Given how sports betting has boomed over the past three years at both onshore and offshore sportsbooks, you’d think there’d be enough money floating around to keep everyone in business. Not so; in late October, Better Collective A/S (BETRCF), the Copenhagen-based sports media company behind The Action Network and Playmaker HQ, laid off at least 300 employees.
Better Collective co-founder and CEO Jesper Sogaard announced the cutbacks on LinkedIn while downgrading the company’s financial targets for fiscal 2024, after watching their stock price tumble 36.5% to $13.08 on the NASDAQ over the course of five days. They’ve slipped even further to $12.74 since then.
Why is Better Collective laying off employees when the world is spending billions of dollars betting on sports? Because other companies are enjoying that success instead; while Playmaker HQ has made some inroads in the podcast space, its value has plummeted from $54 million to $23 million since its purchase in July 2023.
Meanwhile, the $240-million acquisition of The Action Network in 2021 hasn’t paid off, as more American bettors in the regulated markets bypass the affiliates and go directly to either DraftKings or FanDuel for their sports odds.
Better Collective Downgraded Revenue Targets
Apparently, that’s part of the problem. When Better Collective downgraded their revenue targets by about 10%, and their EBITDA by around 20%, Sogaard cited the ongoing state-by-state regulation of sports betting as one of his company’s challenges. The expected regulation of sports betting in Brazil and elsewhere across “Latin America” was also mentioned.
This wave of regulation may help make betting on sports go mainstream, but it also makes it tougher for any one company to make a buck in the increasingly competitive marketplace. That’s a big reason why we focus on offshore sports betting here at Bookmakers Review. That sector is growing, too, especially among sharper customers who face betting limits and other restrictions within the regulated space.
With DraftKings and FanDuel absorbing much of the oxygen in that space, Better Collective didn’t give themselves much room to breathe with their aggressive purchasing of smaller companies – 35 in all since 2017, most recently in May when they snapped up the sports betting calculator AceOdds (based in Newcastle upon Tyne) for a reported $45.5 million. Now they’re laying people off for the fourth time in three years.
Better Collective Employees Take to Glassdoor
Several former employees took to Glassdoor, a job reviews website, to share their experience following the layoffs:
“Never able to rectify the hyper purchase of small companies and protect employees during the downtime. One quarter we are popping champagne for our financial success and the next we are laying of [sic] 300 people and closing offices.”
This is clearly an emotional time for Sogaard as well. He didn’t reveal exactly where in the company those cuts would be made, but there are only some 1,200 employees from which to choose, according to their 2023 numbers. Sogaard was personally responsible for hiring many of those.
Some lessons are more painful to learn than others. During their company earnings call in August, Sogaard said that Playmakers HQ didn’t meet “ambitious” targets for commercial sales, prompting Sogaard to restructure Playmakers HQ’s front office – and to scale back the entire company’s targets, which they did last month.
Better Collective has also slowed down their buying spree this past year. AceOdds was their only notable acquisition in 2024; before that, it was the larger Playmaker Capital purchase in November 2023 for $189 million – they’re the Toronto-based holder of media brands including Yardbarker.
Sogaard said during that August call that Better Collective would “carefully evaluate targets and be diligent about when to deploy our capital – and, more importantly, when not to.” As of late October, that capital isn’t going into the pockets of at least 300 former employees at The Action Network and elsewhere within the company.
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