Charles Gillespie has traveled a long way to get back home. Gillespie is the CEO of Gambling.com Group Limited (NASDAQ: GAMB), a digital marketing company that, in his words, provides comparison shopping for online gamblers.
The company, which spent its early years focused on Europe, went public last summer. Since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled individual states would be allowed to decide whether to legalize sports gambling, Gambling.com has made growth in the U.S. a priority.
Gillespie grew up in Charlotte but now lives in Monaco. Last week, he sat outside the Starbucks in Myers Park, sipping coffee while glancing at his laptop and telling CBJ how his hometown fits into Gambling.com Group’s growth plans.
Gillespie isn’t moving back — but Gambling.com Group has quietly made Charlotte its U.S. beachhead.
In 2019, the company opened its first offices here in the WeWork space at The RailYard building in South End. Gambling.com Group’s local workforce has grown to 30 people. The company has several more remote employees in other North Carolina cities, including Raleigh and Shelby.
Gillespie said “our first preference” for new hires is to have them in Charlotte — though, with remote and hybrid work, that is not mandatory.
Kevin McCrystle, the company’s chief operating officer, also grew up in Charlotte. He and Gillespie attended UNC Chapel Hill together, where the idea originated for what has become Gambling.com Group. Gillespie started the company in 2006 and McCrystle followed the next year.
The company doesn’t have a designated headquarters city, but its largest employee hub is in Dublin. McCrystle lived in Dublin until 2019, when he relocated to Charlotte and opened the office in South End. The company has 320 employees, with half of those added during the past 18 months through both acquisitions and newly created jobs.
Revenue was $42 million last year. In the first quarter of 2022, revenue was $19.6 million. Gambling.com Group generates revenue through negotiated fees with online gaming companies such as DraftKings Inc. (NASDAQ: DKNG) and FanDuel for customer transactions generated by the Gambling.com site.
Those fees could be based on one-term referrals or the lifetime value of a customer, Gillespie said. Other revenue comes from gaming operators who pay for a presence on one of the company’s 50-plus websites. Combinations of those agreements are also part of the mix.
Gillespie anticipates continued aggressive hiring in the months ahead. “We’re hiring people across the U.S.,” he said.
NC bill to legalize sports betting moves forward
Legislation to make online sports betting legal in North Carolina continued to advance this week. One of the lead lobbyists for online sports betting told CBJ it could reach the governor’s desk by the end of next week. Gov. Roy Cooper has said he will endorse sports betting if the legislature passes it.
More than half the U.S. states have approved legalized gaming since 2018.
For business and personal reasons, North Carolina is an important market for Gambling.com Group.
“Every one of these new state launches matters,” Gillespie added. “North Carolina is a special one for us because we’re from here. We went to school here. And it’s got a fantastic sports culture. It’s one that we very much expect to be in the lead on. We expect it to be a very meaningful market.”
BetCarolina.com, a Gambling.com Group-owned portal with North Carolina-related gaming news, was built and launched in anticipation of legalized gaming in the state. It will direct users to be able to place bets with operators as soon as gaming is legal here.
Gillespie said that, as much as people are anticipating sports betting in North Carolina and other states, the likely scenario is that, eventually, legalized casino games in U.S. states will become common, generating higher revenue across the industry.
“That is much more lucrative from both a commercial perspective and a state tax revenue perspective,” he added.
“I think a lot of states in the beginning had unrealistic expectations for the amount of tax revenue they would get from sports betting — it’s super low-margin. … Whereas the online casino business is.”
For the moment, sports betting will lead the way, but Gambling.com Group and others are already eyeing expansion.
