FDJ United ($FDJU)

Welcome to the FDJ United First Quarter 2026 Revenue Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to Pascal Chaffard, CFO, Strategy and Performance Leader. Please go ahead.

Hello, good afternoon or good evening, everyone. Before handing over to Pascal Chaffard, just to let you know that the English press release version will be disseminated soon. Nevertheless, the slide deck is available on our website. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mark, and hello, and good evening or maybe good afternoon according to your time zone, and welcome to this FDJ United Q1 2026 revenue presentation, you have [indiscernible] and Pascal Chaffard, the CFO, for the moment, but very soon, full-time chief online betting and gaming business in officer and also group strategy and operational transformation leader of the group. So you may have seen that Dan [ Levy ] will become sooner our new CFO starting mid-May. The press release has been disseminated some minutes ago or so. He was previously amongst its senior position, the of IPO Group, one of the world's leading market research and opinion polling firm. So Q1 2026 will be my last Financial Commission as the CFO of this company. This slide deck, as Marcus said, is available online in the Investor section of our corporate website, so you can follow the presentation with me easily. So I drive you to the slide, the next slide. During the first quarter 2026, the GGR rose by 1% to EUR 2,175 million while revenue declined by 3% to EUR 895 million reflecting EUR 24 million of calendar gaming tax increases. There is no news in that. Those increases were forecasted were decided last year. There is no new increase that have been -- not have been anticipated. It's just the effect of them when we compare our figures to the figures of Q1 2025, just to be clear. The year has started well, but the activity has been globally weaker since the end of February, resulting from 2 main factors: low sports betting margin or high payout, as you wish. Not compensated by our higher stakes across the board and also a lower activity in low-based games in the French or [indiscernible] I will come back to that. For the French lottery and retail sports betting the FDJ remained broadly stable at EUR 1,740 million, while the revenue stood at EUR 627 million, down 2%. It's also the result of the gaming tax increase. Again, no news, just GAP. When we compare to the situation of the Q1 last year, as you remember, maybe the tax increase in France 2Q was put in place from July 1, 2025. So we will lap them next July. We will see on the following slide each BU performance in more detail, but in a nutshell for LSF -- for the LSF 1, the performance mainly reflects the continued strong momentum in instant games, but short lottery cycles and a high comparison base for draw game. And also, as I've said, more globally IPLs and sport-betting. Those headwinds in LSS should be temporary well-off. And we still aim growth on the full year. I will also come back to that in more detail. For online betting and gaming OVG, the GGR was broadly flat end, a 1% decline to EUR 342 million, but the revenue fell by almost 8% to EUR 213 million, reflecting there also EUR 9 million of gaming tax increase in France, Netherlands and Romania. Again, no news, no new elements that have been cited lately, but the impact of the decision that has been taken in 2025. Excluding the Neverland on the U.K., the GGR increased by 6%, and the revenue remained broadly stable, minus 1%. Clearly, the situation in the U.K. remains difficult. The one in the Netherlands also at a smaller extent. We have changed the management of the view already launched a number of actions to turn around the performance, beginning with the U.K. and Netherlands, but not limited to those jurisdictions. We will see an improvement in the performance over the year, and we aim to be back to growth in H2, first on the GGR, thanks to the ongoing action plan. I will come back to that in more details in the next slide. So globally, based on the Q1 performance for the old FDG, we expect, for the full year, a slight increase in GGR but a slight decrease in revenue and recurring EBITDA between 23% and 24%. I will come back also to this more in detail at the end of my presentation. If you move to the next slide, you will see a slide with on the left, the split of the GGR by business units. And on the right, the split of the revenue by the [indiscernible] Between the 2, we have indicated the global impact of the EUR 20 million, EUR 24 million that I already talked about for the quarter, 15 on LSS and 9 on VG I've quoted all these figures before. Before we did dive into the 2 main BUs, maybe a few words on international lottery where revenue was EUR 41 million, up 7% on a Q1 25 basis reflecting nonrecurring elements of PLI, most notably an exceptional number of jackpot wheelers in broking last year. But anyway, we are happy with this performance this year. Payments & Services, the revenue has reached 14%. It's down 7%, but it's as forecasted as the BU continues to streamline and focus its offering of the more profitable product. So no problem and no impact on the EBITDA linked to that. If we move to the next slide, we will deep dive on lottery and for betting retail called [indiscernible] As I said in my introduction, the GGR was stable. The revenue declined by 2% for reasons that now you are fully understood, I think, for the lottery, if we look at only the lottery, not protecting retail at this moment, the GGR was up 0.4%, while the revenue declined by 1.8% to EUR 519 million, thanks to items for draw-based games as instant games continue to perform strongly. For draw games, the DGI was down 3.5% and the revenue down 6.2% to EUR 199 million. We had basically no rolling assets following the 2 Fridays and 13 later in February and March. As the super jackpot were won at the first row each time. Over the quarter, Lotto recorded on the freedom cycle versus 1,616 in Q1 2025. So it makes a huge difference. We had also a very high European comparison base, driven by last year in March record of 250 million at reached for the first time in the history of this game and that has attracted a lot of new players, particularly online and generated a significant additional stake. And we didn't add this element this year. So the basis of comparison is a little bit harsh. When it comes now to instant games, we are very happy of the continuous momentum. We have fueled the portfolio elation with new games and the rates are good, with the GGR plus 3.4%. And at EUR 880 million and the revenue up 1.1% at EUR 320 million. This is in line with the record fourth quarter of 2025 that -- where we also saw a strong performance of the strong -- of the cost team. This performance was driven by a number of launch. I can just give 2 examples. Chief odor or at gold is time it seems to work well. Cipro, a EUR 5 game in January and a game called [ Laciblofgame ] in February. Online lottery. The revenue increased by 1% to EUR 81 million, thus a penetration rate of 15.5%. When you look at those numbers and state, it's a little bit better the growth has been -- was driven by an increase in the number of players and also a strong performance of exclusive online games with the GR up around 50% -- so it should be noted that the online luxury sales were up 14%, 14% at mid-March 2026. Although the comparison base was very real at the end of March 2025, when I explained that we had this exceptional European jackpot that has approached and reached the record level of EUR 250 million and it has driven among all of March a super activity in online lottery the performance of online industry in the first quarter has to be looked at with the context of this exceptional draw in 2025. But again, just before this draw has occurred as a basis of comparison, we were up 14%. So nothing to be worried on -- on the retail operating now, the decline of TGR and revenue is mainly explained by less attractive sporting events and a high payout ratio of 7.8%. It's above the regulatory full year cap. Usually, what happens when you have high payouts like your debt, it comes with high level of take but not in Q1 where the payout has not been mitigated by high level 6. And why that because the [indiscernible] of the offer was less important. I think it's interesting to give an example and to explain the business point sport betting retail is very dependent on football. Football is 2/3 of the activity of sports betting retail, no in play, on only a pre match offer and so as we are very football dependent and the European championship dependent. When you have some of the events that are very very unattractive. It leads to this situation. For example, we had some games like attire, [indiscernible] with the first flag results, 52 or 61, respectively, if I may say, effectively, it has decided the outcome of the second game before the beginning of this game, so that's discouraging many filters from betting on the second leg so just to explain why we have this element of was [indiscernible] great. And it is -- it will not be seen at the same level on the online sport betting as football is less important. And also, you have the capacity to play during the games, which also is another mitigation of that. Okay. So on retail sports betting, we expect a good momentum, but not exactly now. It will come in 2 months now during the main event of the year, i.e., the football lockup, next June and the beginning of July, with more games than the previous World Cup and thus, more capacity to drive a high level of activity. And as I said, sport-betting off-line is very football dependent. So it will be for the good during this event. So to conclude on LSS, the activity was a bit weaker than expected in the second part of end of February and March. But this situation is temporary, and we expect the rest of the year to be broadly in line with our initial expectations. Again, I will come back to that when I will explain the full year guidance. Now let's move to online betting and gaming on the next slide. At OBG, we have done that in since 2 months. We have implemented a new organizational structure. As you know, I am the new head, and I'll come back to that later. We have continued our marketing initiatives, notably the finalization of our new license strategy in Sweden, which is very successful. In 1 word, we used to have just 1 license in Sweden. We divided our licenses into 5 licenses and it has driven an extra business with a double-digit growth in Q1. So very good. And in France, at the end of the quarter, we have completed the verification of the online sport betting and online poker activities under the United brand. Now we have only United brand to drive our activity in France for betting and the poker, and we still have the brand [ Zetor ] the racing, the outracing offer. All those offers in force, sport betting and outracing is available via a single account shared across all gaming verticals enabling synergies and cross-selling on a very high level. And what has also driven this merger of the brand is an improved clarity of the offering and also it supports digital growth and operational efficiency as you may have understood. This was a very important achievement, a complex project in our knowledge never done in this industry. And again, it's a technical and a commercial success. We are now in line with our expectations following this merger and even above, in particular, in outracing and in poker. So this is very good, and this was a very good achievement. Now if we look at the activity of the food, [indiscernible] the DGR, as I said some minutes ago was broadly flat versus last year or a small decline of 1%. But the revenue fell by 7.7% and as I explained also linked to the tax increase in past. The tax increase impact, just to remind you, it's in France. I've already said that from first July 2025, it's also the Netherlands with another layer of increase that started first January 2026 and Romania that have started first August 2025. We will have the U.K. tax impact seen -- we see that in the Q2 because it has started first of April 2026. So in the U.K., to be clear, the situation remains difficult with revenue still down by more than 20%. Clearly, not at the level expected so far. We will come back to that with action plans underway to turn around as quickly as possible the situation. This is our top priority. In the Netherlands, there has been a marked improvement with the decline reduced but still a decline for the revenue in a shrunk legal market. Can say has published lately the figures for the full year 2025, which is, again, more than 20% decrease of the market as a whole. So we still had in Q1, a year-on-year impact. because we have the last measure of regulation that has been taken mid-Q1 2025. But starting Q2, we will be in a more comparable situation to envisage the comparison versus last year. And we have already taken a number of actions that will have a positive impact starting Q2. Now if we exclude Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the GGR rose by 6.3%, which is not bad, and revenue remained broadly unchanged. To be noted also on OBG, the number of active players has increased on the quarter by 3% compared to the first quarter of 2025 our player acquisition is the key pillar of the business because we want to do the decisive marketing and responsible gaming strategy. The question is more how we can drive also more revenue per player while being fully compliant with RG and AML. This is 1 of also my top priority not as a CFO, but maybe also the CFO, but as a Chief Officer. So if you move to the next slide, we have written down a number of elements that explains what are our top priority to streamline the organization to grab executive excellence and also the number of areas of improvement that we have already worked on and the action plan that are already underway. The first element, the turnaround of the performance in U.K. and Netherlands in top priority to targeted task forces. It has already begun. Second, the shift to an AI-led marketing and generosity. We are not enough -- I led to date. So we have to spend better in marketing and in generality. And we are identified what we have to do. Now it's a question of putting it in live, and it will be done rapidly. Third, it's to unlock the player value through better player experience taking into account the full picture, it means not only the commercial picture but also product picture the responsible gaming, the iML picture, looking at this activity, 360 degrees. We also have identified a number of improvements that are about to be put in place. We also, as I said previously, streamlined the organization and continued to streamline this organization. And we have worked on the road map to secure our proprietary platform rolled out, as it has been said 2 months ago when we talked about the full year 2025, it will be done by end of 2027. And it's underway, and we are working harder on it. So this was what I wanted to say on the elements of action plans on OBG. If now we come back to the last slide of this presentation, which is the full year 2026 guidance. What we now aim for 2026 is a slight increase in the GGR, a slight decrease in revenue. But based on LS despite the temporary impact of even a revenue up and add up at a higher level, obviously. And on with the link that you can make with what I said on the action plan, we are aiming for an improvement in the annual performance of the BU compared to the Q1 with return to growth in GGR at least in the second half of the year, driven by the implementation of the ongoing action plan, both as I mentioned and a number of others that I didn't mention year yet. And globally, this will have an impact on our recurring EBITDA margin. We aim it to be in the range of 23% to 24%. What is very important for you to have in mind is that we are working hard to generate growth. So we don't want to damage this capacity to grow by doing crediting on the cost. So we will continue to drive a lot of performance but to be clear, we will -- our #1 priority is to come back to growth, and we are fully focused on this objective. Thank you very much. Now I'm open to your question that I will answer along with Mark Blom, the IR that is just next to me.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley.

My first question is on LSF. Just for sort of clarity, are you suggesting that the performance is simply a sort of a matter of luck, there were tough comps and you were more unlucky than you expected to be in this half of the quarter? Or are there areas of [ misexecution ] or anything operational that you need to turn around? That's my first question. .

Okay, thank you, and good evening had. For LSF, it's very clear. It's a question of top comp for the quarter and also lack of luck, if I may say, on our side. which translates into the fact that we don't think that we will compensate that throughout the rest of the year. But no structural problem as we still think that we are able to continue in -- at a pace that is the one that we have forecasted on Q2, Q3, Q4. So no structural problem. The question is that we had some temporary one-off elements in Q1 but temporary, it means that we don't expect them to translate into other gaps in the other quarters.

Okay. I have 2 follow-ups on OSB, if that's okay. The first one is on the U.K. performance. It's I think probably quite a weak number from where people would have expected. Is there sense you've got for what the market did in Q1, some of your peers have reported sort of decent growth there. So yes, just sort of color versus the market, I guess. And the bigger question is you've guided towards the second half turnaround in OSB. I guess the question is, do you sort of know what it's going to take. You've outlined some action plans, but obviously, you're moving into that role, Pascal, you said that it's a big priority, but you've also got to identify the problems. Are you sure you know what the diagnosis is. And I guess connected to that, does the 23% to 24% margin assume that you're putting more cost into the business to turn it around? Or are you having to say more efficiencies? Because obviously, OSB is providing a lot of the efficiencies through this year and next year for your sort of overall medium-term guidance?

Yes. Thank you again, Ed. First, the question of what why it is weaker than we expected in the U.K. and how we will end this turnaround. The of course, the first answer and the main answer is that I think that we have maybe underestimated the difficulty of fine-tuning the compliance rules to get to a situation where we are fully compliant compared if we talk about RG and AML rules, but at the same time, efficient commercially. And what I've seen and what we are working on is that we have maybe worked too much in silos from the different teams, and we need to work this element more in a 360-degree view across all the elements because it's a question of fine-tuning and this fine-tuning has not been done enough correctly to date, and we are working very hard to find a way to turn it around. And I think it's clearly achievable. We have also some other elements that we are challenging the way we are doing our marketing. Are we recruiting the good players? Are we good at CRM, et cetera. We have a number of improvement on those elements also. We have also some elements to move in our Casino product. I don't talk about the sport betting product because what it is, but it's 15% of the business in the U.K., so I cannot blame only the sport betting product. So we have a number of elements I cannot say that I have understood 100%, and it will be solved in 2 months, but we have done the job to get into the details and to get the -- a number of actions that will have a positive effect. What we -- what is behind the 23% to 24%, is that what we didn't want to present you today is something where we cut off of the marketing costs. We are achieving the right level of EBITDA. We are very happy in 2026, but not that happy afterwards. What we wanted to do is to do things right. And I didn't see -- say that we will not reduce some marketing cost because at some point, the question is the efficiency of those costs. And I'm here also to review all this question of efficiency of those costs. I said I'm here to do that because it relates much more on OBG, this question of efficiency of marketing costs. I'm quite comfortable with what we are doing around the marketing costs on the vapor and the French monopoly, so no problem here. I think this is not the point on marketing costs and how we deliver them is more a question not only but more globally on OBG, the work has begun well before I take a comment of this business unit, but it has to be accelerated and done in the proper way globally.

The next question comes from Estelle Weingrod from JPM.

The first one, just following up on a question perhaps on the U.K. with the implementation of the new tax for [indiscernible] gaming starting April, is there anything to flag in the market currently, perhaps in terms of the competitive intensity, black market or anything? I know it's a bit early, but just in case you have something. And the second question on the Netherlands. You have now cycled most of the TAF regulation comps since mid-February. Can we get more color on the GGR momentum in March onwards? Which should have been on a cleaner base?

Yes. Okay. First element, it's a little bit too early 3 weeks after the beginning of the taxation to see what are the way that the behavior of the different factors. What we know is that what we fear among all the operators, not us, in particular, but the operator is development of the offshore offer. This is, for sure, one of our discusses. We have flagged that clearly to the UK GC the Ministry of budget, not exactly the name of the cancer last year -- end of last year and they said that they have understood the point, and they will give more capacity to the UK GC to fighting on that. We are also completely sure that it's fully done now, but it is something that we will continue to work on because we cannot -- we cannot have a more stringent regulation use and tax levels and not having a good fight and an efficient fight against the illegal actors we have explained in detail to the GC and the Chancellor it is possible to fight against any collectors not because it's online, but it is possible. It is possible. There is ways to do that. So now we will push on that because we want to fair play in this field. It's okay to have at the end of the day, more tax. It's okay to have a more objective of protecting the players not okay to not have a level plan field that is the same for everybody. And second -- sorry, second question was about the Netherlands. Yes, what we can see now is that we are coming from the situation where we were declining to a situation where we will be flattish. First, this is our first objective to stabilize the situation, taking some actions on our side to be able to help this situation to get better. And we are working on how we can bring some growth, but it will not be an enormous growth in this jurisdiction. But first objective to come from decreasing to flat then come from flat to a shorter level of growth possible in the future.

Can I just ask a last question? I mean we have seen articles on some like suggestions for like EU tax for the industry. Do you have a view on this? Like how likely is it to happen? Or not?

EU tax that didn't have that in mind, but clearly, as we are talking about activity that are regulated and taxed locally jurisdiction by jurisdiction. I think it's unlikely that we could get a new tax on the gaming industry. You have also to have in mind that the gaming industry is one of the more tax industries. So I think it's likely, but I didn't have that in mind, but don't listen or read or believe an article. I don't think it's credible globally. But I will deep dive on it.

The next question comes from Sabrina Blanc from Bernstein.

Yes. Sabrina Blanc from Bernstein. I have 2 questions from my part. The first one is regarding the new guidance that you are providing for the full year. Just to understand where it comes from the bulk of the decrease of the guidance, if it's the weakness of the lottery in Q1? Or is it weakness of the U.K. And the second question is regarding the your action plan on the Slide #7. Can you provide some details regarding U.K. and the Netherlands targeted task forces that you would like to put in place?

Okay. Hello, Sabrina. On your first question, it's very clear. On the lottery, we had an impact on the first quarter. So part of the guidance reviewed is linked to this impact in the first quarter. But we don't see an impact that will also be in Q2, Q3, Q4. So it's a one-off on Q1. We are below our expectations on Q1, and we don't think that we will compensate it on the rest of the year, but we will not either degrade continue to lose ground. So it's more a one-off Q1 in the way we see it. In bit, it's a little bit different. We have a decrease in Q1, and we think it will continue in Q2. and at a certain extent, in H2, but at a lesser extent, making it possible for us to come back to growth at least on GGR level on the second part of the year. What it means is that it's not magical when you change the management. You need to have some time to put in place really new things. So we cannot expect to see things magically change over 1 quarter. We cannot expect either to wait a long time to see things changing. What we are doing is that we are working very hard on the action plans on the way we are managing this BU, the way we are getting in very detailed work to understand exactly what is going on and find a solution to everything. So it means that we will turn around it we cannot promise that we will turn around it in the next quarter on 100%. This is what it means. So if -- to summarize, the impact on the NSF is low and limited to the Q1, the impact on OBG sales is higher when you look at the full guidance and is not limited to if you're looking at the growth volume, the adjustment in the guidance, for example, you may have seen in revenue from slight increase to slight decrease. Let's assume that 2/3 of this is attributable to OBG, 1/3 to LSS. And basically, we've had the same split when it came to the overall changes in EBITDA guidance. And your second question is to understand a little bit more of what is behind what we say, targeted task forces in U.K. and the question is that what I saw is that we are -- we addressed the different difficulty that we have on those 2 jurisdictions, more in silos. It means that we had some marketing initiatives from the marketing from product initiatives from the product from requirements from the responsible gaming team, some AML requirements from the AML team not working really around the same table to find the best way to implement all that and to make it globally efficient. So it's a question of -- on ways of working. It's a question also on how we dig in the different details with the data that is needed to really understand what are the right decisions to take the right moves to make. So what I've done is to take all the specialists and lock them in the same room. I didn't lock them in the real world, but make them work in the same room and talk to each other because it has a link what is completely true that all those elements are totally linked. For example, if you send a bonus to a player that is about to be blocked by the RG and this player is playing and then blocked by DRG 10 minutes after this is pointless. So this is quite an extreme example just to make it very simple. It's a far more complex and sophisticated, but it gives you a sense of if you try to solve the compliance problems that we added because we had some fines and it's not acceptable for us to sometimes that related to actions of -- not of FDJ United, but the previous owner of [ Kindred. ] But anyway, we don't want it to happen again. So if we take the actions line by line. We are not taking -- it's not a good way to look at the problem. And this changes quite a lot of the way we are looking at that. So more facts, more figures. More also complete view of the situation.

May have had a question regarding the U.K. Could you remind us your market share in the U.K.? And is one key question. You have mentioned that you don't expect right now a positive impact, but how long will you accept weight a recovery of the U.K. situation? And does that mean that you would be able to withdraw from the U.K?

So our market share in the U.K. in the region of low single digits. Globally. The situation in the U.K. is that we are profitable in the U.K. it's clear that it's more [indiscernible] with the implementation of the new tax from April 1, but we are profitable. So we don't have any intention to withdraw from the U.K., I think it's not the point. The point is that we have some problems to solve. We have some way to find to be, at the same time, compliant and in capacity to grow. We have seen frankly, that some of our competitors have been able to do that. We are not less smart than them. The question is to do things right. We don't think that it will need years to come to this situation because at the end, it's not a very structural deep problem. It's more the way we are working, as I said, the way we are implementing our different measures. So for me, there is absolutely no question of getting out of the U.K. The top priority is to fix this problem, and it's more a question of some of quarters, maybe not 1 quarter, some quarters than yours to get there, frankly.

The next question comes from Andrew Tam from Rothschild and Co Redburn.

Just the first one. Can you give us a sense for how U.K. customers' numbers have done? Have they declined more or less than the GGR revenue numbers? And just a question on how you're mitigating the U.K. tax hikes. Is there a risk that cutting back on marketing at this point will compound some of those player losses in terms of retention?

Yes. I don't think I've really got well your first question second very well, but your first question, if you may -- I'm very sorry, if you may repeat your first question for me to be sure that I've got it well.

Yes. I guess some of your peers put out to the mark or publish average monthly players or monthly users and so forth. Can you give us a sense of the number of customers and how player growth has tracked relative to the GGR revenue numbers you put out for the U.K. tonight.

Okay. Okay. And sorry, I didn't get it because the line was not very good, but it was very clear. Yes, I think we can provide this kind of data, but I don't have it in my top of mind here. What I can say is that we are looking at the evolution of the active players jurisdiction by Justin because it's an important one. We know that in total OBG we have grown the monthly players by a factor of 3% in total. I will come back maybe later or offline we need to provide you with more details on what is the number in the U.K. have some other jurisdictions in light of online, but not the number of. What is clear the U.K. Just to give you some color is that the main problem that we have is not the number of active it's clearly the drop in the average revenue per user. This is our really main problem. We have an acquisition in the U.K. that is quite good. And again, I'm sorry not to have the numbers top of mind, but the acquisition is quite good. The question that we have is that we -- it doesn't translate at the right level into an average revenue that is good. It means also that it's linked with this question of fine-tuning the compliance -- it means that we are maybe not doing exactly what we should do to keep a part of the player and to do the retention exactly as we should do it in the context of quite complex RG routes. So the question for me is more ARPU than a question of acquisition. I don't know if you to part of your question. I mean on a quarter-over-quarter, I mean we have a slight increase in the active player numbers. So as Pascal was mentioning is much more to number of actives, which is up let's say, in the single-digit figures, but definitely on a quarter by quarter. I mean either versus the last quarter of 25% or the first quarter of 25%, both it's -- so I confirm what I said. The question is that we are still quite okay recruiting players. The question is how we drive more value over those players and it's clearly part of our priority and action plan. Again, it's not just a question of how we push on those clients because if we push clients that are becoming at-risk customers at risk players, we don't get the value for the money that we spend. So this is the core of the question, working on it. we see in the coming weeks or quarters, the results of that.

So just to follow up on that. It sounds like most of the revenue headwinds are from the compliance, the initiatives that you put through rather than an acquisition problem. Mid Q2, where we're going to see the hikes in the IGD, obviously, to mitigate that, that's going to require cuts to marketing. Now as that cuts to marketing going to compound those issues? Are we going to see a deceleration or a decline in player numbers as a result of that?

Yes. No, what we -- if I well understood your question, we -- in which -- and it comes to the mitigation that we have put in place. What we have done to mitigate the U.K., we have a little bit reduced the marketing spend, but not at a high extent because what we aim also is to be able to take a benefit of the situation of the smaller and weaker players that will be in much difficulty with the tax that is now higher than it was at a very high level. So we don't expect to reduce dramatically the level of marketing Pakistan. But again, for us, the question is primarily how we work on the retention and on the ARPU of the active players that we have.

Got it. And then just finally, are you able to provide us with any color on how the U.K. business has tracked sequentially into April, perhaps?

I mean, sorry, we didn't catch the end of your question, how the U.K. business is evolving sequentially?

Yes, versus Q1.

You mean the beginning of Q2 versus Q1?

Correct.

It's a little -- it's a little bit too early to have a few direct view to be extrapolated over only 2 weeks of Q2. It depends on how the level of margin for betting it changes -- we have some good weeks and bad weeks on that. So it's not really a good way to see it just 2.5 weeks between the now and the beginning of April. I think it will be better to talk about that end of Q2 when we will have a little bit more view vision on what happens really on 2 weeks. I cannot provide, I think, a correct answer to your question.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas.

I've got 3 Firstly, on the guidance revision, you said it's roughly 1/3 in lottery and sports betting France. 2/3 in OBG. Obviously, within lottery and sports basin France, there is sports betting France, which is also affected by player payout and sports calendar, et cetera. So it's just keen to understand -- how much you think is the impact of strictly long cycles? It seems like in total, your guidance of about EUR 60 million lower EBITDA. That's 20 million lottery and sports betting France. Yes, any more help on what part is just lottery, just long cycle, please?

Okay. So yes, understood. Your question is among the is the part of the drug games and what is low cycles? And what is the part of the retail sports betting? Mark, have you got any insight on that?

We will look at it during the at the figures top of mind. But as Mark has already done a few minutes ago with another question, maybe we can get it better globally or look at the weight of the 2 activities, I think I can say without any doubt that it's a more long cycle than retail sport betting. And also at a part of this sports betting.

If I may. .

Yes. On sports betting you got 2 things. Basically, I mean also, you've got overall, I would say, competition which were less opening. For example, some of the events -- we're already, we said down in the first part of the competition, so the match sorry, the second [indiscernible] was definitely less attractive for the people, and they don't even bet on the second make part. So that's something on the other point is on coal, we have a very high quite a high level of [indiscernible] And as Pascal mentioned, this level of TP does not automatically translate into stakes coal in the week following. So that makes that -- at the end of the day, we say basically, the bulk of the impact is much more geared towards the -- well, not a little bit more than spot bidding.

And so related to France, but this time Competitive Market. Just moving on to -- yes, in France, but on the competitive market this time, you said it's too early to have a view on Q2. But I'm sure specifically for the France rebranding you must be paying a lot of attention to how it's doing because I think it was at the very end of the quarter. So just curious if you get any extra color here. It's 6% up in GGR, but that's mostly before the migration. How is it doing towards migration?

Yes, very important. And to be clear, we are following that day by day. First, we had a very smooth and good migration which means that we did it in the night of the 23rd to the 24th of March with just [indiscernible] hours stopping the activity in the middle of the night. It had just an impact on the -- some NBA matches, but not more. And going back fully live morning of 2024 of July -- of March. First thing, how it works on the migration of the accounts and the merger of the accounts of the players. We did it with an accuracy of something like 99.9%, which worked very well. Second, how we -- what can we say about the activity on sport betting poker and all 3 things since then. On sports betting, we are a bit over our expectations that we're taking into account the fact that we would have some impact, but we are over our expectations. In all 3 things, we are far over our expectations because the Univest player gets the full access to the offer of the turf and not only the B2B like access. So we have a better cross-selling between the 2 and the better user experience. And on poker, this is really very, very good because we are far over our expectations. We have moved from the [ Playtech ] poker to the relaxed poker, [indiscernible] being our subsidiary. We have done a lot of adaptation, modifications to developments on the relaxed poker to get all what it had and [ Playtech Atmos and what Playtech Ad ] and relaxed at not. So we have really the best of the 2. And we are now currently something like 70% over our expectation on that. Poker is not the biggest part, but it's quite interesting yes, slightly over expectations on sports far behind on outracing and far behind on poker. So globally, we are very happy today. still in the stabilizing zone. So we have we still look at it very precisely. We have still to we say, English to make the players that are not recurring players go back to the platform. So this is now our -- the challenge that we have. We have focused our attention the VIP, the more important players and the upper level of the players. And now the question is to reactivate all the players that are not connecting every week or every month and every quarter, less regular player. They have less value for us. So it's less a problem. But still, it's important to have the full base of Unibet merged into the new platform. So globally, as I said previously, technically, it's a success and commercial -- the next step that we will have to look at how it works is when we will be launched a new competitor in France, we understood that would be in May, somewhere in May before the World Cup. And this is also why we had all this done work before to be really fully live and up and running for this moment. This new competitor is [ Bet365, ] A little bit more dangerous than previous ones that have tried and failed to enter the French market. So still cautious, happy -- and just to what we are saying that -- so Jaafar, the temporary is first quarter on LSF is a little bit -- is skewed a little bit more attributable to lottery drug games than to sports betting a little bit confirmation.

Okay. And on what you said about the rebranding in France, you seem happy against expectations. Obviously, I don't know what your expectations were. So in Q1, you were doing plus 6 in GGR across France and Sweden. Are you still in growth? Or what's your expectation for a meaningful impact from the migration and you're not growing, but you're happy?

No, no. Seeding growth.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

So thank you to you all to have attended this Q1 session for FDJ United. And I say rounded, like we say in French and English, maybe the de tomorrow or day on our AGM and also next step will be the dividend that will be paid in the coming days. And then we will -- I will not be there for the H1, but you will have the big pleasure to have Dane and [indiscernible] Pallet presenting H1 results end of July. So goodbye to you all, and wish you all the best.