Good morning, and thank you for joining our interim results presentation today. I'll start with a brief overview, then spend some time giving details on our other exciting announcement this morning, namely our strategy for Central and Eastern Europe, including the acquisition of SuperSport. We can then return to our half-year performance, with Rob talking through our numbers. Finally, I'll update you all on our strategic progress before we finish with questions. A few weeks ago, we updated you on our trading in Q2 and the first half of the year. Today, I want to be clear with the message. Entain's first half performance was robust, as we successfully continued to deliver on our strategy. Our retail business performed strongly as customers enjoyed the updates made to our machines and overall in-store experience. Our online performance was more mixed, as we faced into various headwinds, in particular lapping tough COVID comparators. By putting the customer at the heart of our strategy, our decision-making and delivery, we are making great progress across our objectives. Our record levels of actives is testament to how our customers are responding as we deliver great products with our leading brands attracting new and retaining existing customers, all whilst broadening our recreational audience. Our strategic M&A continues, and this morning we announced the creation of Entain CEE and the acquisition of SuperSport. This marks our first proper steps into Central and Eastern Europe and will enable us to drive our growth strategy across the region. You've heard us say before that Central and Eastern Europe is a strategic focus for us, being a highly attractive market with significant opportunities, while also being aligned with our commitment to operating in fully regulated markets. In true Entain style, we are taking an innovative and unique approach to expansion in this market that will enable us to unlock the significant opportunity. First, we're establishing Entain CEE to drive expansion there, partnering with EMMA Capital, a leading investment company with considerable expertise in the region. Entain CEE is owned 75% by Entain and 25% by EMMA Capital. Second, Entain CEE will acquire SuperSport, the leading gaming and sportsbook operator in Croatia, currently owned by EMMA. SuperSport is a great business. It has 54% market share in the regulated Croatian market, with 85% of revenue coming from online, and it has delivered consistently strong financial performance. The transaction is expected to be mid- to single-digit earnings accretive in the first full year. Entain CEE will be led by Radim Haluza, current CEO of SuperSport, and a highly experienced and capable individual within the industry. In terms of the transaction structure itself, Entain CEE is acquiring 100% of SuperSport for an initial consideration of EUR 800 million, of which EUR 600 million is payable in cash by Entain on completion, which is expected to take place in Q4. As you can see, CEE is a highly attractive growth market, worth today around EUR 5 billion of gross gaming revenue and is expected to grow at over 10% per year through 2025. The 10 major markets across CEE are dominated by local operators and is therefore a highly attractive consolidation opportunity for us. At the moment, we are being selective in terms of which markets in the region we are prioritizing based on various factors such as regulatory environment and addressable opportunity. Historically, international operators have had little success in driving consolidation in the CEE region. The sector is led by locally founded national players, few of which have succeeded in building a scale outside of their home country. International players have historically found it challenging to secure lasting market share across the region, as they have often lacked necessary local market knowledge. We have created Entain CEE, which addresses many of these challenges and combines our global scale, access to capital, and industry-leading capabilities together with the regional knowledge and connectivity of EMMA Capital, which I would add is key, and overlaid with the expert regional operational knowledge of local acquisitions and their management teams, starting with SuperSport. As I mentioned, Entain CEE will be led by Radim Haluza, current CEO of SuperSport. We have set out more details on the structure and governance in the appendix. To give you a bit more detail on SuperSport, it's a fantastic business. It's the leading player in the attractive Croatian market with a number of differentiating factors. It has a 54% market share in Croatia. With a broadly 50-50 split between betting and gaming, it has a good product diversification. It has more than 130,000 yearly unique active customers. Its website is among the top 20 most visited in Croatia, and it has a 70% brand awareness. Having originated out of retail and still retaining a shop network, SuperSport has transformed into a predominantly online operator with a proprietary technology and app offering, supported by in-house infrastructure. As such, it has grown rapidly with 85% of revenue online. It has a proven omni-channel approach that helps drive brand awareness and customer acquisitions. As you can see, SuperSport has demonstrated consistently strong financial performance over the years with strong margins, delivering compound annual growth from 2016 to 2021 of 16.6% for revenue and 20.8% for EBITDA, underpinned by healthy EBITDA margins. Going forward, we expect SuperSport to continue demonstrating resilient top-line growth and margin progression. The transaction is expected to value SuperSport at EUR 920 million, which implies a 9.1x full year 2022 expected EBITDA multiple after synergies. For 75% of the economic rights in SuperSport, we are paying EUR 600 million in cash at completion. There are further potential payments to EMMA based on the performance of the business as shown on this page. The important thing to note is that the total consideration, plus the enhanced dividends, will imply a multiple of less than 10x SuperSport's last 12 months EBITDA. We're intending to fund the transaction entirely through debt financing and will raise approximately EUR 700 million of third-party debt financing, which will add 0.4x to our pro forma leverage. The transaction is expected to be mid-single digit earnings accretive in its first full year of ownership, and we expect to complete in Q4 this year. To summarize this very exciting strategic opportunity, CEE offers a regulated market with strong growth prospects. We have created an innovative structure to unlock the potential in this region. That structure provides the regional expertise to grow and the local expertise to execute. SuperSport is the Croatian market leader with unrivaled brand recognition. It has a highly attractive financial profile with a proprietary in-house technology stack. This transaction fits firmly with our growth strategy by entering new regulated markets and broadening our geographic diversity. With that, I will hand you over to Rob to go through our first half results in detail. Thank you, Jette, and good morning, everyone. Let me take a moment to say I'm delighted to have announced our latest acquisition this morning. We've been looking at the CEE market for a while now, and it's been a challenging region to break into. Establishing Entain CEE with EMMA Capital and the acquisition of SuperSport provides us an exciting strategic solution to unlock significant opportunities and value across the region. Now on to the numbers. I'll take you through the financial highlights, and then we'll end with some comments on guidance. As always, you'll find more detailed financials in the appendix to review at your leisure. Kicking off, on this slide, we set out the key highlights of our group's robust performance during the first half. Group NGR was GBP 2.1 billion, up 18% on last year. If we include our 50% share of BetMGM, that sees a total NGR of GBP 2.4 billion, up 22% year-on-year on a constant currency basis. Retail's performance was excellent. Of course, benefiting from lapping H1 last year when our estate was largely closed or under COVID restrictions, but it also benefited from our improved in-store experience, which Jette will talk you through in a bit more detail shortly. Online NGR in H1 was down 7%, primarily as a result of the tough COVID-boosted comparatives last year. What is pleasing about our online performance is that it continues to be actives driven with record levels, up 57% versus H1 in 2019, demonstrating a greater mix of recreational customers. We are seeing strong reactivation of our existing player base, as well as attracting new customers with FTDs up 35% versus pre-COVID. Online NGR has now grown at a three-year CAGR of 13% in constant currency. If we strip away the COVID impact on last year, online NGR growth for H1 would have been positive year-on-year, which given the other headwinds we faced into, including the temporary loss of the Netherlands, the benefit of the Euros last year, affordability measures in the U.K., and the consumer backdrop, that clearly shows that the underlying momentum and relative resilience in our online business is strong. Moving across the page, group EBITDA came in at GBP 471 million, up 17% year-on-year, with retail ahead and online behind. This growth in NGR and EBITDA reflects the underlying strength of the group that comes from the diversification of our geographic, product, and channel mix. BetMGM continues to perform very well with H1 NGR of $608 million, and we are firmly on track for NGR of at least $1.3 billion for the year. Our share of losses for the half were in line with expectations as BetMGM continues to grow and invest in the future. Moving on, underlying cash flow was GBP 191 million in H1, and Adjusted EPS comes in at 47.6 pence per share, up 50% year- on- year for the half. Following an active start to the year on M&A, net debt nudges up to GBP 2.2 billion with leverage of 2.3 x at the half year. The Evolve cost savings program that we announced with our interims last year is on track to deliver GBP 100 million of cash savings in 2023. We've included a slide in the appendix as a reminder of the phasing, as well as the split between EBITDA and CapEx. To finish the slide, dividends. You will have seen the board's decision to reinstate the dividend with an updated policy. We restart with a dividend of GBP 100 million for 2022 financial year and plan to grow it progressively thereafter. I'll come back to that in a bit more detail shortly. Here we set out the usual EBITDA bridge for H1, walking through the various moving components. For the first half, we posted group EBITDA growth of 17% versus the prior year. This year-on-year performance reflects a starkly different COVID impact by channel in the prior year, but more importantly, the benefit of diversity. Starting with online, EBITDA at nearly GBP 385 million was down around GBP 111 million versus 2021, with our performance impacted by the headwinds I just mentioned, in particular, COVID restrictions last year. Conversely, retail delivered EBITDA of GBP 141 million, which is up GBP 204 million year-on-year with shops fully operational this year. The performance has been helped by our best-in-class offer across both our gaming machines and self-service betting terminals. Like-for-like volumes in retail are back to pre-COVID levels, and volumes in the U.K. and Italy are ahead. Corporate costs during the half were up nearly GBP 9 million, which relates to our ongoing commitment to responsible gambling, player protection, and ESG initiatives. Finally, to our new opportunity segment, which comprises innovation and Unikrn. With GBP 15 million invested in H1, we are on track with our full year guidance of GBP 50 million, which is weighted towards H2 primarily due to Unikrn launch timings. While this hits EBITDA as we invest, it is of course a driver of future value. Moving on to cash flow. We continue to invest in our business, and in H1, we deployed GBP 293 million on M&A and BetMGM investment. As I mentioned, we ended H1 with net debt of just over GBP 2.2 billion and leverage at 2.3 x Liquidity also remains strong with GBP 386 million of accessible cash, which becomes over GBP 900 million when you add in our undrawn RCF. During the second half, we have the newly announced dividend payment, a GBP 100 million bond repayment, as well as completion of the BetCity acquisition in Q4, all of which we have ample resources for. As yet to touch on, the SuperSport transaction has committed financing. Assuming SuperSport also completes in Q4, pro forma leverage at the full year is expected to be a little under 3x. As a reminder, our strong cash flow enables us to delever by around half a turn per year, and so we continue to have a strong balance sheet to support our growth. Now to a reminder of our capital allocation policy. We are a growth business, and given our growing profits and strong cash generation, we're in a great position to deliver that growth and manage our balance sheet and drive returns for shareholders. Our capital allocation policy is clearly built around growth. I've outlined these priorities previously, so I won't go through them again this morning. The key update is our new dividend policy. The board has been cognizant to balance the importance of dividends alongside our strategic growth agenda and ensure that any dividend policy is appropriate for a growth business like Entain. We are implementing a progressive dividend policy, starting with a total dividend of GBP 100 million for the financial year to December 2022. The dividend will be paid in equal installments with the first half year and full year results, which means the interim dividend announced today will be 8.5 pence per share. Finally, an update on guidance. This slide focuses on the material changes to the guidance we comprehensively set out in March. You'll have seen from this morning's statement that our expectation for 2022 group EBITDA is in the range of GBP 925 million- 975 million, which is in line with updated consensus following our Q2 trading statement, and it represents year-on-year growth of 5%-10%. With our Q2s, we updated online NGR guidance to be flat year-on-year for 2022. As you're looking at the shape of the halves, we expect H2 to be back into year-on-year growth and in line with H1 on a three-year CAGR basis with double-digit growth. Similarly with Retail, these comments are reminders of what we outlined in July. We expect H1's NGR performance to continue for H2, save for a normalization of strong sports margins in H1. However, EBITDA will be impacted by some additional energy costs and a full half impact of our increase in minimum colleague pay to GBP 10 per hour. My steer here is to note Retail's excellent H1 results, but don't just double the H1 EBITDA for the full year. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see we recovered during H1 GBP 160 million from the Greek authorities following a favorable court ruling last November that we reported on at year-end. While the recovery was in line with expectations, the timing was unclear, and so this is a positive development. Although we note the ruling in our favor has been appealed and a Supreme Court hearing is expected in 2024. Lastly, we now expect our underlying effective tax rate to be 18% for 2022, which is up from previous guidance of 15% following the Gibraltar government's decision to withdraw its super deduction for marketing for 2021 and 2022. In summary, Entain's H1 performance reflects the underlying strength of our business. The group's momentum continues to be strong, and our outlook for the balance of the year is unchanged. With that, I'll hand you back to Jette. Many thanks, Rob. You've seen this slide before, but I think it's worth reiterating that our strategy is based around two key pillars of growth and sustainability. Entain is all about bringing moments of excitement into people's lives. By listening to our customers, better using data analytics, and putting customers at the core of every decision, we will strengthen our business, make it more sustainable for the future, become more diversified as we open up new avenues of growth to ultimately create even more sustainable returns for our shareholders. I'm delighted to say that we've been making great progress on all fronts, creating new experiences for customers that are driving greater engagement and have seen us reach our highest ever level of actives. It is our unique Entain platform that not only underpins but also drives our customer-centric growth agenda. Our technology, talent, capabilities, and expertise combine to deliver growth ahead of our markets. While our data insight, in-house studios, technical agility, and leading MarTech all enable us to be increasingly customer-centric. Simply, our platform is the enabler that will support our growth into the $160 billion+ TAM opportunity I outlined this time last year. We are able to not only capture the inbuilt growth dynamics in our industry, but also embrace the online growth from increasing digital adoption. As audiences seek differentiated and varied experiences, the breadth and depth of offering is ever more vital to customer engagement. Our capabilities within our platform have enabled us to grow into new regulated markets, predominantly through an enviable track record of M&A delivery, with Entain being the consolidator of choice. The customer insight and analytics embedded in our platform not only underpins our focus today, but enables visibility of new trends and emerging product verticals. All meaning, we are best placed to capture valuable first-mover advantages. I'm confident in saying that our operational capabilities and delivery are stronger than ever. I'm also excited by the strength of our leadership team and ambitions for the future. With our long runway for growth, we are looking forward to how we best align our structures and processes, ensuring we can best leverage our platform into the opportunities ahead. Here we have set out a reminder of what that opportunity looks like, and the powerful drivers that will grow our addressable market to almost $170 billion. You may remember last year we said our markets today were worth around $40 billion-45 billion, including the United States. Given our M&A, the return of retail, and the growth in the United States, we're already expanding that. Our core markets are expected to grow at a mid- to high-single-digit CAGR into 2025. Plus our new and growth markets are expected to grow at double-digit rates. Having increased the scale of opportunity in the United States to $37 billion earlier this year, we can see our markets being worth almost $170 billion, providing us with the opportunity to more than triple the size of our business. One of our many advantages is the diversification of our business. This not only provides greater resilience and sustainability in our revenues, but also provides exposure to higher growth markets such as Brazil. Our scale now means that including our share of BetMGM revenue, no more than 30% of our online NGR is exposed to any one market. As markets like Germany and Netherlands complete regulation, and as we grow into new markets, this diversification will only increase. I'm delighted to say that our strategy to broaden our appeal and attract a more recreational audience is delivering as we focus on providing great products and experiences for customers. That focus has also seen us hit record numbers of actives. For example, recreational customers are now over 90% of our mix in the U.K. We can use our data insights to provide this broader audience with more tailored offerings such as new and differentiated products, media, content, and social interactions with friends. As the chart on the right shows, we see excellent retention among our customers. Our broader engagement improves our understanding of customer behaviors, and thereby driving even better retention. Let us now look at our strategy in action. Since our Capital Markets Day last year, where we spoke about working to invigorate our brands, we've continued to build on the success of our Bwin, Coral, and Ladbrokes advertising campaigns. However, I also want to shine a spotlight on some of the more targeted and tailored marketing we're able to deliver. Our recent Gala Land campaign is a great example of how we leverage our data and deep customer insight to engage with specific demographics and expand our recreational audiences. Working with over 160 million user profiles from more than 30 territories and over 250 years of brand history, we've been able to rethink how we view our customers based on shared values and needs, as well as recognizing the opportunities for cross-segmental values. This has provided us with powerful tools for creating efficient and effective marketing campaigns, and the results are clear. Our most recent Gala Land campaign saw weekly search volumes for Gala Bingo jump 9% to its highest ever. Daily site visits were up 12%. Player volumes were up 16%, and first time deposits spiked 33%. Understanding our customers allow us to shape and position our brands around them. Doing this across more of our brands delivers a wider customer audience, all while driving efficient and sustainable marketing. This intelligent and powerful approach is becoming part of the Entain marketing playbook, and we have another exciting innovative Ladbrokes campaign coming up shortly. This deeper understanding and insight allows us to know more of what our customers want from interactive experiences and expanded offerings to seeking new, differentiated, and engaging features that extend beyond traditional betting and gaming products. We are responding, leveraging exclusivity through third-party providers as well as the creative talents of our in-house studios to develop exciting new game categories and engaging features. For example, we reimagined one of our most popular games as a live game show, Well, Well, Well Live. The customer response has been incredible, with over 400,000 players since its launch in April, and an average of 25 million bets each month. In fact, over 90% of our live casino players have tried it, and stickiness is over double the level seen at other top ranked games with over 55% of players returning to play again. Last week, we launched Starzle, another example of an exciting game in the emerging live game show category. It's early days, but we are pleased by the reaction so far and look forward to seeing more of our customers engage with these new types of games. Meanwhile, our free-to-play products continue to prove extremely popular with over 800,000 weekly players on our U.K. brands alone. It's not just our existing customers that are enjoying our free-to-play products, with over 140,000 new players joining via free-to-play in the first half of 2022. In April, we launched Mates Mode in Australia. This is a social feature that builds and delivers the community interaction our customers have told us they enjoy. Players can set up groups, recommend and follow each other's bets, back bets together, and chat. It has been really well received so far, with over 1/3 of bets being copied and shared by a group member, and we are seeing those customers engaging more with multis and combination products. Meanwhile, bwin has continued to build on the strength of social campaigns last year, which included live streams and game day treasury hunts. The social media-led predictor product has had over 700,000 unique players as fans interacted around the large European tournaments. The broadening of our engagement offer means not only do we retain customers within our own ecosystem, but proves we provide an alternative form of entertainment our customers enjoy. Our partnerships continue to provide a great platform to build customer engagement. McLaren is a perfect example of what we can do by working alongside partners with strong brands and shared values. It also unlocks access to exclusive content such as behind the scenes with the McLaren team and prizes including backstage passes to Formula 1 races. Most recently, we launched the McLaren Turbo Series, which offers a supercharged poker experience and features Daniel Ricciardo. bwin continues its long-term partnerships with the UEFA, the German FA, and multiple Bundesliga clubs. I'm also extremely proud that bwin partners with the German women's football team. This relationship has been in place since the start of 2019, and it's gratifying to see women's football receive the attention it deserves. This is a perfect example of the kind of partnerships we identify and build as we expand our brand reach and depth into new audiences while supporting talented sports people and their teams. We've also been busy building our content and media across our brands. ITV's Against the Odds series, produced in association with Coral, has had 3.9 million views with a social reach of over 15 million people. Developing the series alongside ITV's creative team has been a fantastic opportunity to shine the spotlight on the incredible stories behind those inspiring sports people. Our business in Australia continues to lead on innovative and exclusive content. The in-house team now have produced almost 600 videos watched by over 21 million people, as well as seeing strong social engagement. We also recently announced our partnership with Australia's leading free-to-air broadcaster, Racing.com. Launched in July, these live racing channels on both Ladbrokes and Neds deliver an integrated experience for our customers. This further differentiates us, embedding us as the first choice for racing enthusiasts with a compelling content and media offering driving brand awareness and engagement. As demonstrated by the strong performance during the first half, U.K. retail is another powerful example of how, by focusing on what engages our customers, improving the in-store digital offering, and creating experiences that are second to none on the high street, we can drive performance. We started, as ever, with our customers. Having a large number of shops with a broad base provides valuable insight on what they want, and that is a better interactive experience. We put more digital screens in our shop fronts that can flex between national campaigns or locally relevant activity and align better with online campaigns and offers. In our digital hubs, touchscreens display replace hard copy fixture lists and ensure odds are real time, while monitors show live sporting action from around the globe, as well as our Ladbrokes and Coral TV content. We know customers came back to stores for the gaming machine experience that can't be easily replicated on a mobile phone, and this accounts for around 55% of our shop volumes. We have more of the best cabinets making play more interactive and engaging. Over 60% of our gaming content is exclusively provided by third parties. When added to our own in-house games, this means we have the best and most differentiated offer in the High Street. On the sports side, the more digital in-shop bet station offering has been well received as customers now have access to a wider variety of sports and offers. We are also seeing a much broader demographic enjoying the in-store experience. This wider audience is driving some new and interesting trends. For example, more betting on the Indian Premier League cricket, which was virtually unheard of in-store a few years ago. We're seeing an increasing number of sports customers expanding their interest into games like basketball. In absolute terms, our bet station NGR is now over 1.5 x bigger than in 2019. We continue to evolve the proposition and are developing our own group bet station software solution, which will be live in over 25% of shops ahead of the Football World Cup this year. Now turning to BetMGM in North America. Adam and the team provided a comprehensive update in May, and the business very much remains on track with their long-term roadmap and path to profitability. In the three months to May, BetMGM had a market share of 23% across the state it's live in. That number excludes New York, as we have clearly articulated that due to New York's tax rate, we are deliberately deprioritizing marketing spend there and focusing on other states with better returns. That said, even including New York, our share across our live markets is 21%, so still very much in line with our longer term 20%-25% share expectations. During the first half, Entain enabled the launch of BetMGM in four new states as well as Ontario. In each market, BetMGM's flexible, innovative, and unique commercial strategy and delivery model is all underpinned by the Entain business intelligence engine, which provides one of the widest customer access models coupled with best in class channel optimization. Recent exclusives with Carnival Corporation and a Wheel of Fortune branded gaming experience are illustrative of BetMGM's broader and differentiated strategy in attracting the right long-term customer base. As demonstrated by our approach to New York, our focus on return on our investment means we spend where we see the greater opportunity, delivering more customers at lower contribution costs and greater returns. As with Entain's international business, also underpinning BetMGM's success is the quality of our products and offering. The U.S. portfolio contains over a thousand games, and our exclusivity of in-house games delivers unrivaled products and experiences to customers across North America. This is evidenced by BetMGM's ongoing leadership in iGaming, and we continue to build our sports betting share with a number of new initiatives landing in the next few months. As mentioned in May, development includes an app redesign to optimize sports products and feature discovery, enhanced content display, as well as greater personalization for a more tailored experience. These fantastic improvements are coming soon and are expected to be live ahead of the NFL season in September. I think it's also worth revisiting the structural advantages and efficiencies that BetMGM are able to leverage due to both the joint venture parents. These provide embedded cost advantages in the range of 600-700 basis point margin benefit. They include such things as the scale and capability advantages for marketing, royalties and regulatory expertise from both parents, savings on market access fees, and access to a well-known brand and associated customer base. The biggest cost advantages come from the Entain platform with technology, in-house products, data analytics, BI, and CRM expertise. These are significant and additional to the 600-700 basis point structural market benefit. Last but not least, before I summarize, sustainability is the second of our twin strategic pillars and is at the heart of everything we do. We continue to lead our industry on responsibility and deliver further progress across our sustainability charter. This slide shows some of those achievements so far this year. ARC is being rolled out into international markets, and our responsible gaming efforts have been recognized in the U.K. and internationally with awards from GamCare and EGR. Through the Entain Foundation, we continue our investment in our local communities. Just last week, we announced the latest extension to the Pitching In Trident Leagues partnerships, as well as the launch of our volunteer hub and expansion into international projects. Similarly, the Entain Foundation United States launched its first Gamble Responsibly America app. This is the first of its kind and has been widely endorsed, including by the American Gaming Association. Through partnerships with EPIC Risk Management and the Oakley Foundation, the Entain Foundation U.S. has led education initiatives with US colleges and professional sports organizations about responsible gambling practices. We continue to strive to meet and exceed the highest standards in everything we do, and we're being recognized for it. I'm delighted to say that we have received S&P Global's award, which recognizes our ESG leadership as well as Inclusion in the Sustainability Yearbook 2022. In the US, SBC has named us the socially responsible operator of the year, two years running. You heard me say it before, and I'll say it again. I firmly believe that the most sustainable business will be the most successful business in our industry. We understand and embrace the role we play in our society, and my team and I are committed to Entain's leadership across the sustainability agenda. We will be holding our second Entain Sustain event on 19th of October, and I look forward to updating you on our progress and leadership in this important area. Let me summarize a busy morning. We are making great progress on our strategy, advancing on numerous fronts. This is a key factor in driving our actives to record levels as we widen our customer base and engage with a broader recreational audience. We continue to grow through M&A with five transactions announced so far this year. Each and every one of them reflects our ability to focus on the right solution for each market. BetMGM continues to grow from strength to strength, and we have further extended our industry leadership on the very important area of responsibility and sustainability. If there is one thing I'd like to leave you with today, that is the underlying strength and momentum in our business. This, and the diversification of our business, our strategy, and the huge pool of talent we have with Entain, means that we are confident that we can continue to deliver value for all our stakeholders. This ends the formal part of the presentation, so thank you for listening. I'd now like to open up for your questions. I'll try and host this Q&A. Can I ask that either you put your name in the chat or you raise your hand, and I'll try and form an orderly queue. If you've only got yourself up there as a mobile number, it'd be good to know who you are before you open up the line, if that's okay. I'll keep you on mute. Do remember to unmute your line before you ask a question. We are recording it, as you just heard. We will put the recording together with the presentation and transcribe it as well as usual altogether. I have the first question. Monique, fastest finger first. If I can hand it over to you, if you'd like to unmute your line and ask your question, please. Wonderful. Thank you. Three questions from me, if I can. The first is just about your U.K. online performance. You said U.K. online revenue growth -15% in the first half. That compares to U.K. data I'm seeing from the Gambling Commission down 23%, and your actives also better. Actives growth of 7% versus U.K. industry data up 4%. Just wondering who you think you're taking share from in that U.K. market. Good. Should we start with that? Good morning, Monique. Also apologize from my side. This is why we talk about our 99.99% uptime all the time in team. Anyway, we'll get back into the mode here. Thank you for your question. Let me just take that. Yeah, it's a good point. It does suggest that we are taking share. We saw that in the U.K. through 2021 when we got the regulator's numbers. In terms of who we are taking share from, we're waiting to see. What some of our competitors come out with this week. When I look across 2021 and Q1, we could see that we were taking share against some of our bigger competitors. Let's see, and we expect that to continue. We'll see when the numbers come out. Okay, excellent. Second question was on the U.S. and whether you can comment at all on how you intend to crystallize value in that U.S. joint venture. I just think particularly relevant at the moment, given the comments from MGM last week that they're very interested in the JV, but they can't buy what's not for sale. Yeah. I think we talked about that before. Right now, we are all focused on delivering on our plans here. There are enormous opportunities that can go forward. We are, of course, waiting now for Kansas and Massachusetts. More importantly, we're also waiting to see what happens in California. Right now, together with our partners, MGM, we're really focused on delivering on the strategy. We confirm that we're still on track to be EBITDA profitable during next year and deliver the $1.3 billion or more than $1.3 billion in NGR this year. Where we sit, listen, the partnership is going really well. I heard what Bill said last week, and that's really a question for him. We are really satisfied with the partnership. It's working really well. There are enormous benefits from what we bring to the joint venture. We'll continue to execute on the plans, and as long as we align on the strategy there, I think that's proven to be quite successful. Okay, perfect. The final question also on the U.S. Just on the JV losses. What I'm having difficulty is with tying up, so you said GBP 109 million of JV losses in the first half. When MGM reported last week, if I combine their 1Q and 2Q, their share of the JV losses, it comes to $163 million. I'm just trying to bridge that gap. Not quite understanding it. Yeah. I'll make a general comment and then hand you over to Rob, because I think there are some differences in terms of how they report this. Just to confirm overall, what we said is that we've committed funding this year at around $450 million. We expect that the losses for the full year will be in that range, and that means $225 for each of us for the full year. That's really what we have. Rob, I don't know if you have any insights into how MGM is reporting their numbers. Yeah, I do. Thanks for the question, Monique. It's actually quite straightforward. When MGM publish their numbers, there's a one-month lag, so what they describe as Q2 actually is three months ending May. Whereas, by the time we publish our numbers, we're able to do the full quarter's worth. So there's a month timing difference. Other than that, the numbers are the same. Okay. That's clear. Thank you very much. Thank you, Monique. Thank you, Monique. Next question comes from Richard Stuber. Hi. Morning, everyone. Just three from me. First one on BetMGM. Do you have any comments on how Ontario is progressing? Are you finding it? Is it like another U.S. state opening or is it slightly different given the market which has been there previously? The second question I had was just on the new opportunities, and I was wondering if you could discuss a little bit more about the launch of the esports in Unikrn. What would we see in the second half, and when will it start generating meaningful revenue? The final question I've got on Entain CEE. It sounds like other markets outside of Croatia will be M&A-led rather than organic entry. Just to confirm, is that correct? More generally, do you see those markets as markets only really viable for local brands? Thank you. Thank you. I'll take them in a different order, so I can hand over to Rob in the end for details on what we're expecting to see from new opportunities. Let me kick off with BetMGM in Ontario. So listen, we've had a great start there. We launched in April. BetMGM is performing well, and we're on track on our expectations. Actives are good. Customer conversion, good retention. I would say this. It's not like another U.S. state, so the market is very different. It comes from a history where you've had international operators operating there for a long time. It's extremely competitive. I think we've seen around 30 operators that have now gotten a license there, and there are many, many more that are applying for licensing. There is quite a bit of competitive pressure. The good thing is that we have both sports betting there and also gaming. We're also seeing good cross-sell, which is great as we go forward. Momentum is building nicely. We don't have any numbers out yet, but we are expecting that we are probably in the high single digits% somewhere and growing. More to come, but very competitive environment. We've secured a number of partnerships there, so that's also reassuring. When it comes to M&A in CEE, yeah, so just to be clear, when it goes to CEE and the setup that we have there and the venture that we have there, we are seeing this as an opportunity for us going forward to consolidate within the region, and I mentioned this in the presentation this morning. It's really interesting when you look at the region. There is actually none of the multinationals or international operators that have any success in taking meaningful share in that region. That is because you see strong local brands, and actually very few of those local brands cross borders. Also the local operators have had a difficulty in actually expanding. We look at a number of opportunities, and to your point, around acquiring local brands in some of these other markets. Now we'll wait for this transaction to close probably in Q4, and then we'll look more into that. That was on CEE. Let me kick off on new opportunities in Unikrn, specifically on the commercial side, and then if I can hand over to you, Rob, to talk a little bit about when we expect to see revenues there. Unikrn and our esports venture, we spent the last year in basically building the product and the platform, making sure we implemented all the compliance, and we are now looking at launching during Q4 probably towards the end of the year, which is really exciting. The short answer is we're not expecting any revenues to come in this year. Rob, do you wanna comment a little bit more on our new opportunity area? Sure. I'll add a couple more bits of detail for you. Just firstly, a reminder that the GBP 50 million annualized investment guidance is split roughly half and half between innovation and Unikrn. It is H2 weighted. The biggest driver for that is, as Jette's just talked about, planning to launch later this year and therefore the marketing investment that goes around it. I wouldn't change the full year guidance, but the phasing is H2 weighted. Then just to the other question, might it be material in 2023? Look, I don't think we expect it to be. I think, as you all know, this is a very nascent market, but one that we're super excited about. I wouldn't adjust your numbers for 2023 to include this, but we will update as we go and we progress and launch into new territories during next year. That's great. Thank you very much, both. Thanks. Thanks, Richard. Next question comes from Joe Stauff. Very early. Good morning, Joe. Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I guess I had two questions really on customer engagement, right? I guess first within the U.K., just wondered where, say, average spending levels were, say, at this point, especially as you compare that to what you've seen or what you saw in 2019 levels. Obviously, you have a much larger user base, but I was wondering where that customer engagement was in the U.K. Second to that, you know, is your kinda global portfolio and wondering if that level of customer engagement that you've seen, say, in a core market like the U.K., it might be different, say, in other countries. It's more of an economic question and that's why I ask that. Yeah. Good morning, Joe. You must have been up early if you went through the full presentation as well. Rob, do you wanna start off on this question and then maybe come back to me, and I can add a little bit of flavor of some of the things that we are doing across our countries? Sure. Morning, Joe. I can have a go. In terms of customer engagement, yes, actives are very significantly and certainly versus 2019 pre-COVID. If you've had a chance to look at the presentation yet, you may not, you'll see that in the U.K., the spend levels, so spend per head, are lower because we've gone on a journey to focus on a more recreational audience. Now, as the presentation showed, around 90% of our revenue is coming from recreational or low-spending customers. Average stake size is now down to GBP 7 in the U.K., and of which we win, say, 12% on average. Low spend, generally speaking. In terms of economic comparisons to other territories, it is a mixed bag. There are some parts of Europe where we are seeing some indications of pressure on the consumer. Generally speaking, our numbers are still strong everywhere you go, if you allow yourself to back out the headwinds, things like lapping COVID in the prior year, which obviously in many of our territories where there's strong retail presence, you know, that's a significant impact on the online numbers. As we progress through the year, that should unwind. Does that hit the spot for you, Joe? Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. No, I appreciate that. Okay. Maybe I can just add a comment. One of the reasons why we spent some time this morning talking about many of the activities that we have in both the U.K., but certainly also in countries like Australia, in Europe and in Italy, is because this is part of our strategy to basically increase the recreational base, to have much more healthy year-on-year contribution going forward. As we are addressing a more recreational base, we're also making a lot of efforts in making sure that we then increase the engagement. To put it in black and white, we make sure that they spend more time with us, and we also get a bit larger share of their wallet when they're with us. That's why you're seeing us launch all these things around Mates Mode, community betting, live channels. You know, it's all efforts to make sure that we engage them. Same thing with free-to-play bets where we have enormous conversion rates, which is a way for us to bring a new audience that are more recreational into the funnel, and keep them engaged and then also convert them into real money gaming. Thank you, Jette. Thank you, Rob. Thanks, Joe. Many thanks, Joe. Next question, line for Michael Mitchell. Morning, Michael. Morning, David. Morning, Jette. Morning, Rob. Thanks for taking my questions. Three, if I could. First, just on guidance, and Rob, I think I heard you correctly when you said the guidance slide sets out only the major changes. Just wanted to confirm, should we still be thinking about a 27%-28% EBITDA margin for online this year as per the March slide? Then question two and three on SuperSport, if I could. Firstly, on the EBITDA margin, Jette, I think in your scripted remarks, you talked about, you know, the potential for further progression in the margin. I'm just interested in terms of how it generates such a high margin and how you think it can improve from here. Thirdly, Jette, maybe you just answered or you just alluded to this in a previous answer, but clearly the market share is very strong in Croatia. I just wonder, is there scope for SuperSport to move beyond Croatia? Perhaps not on the basis of your comments about, you know, the importance of local heroes, but maybe you can just talk about top line growth prospects for SuperSport, given its very strong share- to- date? Thank you. Thanks, and good morning to you, Michael. Let me start off with SuperSport, and then I can hand over to Rob to talk a little bit more about the guidance. SuperSport is a very strong business in the region. If you go into a pub or cafe, you'll see the staff there wearing SuperSport T-shirts. They come with a very, very strong brand awareness. I mentioned a couple of other commercial points in the call this morning. They have a 54% market share, and they also just recently closed the partnership or the sponsorship with the Croatian Football Federation for 2022 and 2026. Anyone that follows Croatian football will know that actually sometimes that football team does really well. There's a lot of strong things here. I think when we look across the region, we do expect to see growth rates there around 10%. Probably that will be a little bit lower. That will be a little bit lower when you look to SuperSport in the Croatian market. We're still expecting them to grow as they've done through the previous year. When it comes to the margin, well, it basically goes to both the strength of their product but also the strength to their brands in Croatia. There are really no one that's competing with them at that level within Croatia. That's just your last question. When it comes to rolling out across CE, we will look at it on a case-by-case basis. A lot of it, I assume, will be driven by M&A and looking for the strongest local brands. There might be opportunities to roll out SuperSport into surrounding countries as well. That's something we'll sit down with Radim when we close. Rob, guidance? Morning, Michael. When we think about online margins and sort of jumping to the bottom EBITDA margin, you really need to think about the component parts above it. Gross profit margin, marketing spend giving you contribution margin. Let me just talk through each of those, and then we'll conclude on EBITDA margin. The killer margin for me is contribution margin. And you'll see that H1 came in almost on the range that we guided. We guided 40%-41%, and I think it came in at 39.9%. Just at that bottom end of the range, meaning that we've been able to manage the marketing spend accordingly. Now, when you look above contribution margin at gross profit margin and marketing rate, the single biggest difference between where we thought we would be in our guidance versus what we're reporting in H1, and indeed expect for the full year, is geographic mix. You'll have heard us talking about how Brazil has performed strongly, Italy has performed strongly. Australia has performed strongly. I should say Brazil is up year- on- year, but adverse to our expectation. You'll remember we talked about increased competition in Brazil. Australia strongly, Italy strongly, and Brazil below expectations. If you then think what that means from a gross profit perspective on margins, obviously Australia is a lower converting country, as is Italy, because we have franchisee costs, whereas Brazil is higher. That's adverse. When you think about marketing spend, Italy is lower spend. Australia is lower spend because there's a marketing ban, as the market's adapted to the higher product fees and point of consumption tax, whereas Brazil is higher. You've really just got an inverse going on there. The key point is that contribution margin is in line, give or take, with guidance, just at the bottom end of that 40%-41% range. What does that mean for EBITDA margin? Well, unless we go after the cost base in the same proportion, then there will be an impact on the EBITDA margin, and that's what we will see. The EBITDA margin was 26% in the first half. And I think that's a safe assumption for the full year, too. In other words, movement in EBITDA margin is caused by movement in NGR right at the top of the P&L, not the contribution margin, and OpEx spend is in line with guidance. Hence, there's compression on EBITDA margin as a result of NGR movement. Hopefully that makes sense. That's great. Thanks for the color, Rob. Thank you. Many thanks, Michael. Next question comes from Ivor Jones. Morning, Ivor. Morning. Thank you. Back to CEE. Does Entain control it? If it executes M&A through the CEE business and EMMA doesn't follow along, does EMMA just get diluted? Does cash get trapped in CEE until Entain owns 100%? Back to the margin point in that business. The GBP 5 million of OpEx synergies that you were talking about, I think you said that it would stay on its own tech. Will it eventually move to the in-house platform and what would be the upside from doing that? Moving away from CEE, I'm trying to understand what RG measures have been taken in the U.K. that are driving revenue and relate them to the moving target of what might be in the white paper. Could you just talk about, in the U.K., what you've done in relation to stake limits and maybe where affordability checks land and maybe around advertising, so we get some idea of if we ever see a white paper, how far down that road you already are? Thank you. Great. Good morning, Ivor. I'll try to remember everything. We'll do it like this. We'll start with SuperSport. I'll talk about the structure and the governance as well as the margin and the synergies. Rob, if you can talk about cash, and then I'll go back to U.K. and RG. You asked whether we control the venture. Yes, we do. We have 75%. There is a board of five board members where Entain appoints the five board members. Of course, we'll discuss here M&A and then, of course, if EMMA decides not to follow, then they will get diluted, to your point. That's really not where we are. We've had really good discussions with EMMA leading into to making this acquisition, and talking about. Can we mute? I believe there was Hang on a second. Until 10:00 A.M., there was one question. Can we mute? Thanks. Ivor, back to your question. Yes, we have control and EMMA can, of course, make their decisions, but that's really not where we are. We've had multiple discussions around the strategy and potential targets going forward, so we look forward to continue to discussing that. Just jumping to margins and synergies. You're right. SuperSport has their own technology. It's a really strong technology platform. Whether we, at some point, would migrate them to Entain platform, that's not something that we have to do now. We'll cross that bridge when we come there. The GBP 5 million you see in synergies fully floating through in 2024 on the cost synergies, that's really more towards buying power and potentially helping with adding our games and so forth from third parties. Now, what we do expect going forward is, of course, that there could be more M&A synergies coming in as we form Entain CEE across the region. That's not something that we put in there for now, of course. Rob, do you just wanna talk about cash? Yeah. Yeah, that's a very straightforward one. No trapped cash. The intention is to dividend out proceeds to the shareholders in accordance with the ratio. As and when further opportunities to invest, either organically or M&A, the parents would make that decision, and invest accordingly. Good. Let's go back to the U.K. and RG and GAR and affordability. When it comes to affordability measures that we've put in place, I think I've talked about it a couple of times. This is something that we worked with over the last one and a half years. You know, our strategy around this is really to implement ARC, which is a personalized protection. We have more than 3x as many behavioral markers as anyone else. We're the only operator that is capturing the real-time data. Our self-certification and the questionnaire are immediate, so they're real-time. Instead of you have to wait for an agent to call you the next day. The reason I mention this is that the whole philosophy behind ARC is to slow down play, so we don't lose the customer. To your point around staking limits, that's the same philosophy we have around staking limits. We have personalized protection in place, which means that we are implementing dynamic staking limits, so they are basically Adjusted to what kind of risk profile you have. That's what we believe is a much more superior solution to managing this. We also have things like control tools, where you as a player can set your own max staking limits. We've taken a different approach to this, which means that our staking limits basically adjust to the player. I think we've said many times that we think this is the right solution going forward. Now, in terms of where this all lands, Ivor, I think we've tried to guess around this so many times, so we'll wait and see where the GAR comes out. I do think that with everything that we've implemented through the last year to one and a half, we're well prepared for what comes from the GAR. In terms of the details there, we will just have to see where this lands when we finally get it out there. I hope that gives you a little bit more color. That's great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Ivor. Let's hope we get a new leader and get the GAR out soon. Thanks, Ivor. We'll move on to Simon Davies. Morning, Simon. Is this where you say you're on mute or? I've just asked him to unmute. Okay. Is Simon there? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, Simon. Sorry, I thought that was happening automatically. Yeah, first question was just on the SuperSport option structure. You talked about options kicking in after three years to buy out the minority. How does that work? And would you view that as a negative outcome, i.e., evidence that the strategy would not be working? Second point was on the 2020 decline in revenues and EBITDA at SuperSport. Is that entirely COVID related and therefore retail oriented? And what is the exit EBITDA margin for SuperSport, i.e., the current run rate? And the last one was just on live casino. You talk about a number of successful new product initiatives in live. Are you signaling that this is becoming a more strategically important product vertical? And d o you have any view in terms of the potential for launching an in-house live casino capability? Good question, Simon. Thank you for those. Why don't I start talking about our new initiatives and products within the live game shows, and then, Rob, if I can, hand over to you for the option structure, and the question around 2020 decline. We've launched a new live game show category. The two games that I talked about this morning are both bespoke to Entain, which means that they are exclusive. Well Well Well Live, that's our own IP, and it's our own IP in perpetuity, which is based on a popular slots game that we had. The same goes for Starzle, which is also bespoke and has a multi-year exclusivity. It plays into our strategy, which is around having exclusive content and having an exclusive content differentiation strategy. Now, when it comes to this specific category, it's a category that we've seen drive maybe not a new audience, but a more recreational audience, and it's extremely popular. Without revealing anything, I can also say we have a couple of more games that are in development, which will also be bespoke for us going forward. We're always looking at whether this is something we should build in-house or work with third parties. This is something we'll evaluate. I mean, we should always focus, in my opinion, on where we make the most difference. We'll learn as we go, and then we'll see whether this is something that we're gonna take in-house at some point, or start developing. That could be an opportunity for us for sure. Hope that's helpful on the live game show side. Thanks. Good. Let's move on to option structure, Rob, and 2020 decline. Sure. Thank you. Yep, I'll take that. Morning, Simon. This is a standard approach in these kind of situations. We as Entain wanted to make sure that we had a path to full ownership. Equally in EMMA's shoes, they wanted to make sure they had a path to exit, like any private equity firm would. Hence the arrangement that we've come up with. Very straightforward arrangement. Effectively, either side can decide to enact Entain buying the remaining 25%, and the price effectively is done at prevailing value at the time. No pre-agreed price or formula. There'll be a fair value assessment at the time. Then shall I move on to the question about EBITDA? Yes, the dip in 2020 was COVID. They have I think 324 shops plus SSBTs in other locations as well. Clearly during lockdowns, that took a step backwards, but as you can see from the chart and the presentation, strong recovery since then, well ahead of pre-COVID levels and EBITDA margin expectations, you know, continue to be in the low 50s%, which is clearly very strong. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Simon. Next we'll go to Kiranjot Grewal. Morning, Kiranjot. Hey. Morning, guys. Just a few from me. Firstly, on M&A, do you think there's any additional M&A likely this year given where leverage will be post this SuperSport transaction? Also wanting to hear a bit more about the diversity or geographies you touched on in the presentation. Could you offer some more color where the U.K. now sits in terms of your online NGR in terms of share, given especially the pullback seen in H1? Lastly, more on Brazil. Where are we with regulations? I think at Q2 you said there was a step up in competition. Has that held up since then? Thank you. Yes, good morning to you as well. Should I start off from the back then and first talk about Brazil? I think we talked about this in July as well. We have seen a step up in competition in Brazil ahead of regulation happening. That's also why you see that we have extremely strong growth there. As Rob has talked about, it is a little bit lower than expected due to this competition. I mean, our team on the ground estimate that there is currently 2,000 operator sites now live, and many of them are just very small, mostly local, rather than us seeing any new international players coming in. Most likely, they will not get licensed. It does create some competitive pressure right now. We have the number one brand in the market, and there is a significant first-mover advantage here, around our brand, awareness and our product team on the ground and so forth. We remain super excited about Brazil. That's around Brazil. Around geography, let me just take that. I think there were two questions in your question, so I'll try to answer. Otherwise, let me know if I'm not hitting on them. In terms of the geographical diversification, U.K. NGR, U.K. online NGR, excuse me, now sits on 29% of our NGR, which is great to see. We've increased our diversification. We don't really have dependence on one country going forward. That was one side. I think you also asked about market share. We don't have any Q2 market shares, but the last time we looked at, or we had data from our market shares, about end of Q1, it was around 17%, as I recall. Rob, I'll hand over to you around leverage, and M&A capital allocation. Sure. Morning, Kiranjot. Yeah, as you heard from the presentation this morning, once we include BetCity and SuperSport, which we expect to complete in Q4, we do expect year-end leverage on a pro forma basis to be a little under 3 x. You know, naturally we continue our deleveraging journey from there. In terms of what does that mean for future M&A, well, I mean, there's a difference between announcing M&A and completing. Any M&A of scale, you would have thought, even if we announced another one tomorrow, which we won't be doing, that it was unlikely to complete this year, and therefore, you have time for the balance sheet to improve from where it's likely to be at the end of this year. In short, no impact on our appetite for M&A. We absolutely continue to explore multiple opportunities, and there are plenty high up the pipeline at the moment. Perfect. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks, Kiranjot. Our next question comes from Jemma Permaloo. Do you want to unmute your line, Gemma? Hi. Hi, morning, and thank you very much for taking my questions. Apologies if I've missed it. I just wanted to make sure. From the SuperSport acquisition, you're using about EUR 600 million of cash, and you've got another EUR 200 million to go, and then you have the short-dated maturities, around, like, GBP 500 million. Can you remind us how much ideally, how much cash you'd ideally like to keep on your balance sheet? And then secondly, any indication, whether you'd be looking at the bonds market or maybe the loans market for refi? Thank you. Thank you, and good morning to you. Rob, can I hand both of those questions to you? You may, of course. Firstly, to be super clear, the SuperSport acquisition is fully debt financed, so no impact on liquidity. I think the numbers you read out weren't quite right, and the confusion is probably the split between the 75% that we are accountable for and the 25% that EMMA Capital are accountable for. EUR 600 million is our share of the initial EUR 800 million, and then we expect a further EUR 120 million to be due in spring next year, of which our share is EUR 90 million. Hopefully that clears that up. Do feel free to send in questions afterwards. In terms of the questions around cash on balance sheet, look, we have a number that we manage to internally, but you know, clearly you'd expect it to be meaningful. As we go through thinking about refinancing existing term loans, you know, we'll have a look at liquidity projections as we go. In terms of how we will refinance term loans and indeed the GBP 500 million of bonds which you mentioned, the bulk of which mature in just over a year's time. Yes, we'll be looking at both the bonds and the loans market, I'm sure, and you know, more to come on this over the next three to six months. Understood, and thank you for clarifying. That's, I got it now. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Jemma. Our next question comes from Joe Thomas. Morning, Joe. Good morning, everybody. Hope you can hear me. Again, the usual three questions, please. First one is, returning to the point on recreational customers, which you first started addressing seemingly a couple of hours ago, I was just wondering now you're up to 90%. I mean, how we should think about how those recreational customers behave differently, to the customer base that you had historically, I mean, in terms of both, sensitivity to the wider economy, and exposure to sort of result swings. That'll be one question. Second thing, you talked about cost inflation in U.K. retail as well in your presentation, said don't doubt the H1 a bit dull because of that. I just wonder if there are any other signs of cost inflation elsewhere, developers et cetera, and that are perhaps higher or lower than you might have expected. Then the final one is returning to the point on the Gambling Act and ARC and how they might interact. Could you foresee a situation where you might relax some of the ARC initiatives in time if you are permitted to under the terms of whatever eventually does hopefully emerge from the Gambling Act? Thank you. Thank you, Joe. I'll kick it off with the recreational and ARC and then hand back to you, Rob, for the inflation question. Interestingly, the questions around recreational. We do a lot of work here. We have a full team that is sitting all day and analyzing the behavior of our different segmentations. Overall, I think the key thing here is this is a more entertainment related segment. They lend themselves to products in sports betting like in play, multis or accumulators, which is a good thing because that typically implies a higher margin. They're typically less price sensitive, so they are not price hunters. They also react well to our different types of promotion activities and bonuses, and also free to play, which is obviously a really effective funnel for us to acquire customer from and cross-sell to them. When it comes to their whether they are more sensitive to any economic pressures. Listen, I don't think so because the average bet size is around GBP 10. If you would have the economic pressures, I think the first things to go are probably the more expensive things. That's typically what we've seen when we've had some times of economic downturn early on. I think the key point here is that when we look at the situation we're in now, we're also coming out from a long COVID period, where people were stuck inside, and we're in the middle of the summer, and there's not so much sports going on. It's just a little difficult to talk about how they're acting in the current economic situations. Overall, fundamentally, it's a strategic choice for us. It's typically higher margin customers, and it's much more healthy contribution to the NGR, which is why we're so focused on it. To a related point, around ARC and RG, because obviously that also sits closely to our focus on the recreational base here. You ask whether we would consider relaxing some of the ARC initiatives if we were permitted to. First and foremost, you know, we're a licensed operator, so we're in close dialogue with the GC, and listen to them and in dialogue with them, on what it is that they are suggesting. The good thing around ARC is that it is a personalized approach, and that's the whole philosophy here. We're not ruling out initiatives or restrictions or limits to customers that don't need them. And that's why we are so excited about ARC, and that's why we think it's superior. That ideally, you're only targeting the very small percentage of customers that has a risk behavior. Therefore, you wouldn't need to relax some of the initiatives here. Right now we are rolling out according to our plans when it comes to the U.K. and also internationally. I hope that gives a little bit of flavor. Thank you. Good. Can I take the question on inflation? Yes, please. As you point out, retail clearly has some areas of challenge. Energy and wages would be the main ones. We've called that out for you already. Outside of retail, clearly the bulk of our cost is technology related. Now, the good news is we're largely in-house as you know, so you have more control. You're not exposed to third parties in the same way. Where we do have third party arrangements with things like data providers, streaming deals and so on, they tend to be long-term in nature and very often linked to revenue share and therefore have shielded from inflation from that perspective. The big cost where clearly there is an exposure is wages, our people. You know, you mentioned developers and so on. It is a highly competitive job market out there. That's where I expect we will feel some pressure will be wage inflation, both retail and outside of retail. Many thanks, Joe. We have our last question. Last but not least, James Rowland Clark. James? Hi. Good morning. Yes, thanks very much for taking my questions. My first is just on BetMGM. We've heard you and MGM talk a lot about the merits that you each bring to that JV. Clearly, the market isn't really valuing the long-term cash generation of BetMGM, and we've also heard MGM say there's more than one way to skin a cat, and they want greater ownership of BetMGM. I just wondered how you plan to generate or realize tangible value from your U.S. business in the near term. Secondly, on Australia, you spoke a lot about the product improvements you've seen there is driving, you know, customer growth and structurally higher win margins with tax increases coming. Which way do you plan to lean in terms of thinking of this as an opportunity to sort of grow customers as peers pull back on marketing? Or would you prefer to sort of roll back the marketing to retain profitability? Thirdly, just on BetMGM, the operating loss in the second quarter was $142 million. What was that in Q1, please? How are you thinking about that loss trending in Q3 and Q4, given I'm assuming EBITDA loss guidance is unchanged for the full year. Thank you. Good morning, James. Let me kick it off with BetMGM and our partnership there. Maybe Rob, I can hand over to you around where we are on the losses, and then also you could take the Australian question and the tax situation there. When it comes to BetMGM, we are still very early in the journey of what's gonna happen in the States here, and there are some significant benefits of the joint venture that brings to BetMGM, not least the cost advantages and the structural market-margin advantages that we've talked about. Therefore, when we look at our strategy right now and what we are focused on, it is really around making sure that we make the most of that opportunity. We get into new states. We continue to advance our products. We've confirmed our target to become profitable next year. From there on, there are different opportunities of course to also look at how we get value out of BetMGM going forward and into our books. But in general, listen, we are aligned on our strategy here, and that's really what we are focused on here. When it comes to how you skin the cat, I don't know. It's probably a question for Bill to clarify what he meant with that last week. Listen, the partnership is working really well. We have our plan, and we're focusing on executing on that. Sorry I'm not being more precise on that. Rob, over to you on the losses and then Australia. Okay. Thank you. Let me start with the losses. So, if we look at H1, BetMGM's losses were $287 million. And if you think about the full year guidance that we gave previously and was reinforced by the BetMGM team in May, that implies another 150 or so, give and take. And we're comfortable with that step down. Actually, Bill and Jonathan talked about it on their call. Remember that H1 includes four state launches and Ontario as well, in the second half of the year. It's somewhat different and of course, the revenue growth continues to be very strong. We're still posting sort of 40-odd% same state revenue growth through that business. We are comfortable that we will still hit guidance for the full year for BetMGM losses. Then in terms of Australia, everything's about the customer first and foremost. You know, you think about it, everything that the team are doing over there is all about listening to customers and delivering what they want to drive the most engaging experience. Many examples of which Jette has already provided this morning. We're not going to, in response to quarterly consumption tax going up, impact the customer experience. Will there be opportunity to look at marketing spend? Well typically, collectively, in this kind of situation, an industry will move together to adjust what it's willing to pay for customers, given that the unit economics have taken a hit, therefore CPAs go down. As long as the market moves in unison, your share of voice doesn't go down. Therefore, you know, we'll be keeping an eye on how the market progresses, but there will be opportunities in marketing for sure. There's a bunch of other stuff that we can do. For example, the way that you steer customers to certain products, what you promote through your various promotion mechanics or things like the next race, next betting opportunity carousel. You know, you can direct people to the types of products and states which are the most efficient from our perspective. There will still be mitigation that the team think we can mitigate, give or take half of the incremental cost, but critically doing it without impacting the customer. Thank you. That's great. Sorry, could I just follow up on Jette's answer? You, just to summarize your answer, you saying that you have to be or you would aim to be profitable before you would look at value-generating options for Entain and BetMGM? There's really no reason for us to look at other options at the moment, as we're both aligned on the strategy. I think that I know that MGM also confirmed that on the call. It's really for us around executing on the opportunities that we have right now. That is what we've confirmed both on the top-line side and then becoming profitable next year. We have our eye on the ball here, and then hopefully also advancing into new states. Never say never, but it's not on the agenda. We focus on executing on our plans. Brilliant. Thank you very much. All right. I'm afraid we'll have to end it there. Thank you very much everyone for your patience this morning and connecting. We'll have a joined up replay and transcript on the website as soon as we can, but I'll hand you back to Jette for some final comments. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thank you to all of you for your patience today. Many apologies for the technical issues. They will be fixed for Q3. But just to sum up, our group performance, as you've heard this morning, continues to demonstrate that customers are choosing to play with us. Our customer focus, our diversification and proven ability to grow both organically and through M&A, sees us really well positioned to deliver on our strategic opportunities both for the rest of 2022 and beyond that. With that, I would like to end the call today, but if you have any other questions, do get in touch with David and the IR team. Thank you for now, and goodbye.