Episode 539: Flutter CEO Peter Jackson on World Cup Betting, Global Impact, and U.S. Growth

**SPEAKER_2** (0:12)
Welcome in to another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Today's guest is Peter Jackson. He is the CEO of Flutter. Peter, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House. Happy to have you here.

**Peter Jackson** (0:21)
It's a pleasure, it's great to be here.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:23)
So I want to start big picture and just look at the numbers around this World Cup. Right, 104 matches across three countries over a month of time with a tournament expanded to 48 teams for the first time. When you just look at the scale, how do you think about the opportunity that this World Cup, with the sheer size that it is, what does the opportunity look like for Flutter?

**Peter Jackson** (0:44)
Well, let's add some extra dimensions to it, because when we're here in America, we think about big events and we look at the Super Bowl. If I said to you, how many people watch the Super Bowl, what would you say?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:58)
Hundreds of millions, if not billions.

**Peter Jackson** (1:00)
Well, no, it's not. It's about 150, 200 million people.
If you look at the World Cup final in Qatar, one and a half billion people watched that event. So 10 times, the final was 10 times the Super Bowl. And in total, five billion people watched the tournament.
So the World Cup is huge. It's a massive event. Now, of course, it doesn't happen every year. It's like the Olympics, so it's every four years. But this is going to be a huge event. And so really, you know, look, there are going to be billions of eyes on America. So this is a huge deal for everybody.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:39)
And what does it being in the United States, or not only in the United States, obviously there are games in Canada, there are games in Mexico as well, but with the US as essentially the host country, with the final being not far from where we sit today, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, what does that do? It being housed here in the US, what does that do for viewership, for engagement and for Flutter as well?

**Peter Jackson** (2:01)
Well, I'm very excited about it. And of course, as a global business, soccer is religion in Brazil. I remember being in Brazil in São Paulo in 2014, when Brazil were playing one of their World Cup matches, and there was not a dog on the street. So, I mean, everybody is watching the games. I'm not quite sure we'll get the same focus in America, but I think this is going to be very exciting for how bring soccer to the masses in America. So, for our business, this is about acquiring customers. Franchel is the market leading business in sports, and this is going to be a brilliant opportunity to showcase our exciting sports content for soccer.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:46)
Obviously, this takes place, the US being a fully regulated sports betting environment. When you combine this host country advantage with the fact that the US is a regulated landscape, it's obviously expected to generate billions in handle. How do you think about this World Cup with those factors included compared to previous ones that we saw four years ago, eight years ago, et cetera?

**Peter Jackson** (3:09)
This is going to be far bigger than anything we've seen before. We think this will be twice as big as the previous World Cup. We're talking about 60 billion of handle. Those factors are all important. The eyes on America are really important. For us, it's going to be a brilliant opportunity to engage with consumers.
This is complex stuff we have to deliver. You talk about the game. For us, we'll be having 100,000 bets a minute going through the platforms.
The tech that we have to stand up behind that to be there for our customers, all of the tens of thousands of markets were pricing live and real-time as that game is evolving. It's a massive feat. We had to start planning last year. We have a hundred of our best traders working on it. So this is a really big deal for us.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:00)
And so I think you said 100,000 a minute for this World Cup. So I want to ask about the preparation, because to house 100,000 bets a minute is crazy and takes, I'm sure, months, if not years of preparation. This isn't something, obviously, that you can stand up or start to stand up just a few weeks out, right? This is, I'm sure, been in the works for years at this point. I would probably assume. What has this lead up look like internally at Flutter over the last periods of month and years to get ready for an event of this magnitude?