Corporate
M&A, leadership changes, and strategic moves across the industry.
A roundtable on the International Day of Democracy concluded that protecting the "European lottery model" is a matter of civil society, not sectoral interest. The figure is from March; the framing is new, and it is aimed at the institutions that decide what the model is allowed to be.
Bondholders tendered 68% of the lottery group's 2028 notes and Brightstar will pay for them with a new €500 million issue priced last week at more than double the coupon. The €1.4 billion Italy Lotto instalment is why the balance sheet needed the room.
The Ladbrokes owner says up to a fifth of its 2,000 customer care roles could go, weeks after an H1 that beat expectations and days after its chief executive wrote to the Prime Minister about machine games duty. The cuts are global; the argument is aimed at 28 October.
Premium volumes have dropped since August, HSBC and UBS both put the first 13 days flat year on year, and CLSA has cut 2027 by 4% with catalysts "not imminent". A week ago Citigroup called September up 12%.
A $400m term loan and a $160m delayed draw fund pre-construction on the $4bn Ferry Point project and give the group liquidity, from the private credit firm that also refinanced The Star in June.
The Statistics and Census Service's annual survey shows receipts up 8.8% and gross surplus up 9.3%, but the spend on player rebates and commissions rose 11.6%, the second year running it has outpaced the top line.
Group gaming revenue up 5.8% to €352.5 million, adjusted EBITDA up 14.1%, and the online arm's best quarter yet on World Cup stakes 180% above 2022. What the market wants is not the numbers but the answer to a strategic review that has been running since the first quarter, with Jefferies and Macquarie engaged.
Adjusted EBITDA of €162.5 million, a third guidance upgrade this year, and North American revenue up 161%. The driver is a motor-racing and slot hybrid running with Hard Rock Bet in Florida that settles on historical race results rather than a random number generator, and Playtech is telling investors not to annualise it.
Every full and part-time employee gets $1,000 of Red Rock Resorts stock for each year of service, announced without warning at a party most of them thought was just a party. It also arrives five days after the Supreme Court declined to spare the company an order to bargain with the Culinary Union, and it was announced at the property that order concerns.
The First Hall of the Civil Court granted Spribe an ex parte provisional injunction on 1 September covering two EU trademarks. The evidence the court cited is the kind operators can check for themselves: the two games appearing side by side in a search on Betsson, and a listing that credited Spribe's game to the wrong studio.
Around 300 of the roles are in Stoke-on-Trent, where bet365 is the biggest private employer, and 40 across Gibraltar and Malta. Voluntary redundancies come first. Every one of the five largest British gambling firms has now cut staff since remote gaming duty rose 19 points.
Evolution commissioned it in 2022 to answer Black Cube, has called it exonerating, and spent months resisting its disclosure. Now that it is out, it clears Evolution of illegal practice and of operating in sanctioned countries, and separately finds significant compliance failings and games reachable from four prohibited markets. Playtech has moved first on the reading.