TAB NZ Announce Trading Performance Update – November 2022

NEW ZEALAND (December 28, 2022) — TAB New Zealand (TAB NZ) provides the fourth monthly trading update for the 2022/2023 financial year, with the results and highlights for November 2022.

TAB NZ operated through its online and retail channels throughout November. Turnover was up on budget in November, following a strong Melbourne Cup, NZ Trotting Cup, and the continuing Football World Cup. Gross betting revenue (GBR) was above budget, but gross betting margin (GBM) was below budget. Retail traffic continued to hold strong following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, and overall field sizes across all three codes were up on the year-to-date average. However, key factors such as continued competitive pressure from unregulated online offshore operators, reduced betting margin and lower average bet size in key customer segments had an effect.

Overseas racing and sports drove the increased turnover, leading to increased payments and levies for these products. New Zealand Football will directly benefit from the Football World Cup through commission payments of $500k. There was also increased marketing investment to attract new customers and retain existing customers.

The TAB NZ Board signalled to the racing codes in early December that it will reduce distributions by nine percent in the 2022/23 financial year (year ended 31 July 2023). Factoring in other distributions derived through New Zealand racing, overall distributions will be around $160m for this financial year.

Wagering Performance Summary

In November, the fourth month of the 2022/23 financial year, a turnover of $260.9m was 7.3% ($17.7m) above budget. GBR of $40.6m was up on budget by 1.3% ($0.5m) and GBM of 15.6% was 0.9 percentage points below budget.

Racing

Average NZ thoroughbred starters per race were 10.8, above the YTD average of 10.5, while the top three domestic meetings were the Cup Week meetings at Riccarton with a combined turnover of $10.8m. Harness average starters per race were 10.5, above the YTD average of 10.1, while the peak meeting turnover of $7.35m was on 8 November for the IRT NZ Trotting Cup Day at Addington. For greyhound racing, the average starters per race were 7.5, slightly above the YTD average of 7.4, while the peak turnover for a domestic meeting was $1.07m on 10 November for the New Zealand Greyhound Cup meeting at Addington.

Sport

The top sporting event by turnover for November was the Rugby World Cup final featuring the New Zealand Black Ferns and England Red Roses with a turnover of $1.2m. Basketball was the leading in-play sporting code accounting for 35% of in-play turnover while Football was the top pre-match singles sporting code with 37% of turnover.

November Operational Performance

• The reported Profit for the month was $14.0m, which was $1.7m below Budget.
• Operating Expenses were $11.0m for the month, which was $0.4m above Budget.
• Year to Date Reported Profit is $47.6m, which was $7.4m below Budget.
• Year to Date Operating Expenses were $43.1m, which was $2.0m above budget.

November Distributions

Racing Codes were paid $17.6m in distributions and other payments for November, versus $16.7m budgeted. This consisted of TAB NZ Betting Profit (listed as Fixed Distribution in the table below), offshore bookmaker commission fees, which are based on actual turnover (termed Betting Information Use Charges (BIUC) in the table below), and Betting Duty/Levy repeal.

Top 10 Sporting events by turnover

See the original press release.

SOURCE: TAB New Zealand.