Esports holding company Enthusiast Gaming has recorded a net loss of CAD $76.8m (~£45.9m) for the entirety of 2022.
The figure is part of NASDAQ-listed Enthusiast Gaming’s annual end-of-year financial results, with the amount an increase over 2021’s CAD $52m (~£31m) loss.
At the beginning of 2022, Enthusiast Gaming had CAD $22.6m (~£13.5m) in cash available. However, this has dropped to CAD $7.4m (~£4.4m) by the end of the year.
Despite the losses, there were some positives within the financial report. Notably, the company’s annual revenue of CAD $202.8m (~£121.28m) is an increase of 21% year-on-year and its gross profit increases by 68% compared to last year.
Last year was a tumultuous period for the NASDAQ-lasted company. On one hand, the company secured major partnerships with the National Football League (NFL) and Hut 8 Mining, the latter of which is for Enthusiast Gaming’s FPS blockchain game EV.IO. However, on the other, Enthusiast faced public campaigns to replace its CEO Adrian Montgomery, who in 2022 did step down and was replaced by Nick Brien in March 2023.
In March last year, Enthusiast Gaming also sold its media assets to GAMURS Group, the owners of esports publication Dot Esports, for CAD $6.8m (~£4.56m). Specifically, Enthusiast Gaming has sold Destructoid, Escapist Magazine, Operation Sports, PC Invasion, Siliconera and Upcomer.
Despite the increased loss, Enthusiast Gaming’s CEO remains positive that the company is “on the path to achieving sustainable profitability in 2023”. This is largely due to the company recording record revenue, gross profit, gross margin, direct sales and subscriptions. The company’s CEO also highlighted that the current macroeconomic conditions impacted programmatic advertising revenue in the second half of the year.
Nick Brien, CEO of Enthusiast Gaming, commented: “As evidenced by the rapid gross margin acceleration, up 870 bps in 2022, we’ve continued to diversify the business away from commoditized, lower-margin revenue, towards a higher-margin, solution-based mix, focused on bespoke content and brand solutions, subscription- and product-based offerings, and our Pocket Gamer Connects live events series, which set record attendance in 2022.”
Alongside Luminosity Gaming and the company’s FPS title, Enthusiast Gaming also owns Call of Duty League franchise Seattle Surge and Overwatch League team Vancouver Titans.
