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Raketech has faced a difficult opening three months to 2025, a trading period which saw revenue fall substantially year-over-year.
The betting and gaming affiliate media group informed its Nasdaq investors that Q1 revenue had fallen 48.6% from €19m in Q1 2024 to €9.8m in Q1 this year. However, leadership remains confident that the firm will continue to generate value for shareholders in the face of adversity.
This was accompanied by a 52.6% decrease in adjusted EBITDA from €5m to €2.4m and a 64.5% drop in profit from €2m to €730,000 – though it is important to note that profit is still being made, and the group remains in the black.
This drop in revenue has been attributed primarily to a 48% drop in new depositing customer numbers, particularly among its SubAffilation business unit. This segment saw revenue fall 61.6% YoY from €9m to €3.5m, with its paid publisher network seeing market decline from March 2025 onwards.
Corporate leadership does not expect recovery for the paid publisher network in the near term and adds that this segment’s performance is putting pressure on the organic publisher network. It however asserts that it is prepared to scale the operation if volumes rebound.
Despite this pressure, Raketech CEO, Johan Svensson, asserted that its organic publisher network made ‘solid progress’ during Q1. This included onboarding new publishers and expanding the number of commercial network agreements with operators, and may give leadership and stakeholders confidence on an overall rebound for the subaffiliation business.
“The number of active revenue-generating publishers increased to over 80, up from around 50 last year, demonstrating strong interest,” he said. “As of today, we have four exclusive network commercial operator agreements in place, and expanding this base remains a top priority.”
Raketech pins most of the blame for Q1’s troubles on sub-affiliation, but its affiliation marketing business did not perform much better. The segment’s revenue fell 31.6% to €6m (€8.8m), attributed to the continuation of a poor performance for Raketech’s flagship affiliation marketing brand, Casumba.
Raketech’s market breakdown
As with group-wide revenue, Raketech’s sports and casino segments both saw revenue decline. Revenue for the former dropped 41% from €3.5m to €2m while the latter’s revenue fell 50.3% from €15.5m to €7.7m.
A global business, Raketech maintains affiliate-operator deals across the Nordics and Europe, as well as the US, while also maintaining a rest of the world segment. Again, all of these geographic segments recorded a drop in revenue.
Nordics revenue fell 35% from €8.2m to €5.3m, rest of Europe revenue was down 52% from €852,000 to €409,000, US revenue declined 65.5% from €1.8m to €608,000, and rest of world revenue fell 58% from €8.2m to €3.4m.
The group’s US performance in particular was cited as having a big impact on its overall performance. In his CEO statement, Svensson explained that US operations had a negative impact on EBITDA, which as explained above fell 52.6%.
“We’re in the final stage of the strategic review of our noncore US tipster and subscription assets,” he explained. “These assets and related US operations had a negative EBITDA impact of €300,000 in Q1.”
The difficulties Raketech faced in Q1 are nothing new, with the group having reported similar tricky trading in 2024’s quarterly reports. Q3 2024 revenue dropped 39% to €12.9m, with affiliate revenues struggling with changes to Google’s algorithm.
Six months down the line, Raketech’s troubles continue but the firm’s leadership – which itself underwent a transition recently with industry veteran Ulrik Bengtsson departing from its board of directors – remains confident in its prospects.
“By aligning commercial strength with operational efficiency across both internally managed assets and those run through entrepreneurial partnerships within Affiliation Marketing, we deliver measurable results and drive sustainable growth,” Svensson remarked.
“With a growing base of trusted publishers and exclusive network commercial agreements with operators within SubAffiliation, we are well positioned to drive traffic, convert leads, and create long-term value for shareholders.”
