2024 have been a really intense year in terms of M&A for our industry, with lots of transactions amongst the full value chain. Still, the regulatory landscape with fewer market openings, SEO difficulties, advertising restrictions or rise in taxes have made the projections quite harder than it was from 2022.
From our experience in running M&A projects from the beginning of 2025, it appears a gap between sellers knowledge of the market and buyers expectations. As often, sellers want the best price for their assets, and don’t really talk about how their business have managed the past few challenges, and bet on the potential.
The biggest transactions come from Operators and suppliers
Amongst the biggest M&A operations in 2024, there is the merger of Kindred, acquired by FDJ for 2.5billions€.
If the former state-owned lottery operator in France made such deal, it’s to strengthen its reach accross the Europe, becoming now a giant, not only reliant on political decisions in its home country.
Followed by SNAITECH and Flutter with a transaction reaching 2.3 billions€.
DraftKing also hit hard the merger and acquisiton market with the acquisition of the leading jackpocket.com for a total amount of 750M$
Aristocrats Leisure entered the game with the sell of Plarium Global mobile gaming, to Modern Times Group. The sale have been completed in february 2025, for a total amount of 790M$ (620M$ upfront – and 170M$ based on sales performance in 2028).
Endeavor also announced having completed the sale of Openbet to OB Global Holding, in a management buyout, supported by Oakvale Capital, The Raine Group and Latham & Watkins LLP. The transactions was supposed to reach $450M.
Flutter was involved in a second transaction, with the acquisition of a majority stake in Betnacional, to expand its reach in Brazil, for a total sum of $350M.
Golden Matrix on their end, have aimed at MeridianBet Group, a transaction completed in March 2024, for a total sum of $300M. Since then, they announced having launched a recommandation tool, based on AI technologies, lately in October 2024.
Even after GCU 2024, affiliates are still acquiring.
Better Collective have been quite calm in 2024 (and they disclosed not looking for more transactions in 2025), after two incredible years. They acquired Ace Odds for 42M€.
GDC is leading the way in affiliate M&A, with the acquisition of OddsJam (through Odds Holding) for a total amount of 160M€. But they also acquired XLMedia Canadian assets for $42.5M in the same year. The remaining part of the former affiliate, now out of business, have been acquired by Sportradar for 30M€.
2025 is consolidation year – but who will takes advantage of it ?
The market is slowing down, due to the overall economical context, and the regulatory changes in Brazil, Finland, France (where taxes have been raised and a marketing tax implemented) and in the US where the new trend is on predictions market and sweepstakes (even though states are banning it).
Businesses that have been quite healthy in the past year and have high amount of cash can take advantages of the current situation. Catena Media for instance, is now valued quite low, and can become a target for some bigger actors. Otherwise, that’s also the perfect time for smaller affiliate, tired of managing Google updates and PPC costs to sell and exit the industry.
On the operator side, it will probably more cautious since the golden age of US are behind us. Some might be willing to explore new geos, with the rise in Africa, LatAm and the end of the state monopoly in Finland. But on those markets, organic growth is still reachable.
At TGC, we’re helping affiliates and Operator since the beginning of the year identifying the right targets and making sure their interests are protected.
Discover our M&A services, either on the buy or sell side. From the targets screening to the post merger integration.
Pierric Blanchet
Founder @ TGC
FAQ
It depends on the health of your asset. If you have been strongly hit by Google lattest updates, and struggle to recover, it might not be the right time for you if you still want the money of the past. But if you survived and are outperforming competitors, that’s something we highly value and we’d be interested in discussing synergies.
Everything starts with the revenues, profits and ebitda multiples. Then we run a comparative analysis of similar transactions in the past. And depending the type of the business we are talking about, TGC is adding extra coefficient to have the best valuation for the seller and the right price for buyers.
The Gambling Cockpit usually spend a month finding the right target. Discussions on metrics, due diligence and negotiations depend on the buyer an seller interest; but can be done in 3 months. Post Merger is longer, in order to get the most of the acquisition.