Greetings, and welcome to Allied Esports Entertainment Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Lasse Glassen, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Allied Esports Entertainment 2020 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. Speaking on the call today is Allied Esports Entertainment's Chief Executive Officer, Frank Ng; and Chief Financial Officer, Tony Hung. The company's President and long-time World Poker Tour's CEO, Adam Pliska; and Jud Hannigan, who is leading the Allied Esports operations, are also available for the question-and-answer session. Before I turn the call over to management, please remember that our prepared remarks and responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements. Words such as may, will, expect, intend, plan, believe, seek, could, estimate, judgment, targeting, should, anticipate, goal and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those implied by such forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors discussed in the company's public filings, including the risk factors discussed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that these expectations will be attained. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In addition, certain of the financial information presented in this call represents non-GAAP financial measures. The company's earnings release, which was issued this afternoon and is available on the company's website, presents reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measure and an explanation of why the company believes such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Allied Esports Entertainment's CEO, Frank Ng. Frank?

Thank you, Lasse, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I'm extremely pleased with the resiliency of our business and the solid performance we delivered in the third quarter despite the significant challenges we faced in the first half of 2020 arising from the COVID pandemic that persisted throughout the quarter. While strong results in the in-person total of our business was our primary growth driver for the company prior to the onset of the pandemic, operational restrictions, including extremely limited social gatherings mandated globally, impacted this part of our business model for both Allied Esports and the WPT during the third quarter. In light of this, I continue to be very pleased with our team's ability to adapt to the challenges by successfully pivoting our operational focus to our Multiplatform Content and Interactive Services pillars. Solid third quarter revenue growth in Multiplatform Content and Interactive Services pillars significantly mitigated the impact of the pandemic on our businesses as we continue to serve the esports and poker community. In addition, as Tony will discuss further, we made aggressive strides to pay down our convertible debt principal to $3.1 million. As we look ahead, we believe that the strategic pivots we made as a result of the pandemic has accelerated our ability to monetize all 3 pillars of our strategy. Importantly, we believe this has put us in a great position to better serve our customers in the future and take full advantage of the significant growth opportunities as the economy continues to recover and the environment normalize. Despite the near-term impact the pandemic has had on our financials, we do see a longer-term silver lining for Allied Esports and WPT. As gamers abide by stay-at-home restrictions and with fewer entertainment options during the pandemic, gaming is filling the…

Thank you, Frank. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As Frank mentioned, our third quarter performance demonstrates the resiliency of our business and our ability to pivot our strategic focus within our 3 pillars amidst this dynamic and challenging operating environment. While our in-person pillar continued to be impacted by travel restrictions and social distancing protocols as a result of the pandemic, we made strides on the development of our Multiplatform Content and interactive pillars, where we saw strong revenue growth this quarter. As we continue to leverage these 2 pillars while diligently working on the recovery of live in-person events, our priority remains to manage our expense base and strengthen our liquidity position while executing our strategy and positioning ourselves for long-term growth. Now turning to our third quarter results. Total revenues for the third quarter of 2020 were $5.9 million, down 2.5% year-over-year, primarily due to lower in-person revenues, which were nearly offset by higher revenues from the Multiplatform Content and Interactive Services pillars. Looking at these results in greater detail. In-person revenues for the third quarter totaled $0.7 million compared to $2.6 million in the prior year period. The decrease of 73.1% year-over-year was a result of postponed events, reduced operating hours and social distancing measures from the pandemic. Multiplatform Content revenues totaled $1.3 million compared to $1.0 million in the prior year period, an increase of 22.6%. This growth was primarily due to an increase in distribution revenue from 2 major customers. Finally, Interactive Services revenues totaled $3.9 million for the third quarter compared to $2.4 million in the third quarter last year or an increase of 62.1%. The increase was primarily attributed to strong growth in ClubWPT subscription and continued success of our new premium ClubWPT Diamond service. Overall, total revenues…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

Great. Just a couple. You mentioned on the in-person events, your capacity is at about 65%, I think, if I got that right. Can you talk about, first of all, how full the average events are? And then how has that improved, gotten worse, the same? How are the trends in October, November compared to maybe September?

Jud, can you step in to do this question?

I'd be happy to. Thanks, Brian, for your question. So our in-person events are limited to 65% of capacity due to social distancing based on how many computer stations we can get on the arena floor. We've seen great numbers as far as the capacity is concerned. We're filling that -- we're filling those stations week in and week out on our event nights. And so we remain bullish at -- if we're able to increase the capacity when social distancing lifts, we will be able to continue to fill those seats.

Great. And then in terms of a potential second wave of COVID, just take us through what's happening in Las Vegas, if there were issues at all. And are there -- do you see any need to make any changes in today's environment, which is every month is different?

I'm happy to take that question as well. So the -- Vegas was one of the strictest places that -- at the early onset of the pandemic. And so -- and they've also been able to open up earlier than many locations out there. And I think what we've recently seen is an increase in the permitted gathering number from 50 up to 250. I think one of the things that the general climate in Vegas is really focused on trying to bring conventions back. And so there's a lot of collaboration, not only with event organizers, but with tech and the medical field to be able to create a safe environment. I think that one of the things -- being an operator in Vegas, having our facility there, we'll tend to benefit from some of those early waves of technology that increase the safety of gatherings. And so what we're seeing right now is not really any kind of change in protocol. We're seeing folks kind of like holding at that number, and that number has only increased to 250 recently. So we haven't seen any downward pressure against that number at the moment, but we'll continue to evaluate that going forward. One of the things we've done is -- we really earn the trust of our customers who come back to us week in, week out because we put out a safe environment for people to play and do that with as little concern as possible given everything that's going on in the world.

Great. Switching gears just a little bit in terms of the real gaming model, and you had that Jersey event. Can you remind us how you monetize gambling events? Are you taking a Vie.gg -- a percentage of the Vie.gg by the operators? Just maybe a quick description on how you'll generate revenue.

Jud?

Sure. Happy to. Yes. So what we do with -- is we're selling the -- we're licensing our data and video rights. So if you think about us as operating the event, within that game, we're operating a server which is hosting that game. And so we're leveraging the data and video rights off of our stream and our game play and then selling that to -- and licensing that to operators, sportsbook operators around the world. And so we'll collect the license fee for them to be able to ingest that information and to create lines and create offerings around our contracts on their platform.

So sportsbooks around the world will be able to replay events or -- is that what I understand? They're not live events. They'll replay events. And at sportsbook, you can place bets on these events?

So they are absolutely live, just to correct you. They're absolutely live events. They're taking in a live feed from us, and then ultimately then being able to process that and create lines, and in some cases, provide that video on their platforms as well behind a paywall.

Great. Last question of mine...

Yes. And this is just -- look, bear in mind, I've been asked that. This experiment is -- what we tried to do is create an experience or offering that is custom-made for both makers so that we can create a consistency, the frequency, do a few hours block every day so that they can continue to see actions on their book. So I think our partners are very happy about the results so far.

Great. Last question I have. You talked about the cost reductions, yet you still burned $3 million in cash from operations, just back off the envelope, looking at the cash flow statement. So is more being done to reduce the cash burn? Or just maybe some thoughts, high level, on what needs to be done to reduce that burn.

Sure, Brian. This is Tony. Why don't I go ahead and take that one. Yes. Q3 was a little bit of an anomaly in that we had some timing issues and some kind of onetime items that were kind of part of our normalized burn. There was some timing with regards to the tax-withholding payments that we had made for a bunch of these shares that were issued to a number of our employees. We also had a large D&O insurance premium and a few other things like that. So those are all expected, the normal operating burn. I would say more from a normalized perspective, we've been doing everything we can to bring those costs down. And I think we've done a very good job at those and that you should be able to see continue going forward.

Our next question is from Derek Soderberg with Colliers Securities.

I wanted to start with the World Poker Tour business as it relates to the ClubWPT side. Can you give us any details on your expectations for the business from here? And then also, how are you guys sizing that opportunity?

Yes. So this is Adam speaking. Thanks for the question. So right now, we've launched our new Diamond club, and so I think we still have a lot of growth in that. And what I can say is just when you go from $24 to $27 up to $150, it's not so much that the margins changed because you do have additional prize pool, but the absolute dollar amount changes. And so it gives us a lot more room. And what it does, it also gives us a lot more room to do affiliate marketing, something that the club at that level, really, it's not as competitive with some of the online gaming affiliate models out there. So what we see is a great opportunity to begin affiliate marketing, something that we have not done but we are now able to do. And I think that, that provides a good avenue for us as well. And in addition, as real money gaming starts to open up, social gaming is a great entry place for gamers of all locations. And so what we're finding is that we're getting a lot of inward-bound inquiries from real money gaming companies, not just in poker, but in sportsbooks and other areas as well, who realize that this is a very valuable database. These are people who are -- they are coming in, they have an interest in competition, online competition. At the same time, the fact that they're in the social gaming space probably indicates that they're -- at a portion of their journey, they've not selected a real money gaming partner because that wasn't available in the U.S. So I think that, that provides another avenue of growth in that respect as well.

Okay. And then within Interactive, you guys have the virtual product revenue, the Zynga and those others. Are those businesses benefiting as well from some of the trends that we're seeing? And then how are those partnerships going?

Yes. So yes, I think in general, everybody has benefited from people being home and people realizing that this is entertainment, and so -- some more than others, in terms of our capital play agreement, the play WPT side of the business, that which is far more based on right share, I think that we do see benefit from that. In terms of the relationships, our relationships have been good. Part of the decisions that we have to make going forward is related to database domain. Ultimately, it's -- we take great pride that people want to license the WPT name, but it does present an opportunity. In the future, we might want to consolidate these things and put them just so that all of the names fall under our umbrella as opposed to the licensing model. So we'll see about that. But so far, things have been good and we enjoyed the partnerships very well.

Great. And then my final question is just kind of a broad question on the industry. I know you guys had mentioned some really nice numbers on viewership. And I was wondering if you can provide some additional commentary on how you guys are going to monetize some of that for the online events. Viewership is clearly up. I'm wondering how has revenue per event, particularly online events, has it been trending upwards? Have you seen increased engagement from new customers? Any additional detail on how you guys are monetizing those trends?

Sure. Sure. Well, it's not apples-to-apples because before, we've always had basically 65 physical events. Suddenly, we had a pandemic. Fortunately, we were prepared to test out our first online event before the pandemic. We just accelerated that. That was the event in May. That proved so successful that we did the world championship with partypoker, which, as Frank mentioned, they put $100 million of guarantees behind it. What is very nice about the online opportunities, and we will -- we're never going to go back to a world where there's no online World Poker Tour event, is, first of all, the margins are significantly better. Secondly, the intrinsic value that we bring can be replicated over thousands of people. We still have our hosts having dialogue with the winners at the final table. But now over social media, instead of a stream that might reach several thousand people while you're at that time before the TV show goes out, you have a chance to reach many, many, many people who have been playing it or watching it. The other aspect about this is, yes, the viewership is up. But one of the things that I want to point out is, for the first time, we saw total viewership online exceeding linear television. So that's a big turning point, and it's relevant in 2 respects. First of all, the World Poker Tour has one of the largest databases of quality poker content. Five or 6 years ago, when the world went on to streaming, the World Poker Tour continued to do high-end television multimillion-dollar production. So we were able to make relationships with, say, Pluto, where we could come in and say, "Hey, don't worry. You're not getting a couple of seasons or whatever." We have an entire channel that…

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you for your support and for joining us on today's call. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report our 2020 fourth quarter in March. Thank you again for your time and attention this afternoon, and please stay safe and healthy.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.