A sale would reverse Entain’s previous plan to buy out its minority partner.
In +More: Kalshi reported to have held IPO talks with advisors.
Bragg CEO offers resignation in wake of AGM vote rejection.
Markets: SkyCity hits the heights after Australian regulatory settlement.
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Gripped
’Cause I’ve been changing my mind: Entain would appear to be ready to walk away from its Entain CEE business barely a year after its H125 report said it was preparing to buy out minority partner EMMA Capital.
A Reuters story last week revealed Entain was in talks with its JV partner about selling its majority stake.
The story explicitly linked a sale with the need for Entain to raise funds in order to pay a portion of its existing debt of £4.52bn.
Let’s play the blame game for sure: The report suggested a linkage with the recent hike in UK iCasino taxes to 40% from 21% and the subsequent need for Entain to find cost mitigations.
It is the latest sign of the impact of government policies on the landscape of the UK gambling sector.
Earlier this month, Bally’s Intralot finally announced a plan to buy out the deeply indebted Evoke, a company that was badly hobbled by the gambling tax hikes.
Robeson Reeves, CEO at Bally’s Intralot, said the UK tax backdrop had “brought about this situation.”
For Emma, forever ago: Entain has spent close to four years building a Central and Eastern European platform that until now has been viewed as a core component of its growth strategy.
Even up to last summer, the plan appears to have been to seek to buy out its partner as per the original 2022 agreement.
In its interim report last August, Entain said it arranged a financing facility to fund acquisition of the entire CEE minority.
That’s no longer an option: Then came last November’s UK Budget announcement, which was accompanied by earnings call chatter about Entain seeking mitigations to protect margins. The fears over the UK have hurt the share price, which is down 29% YTD.
One source familiar with Entain’s strategic thinking said the original intention of Entain CEE was to “consolidate the region.”
“But with Entain’s balance sheet, that’s not realistic in the short to medium term,” they added. “I don’t think anyone can be surprised.”
Building blocks: Entain CEE was assembled in two stages: first, via the 2022 purchase of Croatia’s SuperSport and, second, through the 2023 acquisition of Poland’s STS after which the selling Juroszek family reinvested for a 10% economic interest.
That left the cap table at Entain 67.5%, EMMA 22.5% and the Juroszek Foundations 10%.
Trigger happy: When the 2022 deal was struck, Entain was given an option, exercisable after three years, to buy out EMMA’s stake and thus give it 100% control. At the same time, EMMA had a matching call right to sell its stake to Entain, meaning either side could pull the trigger.
As of December, the put option was valued as a liability on the Entain balance sheet of $587m, which it said implies a value on the business of £1.8bn.
But it is not clear whether Entain will achieve that valuation; EMMA Capital is the natural buyer, but to an extent Entain is a forced seller.
What cannot be doubted, though, is the performance of the entity. It delivered £191m of EBITDA in 2025, with SuperSport and STS holding number-one positions in Croatia and Poland.
Zoom out: A CEE disposal adds to the speculation already swirling around Entain’s other big JV, BetMGM, where MGM Resorts has previously said that in an ideal world it would own the whole business.
But for now that looks parked: MGM is itself the target of a takeover approach from Barry Diller’s People Inc.
Analysts have suggested that any further corporate action is likely off the table for at least a year.
Ricky don’t lose that number: There are also moves involving board member and activist investor Ricky Sandler, invited on to the board after agitating for the disposal of non-core assets but now out of the picture after his fund Eminence Capital sold down its entire holding.
His arrival prompted a capital allocation committee to review potential sales, a process that first identified the Georgian business Crystalbet as surplus before the company changed its mind.
Whether Sandler’s departure has any bearing on the future of Entain CEE is, for now, an open question.
E+M PRO
Volte-face: For more detail on the potential sale of Entain’s majority stake in Entain CEE, see this weekend’s M&A X-ray edition sent to PRO subs only.
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+More
Float on: Kalshi is reported to be in talks with its advisors about a potential IPO. According to The Information, the discussions have come after the company saw annualized revenues pass the $2bn mark. Recall, Kalshi achieved a valuation fo $22bn in a funding round led by Coatue.
Allwyn is continuing to evaluate a secondary listing, with management considering both London and New York as potential venues following the completion of its €16bn merger with OPAP. CFO Kenneth Morton told iGaming Business a decision has not yet been made.
Scratching that Illitch: Ilitch Companies has created Ilitch Gaming to oversee its gaming operations. The new division will be chaired by Chris Ilitch, with longtime MotorCity Casino executive John Policicchio appointed CEO. As part of the launch, Ilitch Gaming has agreed to acquire Scarlet Pearl Casino Resort in Mississippi and the remaining ownership stake in Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Puts+Takes
Making a mark: The economics of DraftKings’ market-making opportunity “appear highly attractive,” according to the analysts at Citizens, who suggested it offers “superior economics” to many other sectors and provides a “compelling and durable runway” for growth.
See the Puts+Takes edition for PRO subscribers to be sent tomorrow.
Bragg shenanigans
Palace coup? Bragg CEO Matevž Mazij has fallen on his sword after failing to gain the support of a simple majority of shareholders for his re-election to the board at the company’s AGM held last week.
In the vote, nearly 56% of shareholders voted against his appointment. Mazij immediately tendered his resignation.
He will remain in post until his resignation is accepted and a successor appointed.
On maneuvers: The vote against Mazij comes a fortnight after the company announced the plan to acquire Matt Davey’s Drayton International, a deal that also saw Davey join the board.
Davey had previously bought a block of 1-million shares from Mazij and, as part of the Drayton acquisition, he participated in a further share placement at the start of June that raised $1.3m.
Also participating in that placement were CFO Robbie Bressler, COO Morten Tonneson and director Thomas Winter, ex-Golden Nugget Online Gaming founder and president.
Hello, goodbye: In Bragg’s recent Q1 earnings, revenue rose marginally to €25.7m while adj. EBITDA was static at €4m. The earnings came with the announcement of a strategic pivot, which Mazij characterized as a move “towards becoming a higher margin, proprietary games first, AI-driven” business.
Referring to the Drayton acquisition, he said it marked a “critical inflection point” in Bragg’s growth trajectory.
He said that adding Davey to the board was “in a way… what excites me the most.”
Markets
Above us only sky: New Zealand-listed casino operator SkyCity topped last week’s movers, enjoying a 21% relief rally after the company’s Australian subsidiary settled its outstanding regulatory issues with the Australian authorities.
Under the agreement, SkyCity will pay an A$21m ($14.7m) fine and implement a series of governance and compliance reforms designed to strengthen oversight of its Adelaide operations.
The settlement follows years of heightened regulatory scrutiny linked to AML and governance failings that previously resulted in a separate A$67m AUSTRAC penalty.
The A$21m fine will be paid in three installments over two years.
Knicker-blockers: Increasing evidence of the consumer take-up of prediction markets – and in particular Kalshi’s dominance – continued to hurt both of the OSB leaders, with DraftKings down 11.5% and Flutter off by 7%.
The pair won’t have been helped by the news that the New York market registered a negative GTR for the first time in the week to June 14.
The cause was the Knicks victory in the NBA Championship, overwhelming the benefit from the slate of games in the first week of the FIFA World Cup.
The data shows DraftKings registering a loss of $14m and Flutter losing $22.6m.
A plague on both your houses: The long-running legal dispute between Evolution and Playtech took another turn this week after Evolution failed to get its rival added to the New Jersey case.
The leading live casino supplier had requested the Superior Court in New Jersey add Playtech as a defendant in the company’s defamation lawsuit against law firm Calcagni & Kanefsky.
Evolution fell 4.5% last week while Playtech was down 9.5%.
Croix to bear: VICI Properties was down 7% despite announcing another acquisition ex-the gaming sector via a $20m deal with Club Med for a resort in St Croix in the US Virgin Islands, which the analysts at Jefferies said should have been “incrementally positive” for the shares.
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What we’re reading
They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket – but None of It Was Real in The Wall Sreet Journal. “Makihara is one of dozens of mostly college-age creators Polymarket paid to film themselves making fake trades and sometimes scoring fake wins, according to an analysis of more than 1,100 videos by the Journal.”
Bally’s is causing problems for the A’s Las Vegas ballpark dream in SFGate. “Bally’s was supposed to build two hotel towers and a gambling hall to fill out the property’s landscape alongside the A’s new ballpark. That construction, however, is lagging behind, making it quite unlikely that the stadium area will look anything like its renderings by the time the ballpark opens.
Gen-Z Traders Go for Broke in Pursuit of a New American Dream in Bloomberg. “In modern US history, the line between investing and gambling has rarely been more blurred.”
Prediction Markets’ Next Major Bet: Wall St. Traders in The New York Times. “Many market participants say that while institutions have shown increasing interest in using prediction markets, the number demanding to get in remains low for now.”
The social dumpster
Open and shut case: a16z, an investor in Kalshi, said in an X post last week that the sum of outstanding contracts that remain ‘open’ in the market has reached a record weekly high, hitting $1.48bn in the week ending June 15. “Open interest tracks the capital that participants have deployed and which remains at risk,” a16z added.
Upcoming earnings
Jul 17: Evolution, Betsson
Jul 21: Hacksaw Gaming
Jul 22: Kambi
Jul 29: Churchill Downs (earnings)
Jul 30: Churchill Downs (call)
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