This is not product vision. This is actually product reality. And I think you're seeing that. And now for us, as we get these entry points into these key customers, we've got lots of different ways to kind of grow lots of different ways to get into these customers, which I think is foundationally different than even when I joined just 2.5 years ago.

I think it's really important to think about kind of our strategy on that stuff, like we offer an an enormous portfolio of staff to enormous portfolio of stuff. Very bigger than any of our competitors. What competitors in each of these areas, but our portfolio is enormous from a product point of view, as you guys have talked through today. But -- and certainly, I've never really been fixated on only being interested in deals that we start with all of it because it's quite a hard thing for someone to say, I'm going to just [indiscernible] over and start with it. So we have this enormous land and expand strategy. where we start with 1 piece of tech, and we roll in another, and then we start doing more and we start doing more. And we see that journey lots and lots of time, we've seen in the Premier League. We've seen it in the NFL [indiscernible] organization. So we don't really get particularly excited about going, and we've got to have everything all at one go, okay, let's get our touch point this makes sense to us. CBF in Brazil. Let's start with SAOT. We're from there. I've got the cameras in the stadiums. Suddenly, I'm talking to Globe their ballpark as partner, suddenly I'm talking to brands, you want to engage with them. So it's much more that sort of approach than saying we've got to be everything everywhere from day one.

I would just double down on that in a sense that -- and I do grant, I am the newest, I've tried to boil this down as simple as I can to know the encyclopedia as fast as possible. But when you think about the flywheel, which is whether leagues and teams, Sportsbook operators, broadcasters, distributors, advertisers and marketers, it's a good question, like EPL is something we wrap a whole flight wheel around, but you can enter that flywheel. It's independent. You don't have to be in all spaces. But once we get you in, it's a great opportunity to lead you in other pieces, and it spins faster.

It's easy for us to get in and hard to get us out.

No more questions? Okay. Great. Well, look, thank you ever so much for all giving up so much of your time today. We're enormously grateful. We hope it's been helpful, and we're looking forward to doing another one of these at some point in the future.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to today's Genius Sports Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Genius Sports. The floor is yours.

Thank you, and good morning. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 14, 2025.

During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniusports.com. With that, I'll now turn the call to our CEO, Mark Locke.

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us today to discuss our Q3 results. We will keep our prepared remarks relatively brief this morning as we look forward to hosting many of you at our upcoming Investor Day next month. There, we will share with you a detailed overview of our business, product demonstrations, industry trends and our strategic and financial outlook. With that in mind, I will quickly touch on the key highlights from this quarter.

First, we increased our group revenue by 38% year-on-year, making our strongest quarter of revenue growth since Q1 2022. This was led by our Media segment, up nearly 90% year-on-year, further validating our investment and excitement in the space. We also increased our group adjusted EBITDA by 32% year-on-year to $34 million, representing a 20% margin. Both Betting and Media contributed meaningfully to our revenue growth this quarter. I'll touch quickly on Betting to start. Betting revenue increased 28% year-on-year, predominantly driven by growth with existing customers and there are a few specifics that are worth highlighting. First, we secured the exclusive rights to the European Leagues and Serie A this quarter, further strengthening our existing portfolio of the highest quality football content globally. With our scale and distribution across hundreds of the world's largest regulated betting operators, we were able to generate immediate revenue uplift in this quarter through this additional content.

Additionally, we announced the expansion of our partnership with Hard Rock Bet this quarter. As part of our renewal, we are now providing Hard Rock with additional content and live trading services across the Premier League, Serie A, European Leagues, NFL and more. Hard Rock is also now the latest Sportsbook partner to utilize our BetVision product across Serie A, NFL and over 23,000 other live betting streams. Our Hard Rock relationship is another example of how our picks and shovels positioning in the U.S. betting market enables our revenue growth to outpace others in the ecosystem. Whether it is in a state like Florida or through a competing product, our portfolio of data and advanced product set is essential to the success for all operators and we are confident this positioning will afford continued opportunities in an ever-changing and evolving industry.

We've also expanded our partnership with ESPN BET this quarter, which now, for the first time, includes BetVision, not just for NFL, but for our full suite of soccer and basketball content as well. And finally, we have seen positive in-play betting trends to start the NFL season. Through the first 6 weeks of the season, in-play represented 30% of total NFL handle, right in line with our expectations. We are encouraged by the continued growth of in-play betting and expect this will continue to drive betting revenue growth through the remainder of this NFL season and beyond. This growth is a function of the continued evolution and maturity of the U.S. market, but equally, it's driven by an improving set of in-play betting products.

Our sportsbook partners have done an excellent job of offering a much wider range of in-play betting markets this year, and we are realizing the direct benefits of that. To add to this, we are empowering more in-play betting volume through the continued distribution of BetVision, which is now available on nearly every major sportsbook in the U.S. and continuing to drive more viewership, increased in-play betting and more engagement overall. For instance, through the first 6 weeks of the NFL season, we have seen a 35% increase in the number of unique devices streaming NFL on BetVision. Additionally, we've seen a 25% increase in the average time spent on BetVision per device. So we aren't just seeing growth in the overall numbers, but also growth in the actual time spent interacting with the platform. This, as you know, is critical for the integration of our advertising solutions into the BetVision product, which I will touch upon shortly.

And most importantly is that BetVision continues to be a consistent enabler of greater in-play betting, which represented 74% of total handle through the BetVision platform so far this season. And within the last 6 months, we have launched BetVision for soccer and basketball, meaning that we are now providing over 23,000 events per year, more than 200 global competitions through BetVision, representing a rapid expansion of the product. As a result of this expansion, the number of sportsbook customers utilizing BetVision has exploded. This time last year, we had 6 Sportsbook customers integrated with BetVision. As of today, that number has grown to over 100 Sportsbooks, representing more than 350 brands. This kind of growth in just 1 year demonstrates our scale and distribution. So BetVision continues to drive more engagement in in-play wagering, which compounds our Betting revenue growth.

And as we have proven consistently, our Betting revenue growth continues to exceed the growth of the overall market. This was the case again in Q3 with the growth of our Betting revenue nearly doubling the growth of our U.S. GGR. Now as it relates to BetVision, this increasing engagement is also enabling opportunities in Media, both as a source of audience information and as a source of unique advertising inventory, each of which makes our advertising services unique in the market. As such, our Media business was the largest contributor this quarter with revenue increasing nearly 90% year-on-year to $42 million. I'll pause for a moment to let that register. $42 million marks a new quarterly record of Media revenue in absolute terms and 89% growth is our strongest year-on-year increase since Q1 2022, the quarter of our first Super Bowl for perspective. When we raised our guidance last quarter, we expected 50% to 60% revenue growth based on minimum commitments. So we are happy to see that level of spend in the quarter exceed even our own expectations.

I want to take a moment to quickly remind you of what makes our advertising platform unique. We understand sports better than anyone. We know sports fans better than anyone and we are leveraging our technology to create the next generation of fan experiences. So these are 3 distinct factors that differentiate us and we strengthened each of these even further over the last few months. The first is live sports data. We understand the exact moment of a heightened fan engagement and emotion and use real-time data to trigger advertising content, improve campaign pacing and inform bid optimization strategies, all leading to better return on investment for our customers.

The second is audience data, our understanding of who the fans are. We have several sources of first-party data and now we've acquired Sports Innovation Lab, which brings an even deeper understanding through their proprietary fan graph, which is built on real spending patterns compiled from billions of transactional data points. When combined with our league relationships, existing data sets and media buying platform, we can reach fans with even greater precision and at exactly the right moments, generating a higher return for our advertising customers.

Third is our unique inventory. We're creating new ways for brands to reach sports fans that can only be executed through Genius Sports. Last quarter, we mentioned new inventory that now exists on BetVision and how quickly that, that was monetized. Our latest example of new and unique inventory was seen on FanDuel Sports Network for select WNBA games. We delivered broadcast augmentations to showcase next-gen stats such as real-time short probabilities, 3-point distances and more. We transformed these augmentations into high-impact sponsorship opportunities, empowering brands like Shopify, NBA 2K and Point3 to own these key moments of the game, fully integrated live on the broadcast. This has been highly successful for broadcasters and advertisers alike, so we expect more of this to come. So we are continuously improving each of the factors that make us unique and we have built the most comprehensive real-time fan activation platform in the industry.

Our Media revenue growth this quarter is evidence of the progress that we've made. As always, our Media revenue is driven by two important factors: growth in the number of advertisers and increase in total advertising spend. This is exactly why it's important for us to sign deals with advertising agencies because they aggregate a large amount of spend across several individual brands. So our recently signed agency deals, including our new partnership with P&G, are driving significant growth in the Media revenue through the second half of the year. We plan to cover the Media business in more detail at our up-and-coming Investor Day on December 3. But in the meantime, the key takeaway is simple. We have a unique set of sports data, audience data and inventory and that enables us to deliver superior return on ad spend for our partners. We're gaining significant momentum with brands and agencies and remain optimistic about the long-term potential of this business.

Before we conclude, I want to briefly address prediction markets, a topic of frequent discussion over the last few months. In an effort to preemptively address questions, let me share our perspective. We are observing the developments around prediction markets carefully. We must always comply with applicable laws and regulatory requirements and we place a great deal of importance on the views of our regulators and commercial partners. As they evolve and mature, prediction markets may provide a meaningful new opportunity for Genius Sports in expanding the addressable market. While these products are nascent, they are evolving rapidly and the need for Genius official league data, marks and logos and integrity solutions will only grow as prediction markets become more sophisticated. This means that we are extremely well placed should we decide to engage.

With regard to timing, we are being extremely considered and deliberate in our approach. We will work closely with key stakeholders across the ecosystem, our league partners, regulators, existing customers and indeed, the prediction markets themselves to determine the next steps and we are confident in our ability to capitalize on this opportunity in a responsible and sustainable way if we feel all of the requirements we need to be in place to participate in this market are met.

Given the early and evolving nature of this market, we won't be providing additional detail on this call, but I want to be clear, if we are confident that prediction markets will meet our robust regulatory and commercial thresholds, these developments could result in positive developments for Genius Sports and our future growth.

And with that, I'd like to officially welcome Bryan Castellani to his first earnings call for Genius. And I'll now turn the call to Bryan to discuss the financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Mark. I'm very happy to be joining Genius at such an exciting moment in the company's journey, and I look forward to working with the analyst and investor community. To pick up where Mark left off, I will also keep my comments relatively brief this morning since we are planning to cover a lot of financial detail in our Investor Day. As you've heard from Mark, we benefited from multiple revenue growth drivers this quarter across both Betting and Media. Even if we take a step back and review our year-to-date position, we are delivering well-balanced growth across each of our product groups and tracking well ahead of our initial expectations to start the year.

As you'll see on Slide 14, we are also seeing strong growth from each geographic region globally. As you can imagine, the U.S. is driving most of the growth this year and this quarter in particular, especially given most of our Media revenue is derived in the U.S. But even in our more mature European business, we have still increased our revenue by 19% year-to-date, which speaks to our long-term value creation and growth with sportsbook partners who operate in more mature markets. You'll notice our Group adjusted EBITDA margin was roughly in line with Q3 of 2024 and it's worth quickly touching on a few one-off factors.

First, we just secured the official data rights to Serie A and the European Leagues in August. As we outlined last quarter this partnership is built on the broad deployment of our technology platform across Europe, which enabled us to obtain these rights on attractive financial terms. Because rights fees are recognized over the course of the season, we recognized 2 full months of expenses in August and September. However, on the revenue side, a few sportsbook contracts were finalized shortly after the quarter end, resulting in a temporary timing mismatch between expense and revenue recognition. This will naturally resolve in Q4 as the revenue from those contracts are recognized. With that in mind, we have generated strong growth in Group adjusted EBITDA, increasing 32% in Q3 and 65% through the first 9 months. And as it relates to cash, our operating cash flow this quarter was $27 million, demonstrating the seasonality of our cash flow, which typically flips positive in the second half of the calendar year.

Taking a step back from the quarter and looking across the full year, we are continuing to demonstrate strong annual top line growth and group adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. We feel confident in the underlying trends across both Betting and Media, as you heard earlier from Mark. In Betting, we're seeing strong product adoption, increased in-play betting and favorable pricing in our fixed contracts, giving us good visibility for approximately 30% growth for the full year. In Media, we're even more optimistic. We started the year expecting full year growth in the low to mid-teens. Last quarter, we raised our growth expectations to 20% and now we expect growth of nearly 30%. As such, we are raising our group revenue guidance from $645 million to $655 million representing 28% growth for the full year. We are also raising our group adjusted EBITDA guidance to $136 million representing 59% growth and 400 basis points of margin expansion for the full year to 21%.

This further emphasizes our consistent growth and margin expansion on an annual basis. To conclude, the business is firing on all cylinders. We're continuing to improve our position in the online sports betting industry through expanded content coverage, increased product adoption and favorable commercial terms, enabling durable revenue growth. We're also proving the value of our advertising platform, evidenced by a growing number of unique capabilities and new client wins. This success is reflected in the results we've delivered to date and our raised expectations for the rest of the year. We're looking forward to sharing more detail with you in our upcoming Investor Day on December 3.

We'll now conclude our remarks and open the line to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] and it looks like our first question today comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

I want to start on Serie A, European leagues. You mentioned kind of the straight-line expensing delayed revenue rec from a few sportsbooks. One, can you quantify that? And then two, the impact on the quarter that is? And then two, anything you've learned from those two specific contracts now that you've taken them over from the commercial negotiations to working with the leagues to just anything that may have surprised you with either of those?

Ryan, it's Mark. I'll take those backwards. Well, so on the commercial negotiations, I think the takeaway from some of this is really that the rights market that we -- is changing in a way that's very positive to us. We're sort of seeing the sort of evolution that we've been talking about over the last few years of rights fees coming down in a lot of leagues and giving an opportunity for us to deploy technology and partner in a very meaningful and serious way with the leagues. And the rights deals that we've announced recently are very good examples of that. We've managed to deploy a lot of technology. We've managed to create relationships with those leagues that give us the opportunity to really leverage the technology that we've got, access new markets and deploy a lot of our -- it make a lot of the -- sorry, make some returns on the investment that we've been making over the last few years.

Ryan, what I would add -- it's Bryan. Thanks. I would add just that, as I called out, we contracted those early in the quarter but we have a revenue timing mismatch where it will take us a bit of time to monetize them. And so there's a timing expense impact on that.

Are you willing to quantify that?

No.

Fair enough. Switching over to the Media segment, nice outperformance in the quarter. It seemed like better on the revenue line than kind of the flow-through to EBITDA. Curious if that was more the legacy, let's call it, programmatic advertising, lower-margin business or if it was kind of FanHub, higher-margin, self-serve DSP and just kind of bifurcating that strength in the quarter and then also the raise in guidance and if there's any difference in that mix in Q4?

Yes. Ryan, it's Bryan again. Just on the margin flow-through, again, we have the rights timing impact there, Serie A and EPFL coming online early in the quarter and we will monetize in Q4. And so that will start to unwind itself a bit. The revenue mix, as you noted, Media was heavily weighted there with strong growth, almost 90%. That flows through at a lower margin than our Betting business but all the trends in Media going the right way and growing that business. And for the full year, while the margin may be a little lower this quarter but it was where we expected, everything performed in line with our expectations.

Looking at the full year as well as year-to-date, you have roughly 60% growth on the EBITDA and high 20s on the revenue. So you'll see there year-to-date, there's 460 basis points of margin growth. And for the full year, we're projecting 400. So the quarter really just impacted more by timing and mix.

And our next question comes from the line of Clark Lampen with BTIG.

Mark, I wanted to go back to growth in the Betting Tech business for a moment. You talked about performance sort of exceeding the U.S. benchmark. Is it possible to contextualize for us as the market is evolving and it's sort of coalescing around you and your next largest competitor sort of on a go-forward basis, is it reasonable to think about sort of growth holding and above market, i.e., 20% to 30% range for the foreseeable future?

Yes. I mean there's a lot in that. I mean we're seeing a lot of product rollout. As I mentioned in the call, we're running over sort of 20,000 -- I think we're up to about 23,000 events now. So the products that we're putting out into the market are evolving quickly and providing a lot of revenue opportunities. We're sort of seeing this kind of consolidation around the way that we operate the business.

We've got our BetVision product going out. The Media is integrated into that, and that's providing us opportunities to compound some of the growth. So we're expecting strong growth over the coming period. I mean, I think we put our long-term targets out 30% margin. We still see that as our North Star. And again, the way that the product rollout is happening at the moment is bang in line with how we've been talking about it over the last few years.

That's helpful. And if I could, just as a quick follow-up, I apologize if I missed it, but did you call out sort of the delta in performance between the sort of 50% to 60% plan and the north of 80% growth that you realized for the Media business. What led to, I guess, sort of more spend materializing in the quarter? Was it customers seeing a better return? Or was this perhaps timing related? Any color you can provide would be helpful.

Yes. I mean the short answer to that is agencies and strong returns. The products are proving themselves. We're getting the outcomes that we want. And obviously, we've got the agency announcements that we've made. So -- and the combination of both those is driving outsized growth in that sector.

And our next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey with The Benchmark Company.

Mark, Bryan, congrats guys on a great quarter. Welcome, Bryan. Great to hear your voice this morning and seeing you at G2E. Just two quick ones. Mark, just curious on the prediction market here, obviously creating a lot of excitement for the industry. Do you think this could be a driver of legalization across the U.S. and some key states here that have been kind of sticky and not legalizing? And then the follow-up, Mark, would be, do you have any concerns where the prediction markets are competing against some of your partners today that they could take some market share in the near term or long term?

Yes. I mean sort of to take it backwards and I think we made some pretty direct comments in the prepared remarks that we see on a general principle, anything that expands the TAM and expands the market is a good thing for us. We're well placed and we believe that there's a need for official Genius data, league data, marks and logos, integrity solutions across the Board, and that's only going to grow. So in terms of the prediction markets, we -- frankly, as I said in the prepared comments, we see there is potentially an opportunity which could be very exciting. But again, we keep a very tight eye on regulation. As you know, you follow us for a very long time. We're very focused on making sure that we operate in a highly regulated fashion that we work with regulators and we work with the right people in the market.

So at the moment, we're watching it very closely. It's not -- it's a topic of frequent conversation, not only externally but also internally. But at the moment, we feel very well placed. We feel like there could be a large opportunity but we've got to watch the regulatory space and how that's evolving over time.

Mark, I guess a quick follow-up. Just on the integrity piece. We're seeing a lot of issues here, obviously, NBA, UFC and there's some international pieces too. Can you just talk about how the integrity piece of your business and how vital you think it is to the ecosystem?

Yes. I mean it's how we entered the market in the U.S. If you remember all those years ago, we sort of led with the focus around integrity. And again, it sort of comes down to the concept of official data, the thing we've been talking about for many years. It's increasingly important as we're seeing that the operators and the market coalesces around one focus around official data, one source of truth and making sure there's full transparency in the market.

So there's nothing particularly new here from our point of view. Again, we came to market in the late teens of 2000 with an integrity product that was focusing on making sure that there was real transparency and real understanding of what the original results are and how the markets are working. And again, we're just seeing the evolution of that coming through in the market as we predicted.

And our next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan with Needham & Company.

Just want to ask, I mean, kind of a real-time question, but with the ESPN blackout on YouTube TV and Monday Night Football, was that helpful for BetVision viewership? And if so, any tactics that you or your sportsbook partners could deploy to make sure the consumers come back after the blackout or stay with you guys -- stay with BetVision after the blackout is over?

Yes. I mean, look, I mean, not to comment specifically on that but I think the overall point is around the growth of BetVision as you've seen, I think I can't remember which slide number it is. But we've put it out there where the number of sportsbooks has grown. I'm just putting the numbers up.

Yes, I think we're up at what we published about 120 BetVision customers and the amount of content that we're putting through it has gone up to north of 20,000 global events. So we're seeing strong growth. We expect that product to continue to deliver decent viewership. And again, internationally, we're seeing a lot of success there. So we don't know how the viewership and I won't comment on ESPN specifically but we don't know how that's going to affect it. But overall, we think getting content in front of sports punters is good for the sports leagues, increases the number of eyeballs, increases the focus on those competitions and we think it's good for the sportsbooks. And again, we're seeing good results from them.

Yes. Makes a lot of sense. And secondly, can you just talk to the advertiser response to the Sports Innovation Lab data? This seems like a pretty significant upgrade. And so when do you think you'll start to benefit from this data in the identity graph?

Yes. Well, we're already benefiting from it. It was a company that we've been doing some work with and the integration has been very, very smooth and pretty much immediate. So we knew what we were getting when we bought the business and we're already using it and we're already getting very strong results from doing so and good response from the customers.

And our next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens.

Something that's front and center again is kind of the bad game outcomes that are happening across the NFL. As we've learned your business model, there's this understanding that higher gaming margins for the NFL leagues to more upside in your estimates via your variable gaming revenue. So the question is, do you start to think any differently about how you view your upside with respect to variable revenue as we are now in what's the third consecutive month of poor results and what looks like the third consecutive year of bad outcomes in the NFL?

Yes. I would say that we had communicated a while and we did what we said in terms of a round of renegotiations and renewals where we increased our fixed composition. And so while that has decreased the variable component, it still exposes us to the upside and it also gives us more predictability and consistency. And so the week-to-week holds, we don't really feel that variability, that noise. And we obviously like the model we have and we continue to grow our value for the sportsbooks in terms of just the adoption of products and helping them engage more deeply with their audience.

Got it. And then just a follow-up. The in-play mix at 30% from what I see in my notes here, that's roughly flat year-over-year. Maybe something more to discuss at your Investor Day but curious if there's any change on how you're thinking about the shift into in-play over time.

Yes. I think it's partly too, we're early in the season here. The parlay mix matters. And so as we've seen around the world, it's likely that will grow over time, but I think we're early in the season here to judge it too finely as staying flat.

And our next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer.

Just two. Touching on the Media segment, obviously, good growth, recent acquisitions. Can you just talk about how your go-to-market strategy is evolving with your sales force? And then following up on Jordan's questions around the 30% live Betting mix. Are you seeing more better start to go into the higher-margin products such as TV props? We've seen the sportsbooks push that. So is some of this that they're just going into higher GGR products, which is actually a benefit for you guys?

So the answer to the first question is the go-to-market strategy is pretty much in line with what we've been saying for a while. Our focus is agencies. Our focus is deploying the product through them and the acquisition of large brands and proving value through the initial campaigns that we run and making sure we're getting results and it's all coming through. And again, it was touched on the last questions, SILs have really helped a lot with that. We're getting strong results off the back of that. So we expect our relationships with our agencies to continue to grow and we'll touch upon that in the upcoming Investor Day.

On the in-play, as we said, overall, we're seeing that roughly flat. What I would say, and we've called it out in the slides, is that in BetVision, where you might say that is a deeper fan engagement, that in-play mix is closer to 70%, 75%. So we do see that the deeper they go, the more in-play there is. So I hope that helps.

And our next question comes from the line of Steve Pizzella with Deutsche Bank.

Just going back to the advertising business. I believe you mentioned increased spend in the quarter -- for the quarter, driving the growth above your expectations. Can you talk about how much visibility you have into the Media business versus the shorter term in the quarter demand?

Yes. We -- again, there, our business continues to grow ahead of our expectations this quarter. As I called out in my remarks, we started in the teens, went to 20%. Now we're projecting almost 30% for the year. Things like the Sports Innovation Lab acquisition give us more data and deeper insights. And we're currently working on with our new agencies and partners on just annual planning and things like World Cup. And so we look forward to talking more about it at Investor Day.

Okay. And then can you just help us how we should think about free cash flow in the fourth quarter?

Yes. On free cash, we had a strong 2024 with $82 million in operating cash. And a big piece of this is going to be a couple of things in terms of discretionarily where we might invest as well as you have some timing of rights as I mentioned earlier. And then also, we do have, and we've called it out, there is some nonrecurring one-off litigation expenses. So on -- when you look at it organically, we expect it up to be strongly. And so the back half of the year is typically where our cash flow flips positive and strong.

And our next question comes from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist.

I just wanted to follow up on an earlier question. I think we -- relative to the NBA scandal going on, I think we all understand potential upside with integrity solutions and the power of official data. But can you help frame for us any risks around wider bet type restrictions like perhaps limiting player props or micro betting?

Yes. I mean I think the answer still stands, to be honest with you. We've seen this quite a lot in Europe and we've sort of been through a sort of cycle of this in -- especially in the U.K. And I think the focus really does come down to official data and making sure that the leagues are well plugged in and the regulators are -- have good visibility of how the markets are evolving in respect to official data. So we don't really see particular risks around that as long as the market continues to evolve hand-in-hand with the sports leagues to protect the consumer.

Great. That's helpful. And then Bryan, congrats on the new role. I didn't have a chance to meet you at G2E, but I was just curious if you could spend a minute talking about how you'll approach the role with any new lenses and how you think your background can most help add value here.

Yes. Thanks. I hate to turn the call into about me. But listen, I come from a long background in sports, media and entertainment. And what we're doing here at Genius is exciting. And I think for me, Genius is at a really interesting point where our scale and our distribution continues to grow very well. And I have, of course, been focused on driving -- continuing to increase the top line, especially the EBITDA and cash flow and also continue to help and be continued good stewards of capital. And I think you've seen us allocate capital well and set high standards for when we spend it, where we spend it and with whom we spend it.

And our next questions come from the line of Eric Handler with ROTH Capital.

I'm curious, as the NFL continues to expand internationally, have gains into new markets this year, are you seeing any impact on bets being made overseas with the NFL?

Yes. Yes, we're seeing the NFL a real success internationally. I mean you saw, I think, Flutter announced their news with the NFL on an international basis. I think it's the third most bet on sport with Paddy Power. So they're making real traction, and it's certainly piquing the interest of the players in the European market.

Okay. And then I know it's still very early, but I wonder if you have any sort of early insights on BetVision with your new soccer and basketball rollouts.

Yes. I mean, I think the initial indication is we've got, I think, over 100 customers that have taken it now. So the growth has been extremely strong and we're seeing good results and getting good feedback from that. The addition of new events is interesting. I mean, I think most people think about it from only the sportsbooks point of view. But one of the things that's probably a lens that's interesting to think about, I guess, is if you're a sports league, what you're looking for as you look at the distribution, you want people and you want engaged players to be watching your game in order to distribute your sport and make it more well known.

And I think that in today's world where the way that sports consumed is changing so much. You've got short-form content, my kids watch sport in a very different way to the way that I used to watch sport. I think that this product is a really helpful thing for the leagues which is why they're so supportive of it. The other thing, I guess, that's happening is just the way that the advertising market is changing. The advertisers want content that's -- sorry, want spots that are driven by high emotion. Our technologies with the fact that we've managed to teach the machines to understand the game, and therefore, we can highlight those moments of high emotion, which end up getting high returns for the advertisers.

So putting a brand logo up as a gold score or something very, very relevant to that individual fan happens on the event. We were able to do that now. And we're seeing very, very strong results from that. Again, it's one of the things that I think is piquing the advertisers and certainly the agency's interest in helping to drive the Media business growth.

And our next questions come from the line of Josh Nichols with B. Riley Financial.

Real quick, I just want to touch on the gross margin front. I understand you had some additional expenses in 2Q with the revenue coming in -- or sorry, in 3Q with the revenue coming in, in 4Q. With that in mind, just how should we think about the margin profile for 4Q? Do you expect that to be back up to be up year-over-year in the fourth quarter, given you have a normalization?

Josh, I mean, we've called out where we expect to land for the year at $136 million against the $655 million and roughly 20% margin and up 400 bps year-to-year. And in terms of -- if you were looking at the cost of sales, some of that has to do with just increased rights costs in there.

That makes sense. And then last question, you'll probably touch on a little bit more detail at the upcoming Investor Day. But if you look like the Media business now, you've taken the growth expectations up there to like 30% this year. And you've mentioned previously that you thought the company as a whole was able to deliver 20% plus growth for multiple years.

Fair to assume, not just looking at this year but a little bit beyond that, that you would expect the Media business, given the traction you're seeing to grow at above that pace for at least the foreseeable future?

Yes. And we'll talk about this more at Investor Day. As I said earlier, I mean, it is U.S.-centric in that the U.S -- the U.S. and particularly in the back half of the year, the NFL drives a big component. And so strong growth this year, and we're working on that annual planning and how the calendar next year will look. And so we'll talk about that more at Investor Day.

And our next questions come from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

This is Sam on for Chad. Mark, last quarter, you mentioned that a big focus for the company was on trying to create more NFL ad inventory for your partners. Just curious now that we're a couple of months into the season, if there are any updates or new plans on that front for this NFL season or for the next?

Yes. I mean we've managed to do that and we've sold it out actually. It's all sold out. So that's a pretty good place to be. It gives us opportunity to create more inventory going forward as well since we can evolve the product sets as they go. And as you'll have seen, again, I don't have the slide number but the slide entitled New Inventory creating more ways for brands to reach sports fans, I think, is a really good example of that.

And then bigger picture question. I wanted to ask about the 30% margin target. It seems like the growth for the company keeps getting better. So as a company, how are you guys thinking about the balance of growth versus profitability and the time line to reach that target?

Again, I mean, we will provide a multiyear view at Investor Day. This year, we're adding 400 bps and we continue to believe that our margins will rise over the next few years and achieve -- I don't want to get too far ahead on future guidance but we remain optimistic about what we said, where we're going, and we're excited for December 3 Investor Day to talk more about it.

Yes. I mean there's sort of two main focuses. We've got our North Star out there at 30% margin, which we're still targeting and feel very good about. And we're focusing increasingly and certainly will in '26 on cash flow conversion and increasing the cash flow from the business. So we've had a good couple of years on that front and we are hyper focused on that. And again, it's one of the reasons I'm so excited to have Bryan join us to focus on driving that.

And our final questions today come from the line of Greg Gibas with Northland Securities.

Congrats on the quarter. Similar to what you accomplished with ESPN BET to, I guess, expand to the full suite of BetVision sports coverage, could you maybe discuss the opportunity with your broader sportsbook customers that maybe don't use or use it for perhaps just the NFL? I guess just kind of how underpenetrated you would say that, that product is relative to the full adoption opportunity?

Look, they're early days. The products are being distributed widely. We've got a good uptake in the sportsbooks, as we mentioned earlier but there's still an awful long way to go. I think the thing that I would focus on if I renew your shoes is the level of results that we're getting.

Obviously, the sportsbooks as we said for a very long time, we want to be shifting people to in-play betting, higher margins, better returns, better engagement from the fans point of view. And from our point of view, we get a much higher return on our -- through the commercial deals that we have. I remind you, going back over the years, it's 3x the amount. So there's a strong focus in the business on getting that distribution and frankly, a strong focus from the sportsbooks as well because it benefits both of us. So from that point of view, we think that we're still very early in the journey and we expect that product and the adoption of that to be very strong over the coming years.

Got it. Great. And I guess for clarification and I apologize if you already addressed but regarding the temporary timing mismatch between rev rec and the increased cost basis from rights, fair to say no impact expected or carry over into Q4?

That's right. It should start to unwind as we -- for Serie A and EPFL in particular, we start to monetize those deals.

All right. Thanks for the questions, Greg. And that does conclude our Q&A session, and it also concludes today's earnings call. Thank you so much for joining and you may now disconnect. Have a great day, everyone.