Churchill Downs’ land-based casinos outshine social casinos

Brick-and-mortar casinos stole the spotlight from social gaming in Churchill Downs Inc’s third quarter earnings report.

CDI’s latest financial report card showed overall revenue of $314.8m in the three months ending September 30, a 4% rise over the same period last year. Adjusted earnings improved 7% to $76m while net income nearly doubled to $16.7m, with half of the $8m profit surge coming via income from CDI’s equity investments.

As usual, CDI’s social gaming division Big Fish Games topped the revenue chart with just under $118m, but this was $4.4m less than the division reported in Q3 2016. Big Fish’s earnings fared even worse, falling from $27.2m to just $17m, thanks in part to an extra $5.5m in user acquisition costs.

Big Fish’s overall bookings – the sale of virtual credits and goods – were up 4.6% year-on-year to $123.9m (up 10.6% sequentially) with social casino bookings up nearly 21% to $53.4m. But bookings declined in both the casual and midcore free-to-play and premium game segments.