British and Irish iGaming behemoth Flutter Entertainment has reportedly disclosed that the ongoing cost of living crisis in the United Kingdom is not putting punters off gambling as it chalked up a rise of 6% year-on-year in company-wide first-quarter revenues to almost $1.94 billion.

According to a Wednesday report from the Reuters news service, the London-listed firm made this assertion despite chalking up a slump of 8% year-on-year in its revenues from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Rather than the worsening economic conditions, the operator purportedly put this significant slide down to a plethora of winning streaks and its increased spending on initiatives to curb gambling addictions.

British boost:

Peter Jackson serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Flutter Entertainment and he reportedly disclosed that the average number of people in the United Kingdom and Ireland who had enjoyed one of his firm’s brands over the course of the first quarter actually improved by 15% year-on-year. The company’s Chief Financial Officer, Jonathan Hill, purportedly echoed this optimism in divulging that the sum of days customers had bet every month as well as the amount of cash they spent had not been much different from the corresponding period in pre-pandemic 2019.

American appeal:

Previously known as Paddy Power Betfair until undergoing a name-change in early-2020, Flutter Entertainment reportedly recorded a swell of 45% year-on-year in first-quarter revenues from the United States with more than half of this cash having been staked with operations run by its prominent FanDuel Group subsidiary. This purportedly helped the firm to retain its position as the top online operator in the North American nation with a 37% market share although this equated to a 3% decline when compared with the 40% cut it had held at the end of December.

Mounting market:

Continuing the good news from the United States and Flutter Entertainment reportedly saw its average monthly users in the country of almost 332 million people increase by 43% year-on-year for associated revenues of about $530.44 million. This latter figure purportedly came very close to surpassing, for the very first time, the very healthy $641.79 million the operator generated in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Reportedly read a statement from Jackson…

“At this stage we’re not seeing anything that we would point to specifically around cost of living and in fact we’re seeing reasonably consistent levels of engagement from customers between the fourth quarter and the first quarter compared to previous years, which reassures us to some extent.”

Expected expansion:

Flutter Entertainment, which is additionally responsible for the online casino and sportsbetting domains at Betfair.com, PaddyPower.com and PokerStars.com, reportedly went live in the lucrative iGaming market of New York via its FanDuel.com site from January. Jackson purportedly furthermore noted that his company could very well have cleared the required regulatory hurdles to launch in California by the start of next year’s National Football League (NFL) season, which he asserted would ‘clearly be very material.’