Rivalry Records First Profitable Month Since Launch
Esports betting firm claims record Q3 results, generates nearly $3.3M USD in profits for October.
Publicly-traded Canadian esports and sports gambling company Rivalry (TSXV: RVLY, OTCQX: RVLCF, FSE: 9VK) announced Tuesday what it describes as "record third quarter 2022" financial results and that it hit a major milestone in the month of October: it had its first month of profitability.
The company reported a record betting handle of $70.3M CAD ($51.5M USD) in the third quarter, a 203% increase year-over-year, and an 83% increase compared to the same quarter a year ago. It also realized revenue of $7.1M ($5.2M USD) in Q3, a 93% increase year-over-year, and 35% increase quarter-over-quarter. Recorded gross profit for the quarter was $2.1M ($1.53M USD), a 263% year-over-year increase, which was in line with Q2 2022 numbers.
For the month of October, Rivalry revealed preliminary financial results claiming a "record betting handle" of $37.2M ($27.2M USD) and revenue of $4.5M (nearly $3.3M), marking the first profitable month on a normalized basis (a measurement that removes effects of seasonality, unusual revenue and expenses, and one-off costs) since the company's launch in 2018.
Earlier this month, Rivalry launched Casino.exe, an interactive casino platform to host games that users can bet real-world money on. The portal (at least as of this writing) is not available in jurisdictions such as the U.S. and Canada.
Since its launch, Rivalry has raised around approximately $42M in disclosed investments across two funding rounds: In March of 2021, it raised $20M from NewBound Venture Capital and in June of that year it raised an additional $22M from M Partners Inc., Eight Capital, Cormark Securities Inc., and Canaccord Genuity Group. Broad Street Bulls gave an undisclosed investment during the company's initial seed funding round in January of 2019.
While Rivalry may be better known for its sports and esports wagering business, the company does have a handful of esports-related sponsorship deals in place including Brazilian CS:GO team 00 Nation and Southeast Asia-based BOOM Esports; streamer and rapper Shyehee; and Dota 2 content creators TorteDeLini, ImmortalFaith, Biancake, SirActionSlacks, DotaCinema, and Nahaz Dota.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with U.S. dollar conversions, as the financial results represented Canadian dollar (CAD) values.
Full disclosure: The author of this article currently serves as an editor on the esports wagering newsletter Sharpr, which is written by Rival Senior Manager of Corporate Communications Cody Luongo. The author receives no compensation for his work on that newsletter.