Online gambling technology provider GAN boosted its revenue and narrowed its losses in 2017, thanks to a surge in US clients for its social casino product.
Figures released Thursday show GAN (the former GameAccount Network) generated gross income of £41.1m in 2017, up 30% from the previous year. Net revenue gained 17% to £9.1m, ‘clean earnings’ came in at a positive £454k versus a £932k loss, while after-tax losses narrowed to £3.5m from £3.8m the year before.
GAN CEO Dermott Smurfitt hailed the company’s “first full year of positive EBITDA since 2013,” and said most of this positive traction was achieved in the second half of 2017, positioning the company well to sustain that momentum in 2018. Around 82% of GAN’s 2017 revenue was recurring in nature.
The company credited the forward progress to having launched a record five new US casino clients for its Simulated Gaming free-play online gaming product last year, compared to three new US launches in 2016. Smurfitt says the company expects “material growth” in its free-play casino business in 2018.
GAN also powers the real-money online casino product for Betfair in New Jersey’s regulated market and GAN plans to launch its second New Jersey real-money client (Ocean Resort Casino, aka the former Revel) sometime in H1.
GAN currently provides Simulated Gaming to Pennsylvania’s Parx Casino and the company is working on developing a real-money platform for Parx once the state finalizes its online gambling regulations, which GAN expects will come sometime in H2. This week, Pennsylvania announced that platform providers like GAN can begin submitting license applications on June 4.
GAN also has a hand in Italy’s real-money online gambling regulated market, and this channel contributed 31% of GAN’s overall net revenue in 2017. In January, GAN announced it had launched a European-facing real-money online gambling site for Oklahoma’s Chickasaw Nation, a previous Simulated Gaming client.
GAN has also positioned itself to take advantage of a potential relaxation of US sports betting laws by signing a strategic relationship this January with sports betting technology provider SBTech to offer sports betting services to US casinos.
