PointsBet announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, PointsBet, and NBCUniversal Media, a subsidiary of Comcast (CMCSA), have agreed to amend the media services agreement dated August 27, 2020. See market announcement dated August 28 for details regarding the original agreement. Under the amended agreement, the remaining committed marketing spend for Years 3 to 5 of the original agreement will be invested over an additional two years, now representing years 3 to 7, thus reducing the average annual marketing spend to match PointsBet’s optimum desired level of investment under its more localised, targeted strategy. PointsBet maintains preferred pricing benefits and integration exclusivity in the sports betting category at a local and regional level, including across NBCU’s Regional Sports Networks. PointsBet also maintains its online casino integration exclusivity at a local, regional and national level. PointsBet has relinquished sports betting integration exclusivity over NBCUniversal’s national media assets, however PointsBet retains a ‘second look’ for all national NBCUniversal assets. NBCUniversal will be permitted to appoint one additional ‘Official Sports Betting Partner’ of NBC Sports. As part of the amended agreement the portfolio of available assets for investment is expanded to now also include Peacock, sports programming on USA Network and CNBC digital. In addition, the amended agreement allows PointsBet to more heavily utilize Comcast’s EffecTV platform. With an estimated reach of 96 million US adults, EffecTV allows PointsBet to target audiences with postcode level precision across linear TV, streaming and video on demand. The total committed marketing spend for the remaining 5 years is $294M, with $25M of this commitment having already been paid as at December 31, 2022. The total commitment for the current year is $50M. Should the options issued to NBCUniversal at the time of the original agreement not be exercised, instead of a lump sum repayment of the option premium value by the company at the end of Year 5, this amount will be applied to make increased payments for Media Services across Years 6 and 7. Where this is the case, the total cash commitment over the remaining five years of the term, applied largely on an equal annual basis, will be $270.4M, with the balance to be covered by the remaining value of the shares previously issued to NBCUniversal. PointsBet expects its U.S. marketing expense for FY23 to be circa $90M, down from $118M in FY22.
Published first on TheFly
