Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Entain's 2025 results presentation. I'm delighted to be here to present a strong set of results. I'm joined this morning on stage by Rob Wood, our Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Chief Financial Officer. By the way, can you hear me?
Good. Good. Okay. Always helps in a presentation to be heard, I think. Anyway, I'm also joined by the IR team here in the audience. We also have senior members of the executive team in the audience as well, and we have our new Chief Financial Officer Designate, Michael Snape, who's in the front no-row as well. Welcome to everybody, and now on to the agenda. I'm gonna start with the headlines and some of the highlights of our strong progress. After that, Rob will then take you through the financials and provide you with the guidelines for 2026.
It's going to be back to me to discuss our strategic delivery, how our priorities are evolving to further accelerate our performance, and why we have confidence in our pathway to earnings growth, margin expansion, and cash generation, including our conviction that we are going to hit at least GBP 500 million of annual adjusted cash flow from 2028. Finally, I will briefly wrap up before we open everything to your questions. Before I actually do move on to 2025 financial performance, this is the first time that I have spoken publicly since the U.K. budget back in November. The U.K. government's decision to dramatically increase taxes on the gambling sector was extremely disappointing. It opens the door to the illegal black market, who pay no tax, do not have a license, and offer no player protections.
However, during this period of turmoil, we will invest wisely in the U.K., and we will seize the opportunity to gain share from the long tail of subscale operators who, quite frankly, are ill-equipped to withstand this impact. Okay, now turning to our results. 2025 has been a good year for the group. We delivered against our strategic priorities and achieved a strong financial performance. With EBITDA for both Entain and BetMGM ahead of expectations. Importantly, growth was broad-based and underpinned by strong volume growth, which demonstrates the underlying health of the business. Online volumes were up 7% year-on-year in 2025, and impressively, it was up 9% in Q4. Throughout 2025, online business consistently delivered growth, and we now have seven consecutive quarters of revenue growth online. That is despite starting to lap some tough comps.
The U.K. continues to be a standout performance, but also there are markets like Spain, Canada, Greece, Georgia, New Zealand, all showing strong double-digit growth. Our joint venture, BetMGM, produced an excellent year of strong and profitable growth. We also enjoyed efficiency improvements. Entain's EBITDA was up 8% year-over-year to GBP 1.16 billion. Including our share of BetMGM, EBITDA was up an impressive 28% to GBP 1.244 billion. The EBITDA performance is stronger than expected, and the EBITDA performance and the stronger than expected cash return from BetMGM has driven a meaningful improvement in our adjusted cash flow, again, ahead of expectations. Our improvement journey is working, and it is delivering. Our diversified portfolio of podium positions provides resilience and scale advantages that matter more than ever now.
Building on this momentum, we have evolved our strategic priorities to further optimize how we work, enhance profitability, drive meaningful cash generation. In summary, 2025 has been a strong year. The business is in good shape, and we're confident in our ability to not only navigate the challenges, but to emerge stronger. With that, I'll temporarily hand over to Rob.
Thanks, Stella. Morning, everyone. For the eighth and final time, I'm delighted to be delivering the full-year results presentation, and it's a pleasure to present strong numbers again before I hand over the baton to Mike. It's a familiar format from me this morning, let me jump straight in. As usual, all revenue and EBITDA growth numbers that I quote are in constant currency unless stated otherwise. Starting with revenue, I'm really pleased with the growth we delivered across the whole group. Total revenue, including 50% of BetMGM, was up by nearly GBP 0.5 billion- GBP 6.4 billion or up 8% year-on-year. Within that, online NGR ex U.S. was up GBP 3.9 billion, up 6% year-on-year.
Barring adverse sports results in Q4, that growth number would have been 7% in line with volume growth for the year. On to EBITDA, which came in ahead of expectations for both BetMGM and Entain. Ex-US EBITDA of GBP 1.16 billion beat our guidance and was up 8% year-on-year, despite digesting new taxes from Brazil following their new regulatory regime. Online EBITDA margin also beat guidance, and I'm delighted to say it was up 0.4 percentage points year-on-year, despite a 1.4 percentage point drag from Brazil taxes. That means that our scale growth and improving operational execution drove an underlying 1.8 percentage point margin improvement, which is a key highlight of the year.
With EBITDA beats from both Entain and BetMGM, total group EBITDA was GBP 1.24 billion, which was up a very strong 28% on the prior year. That EBITDA growth led to equally impressive EPS growth, which more than doubled to GBP 0.62. Moving on to adjusted cash flow, which is a key measure for us, and I'm delighted to report a strong year-on-year improvement from an outflow in 2024 to an inflow of GBP 151 million in 2025. GBP 151 million is comfortably ahead of expectations and was driven by both the Entain EBITDA beats and higher than expected cash from BetMGM. On to dividends, we've declared a final dividend of GBP 0.098 per share, up 5% year-on-year, which is consistent with the half year and our progressive dividend policy. Finally, leverage.
We've added a look-through leverage metric, which better reflects the group's leverage position. What do we mean by look-through? On the debt side of the equation, we include the outstanding DPA payments and the balance sheet value of the CEE minority, and on the EBITDA side, we include our 50% share of BetMGM. As the slide shows, look-through leverage at year-end was 3.6x, which is down significantly from 4.3x at the end of 2024 due to both EBITDA growth but also paying down the DPA. On a reported basis, leverage has come in at 3.1x, flat year-on-year as expected, and available cash remains strong at over GBP 900 million. Let's turn now to our online revenue performance ex-US over recent quarters.
This chart shows two lines, one for NGR growth, which includes volatility from sports margin, and one for volume growth, which adjusts NGR to remove any impact from sports margin and is therefore a clean measure of underlying growth. two particularly satisfying call-outs. Firstly, we've now delivered seven consecutive quarters of growth, all on an organic basis, evidencing the structural growth in our business model. Secondly, we maintain strong volume growth into the second half of the year, despite lapping the Voluntary Code in the U.K. in the summer. No doubt there'll be some recycling benefit to volumes in H2, given margin was below expectation in both Q3 and Q4, but volumes were consistently strong and grew 7% across the year. That means we're growing at least in line with our markets, and we enter 2026 with continued momentum.
For the eagle-eyed amongst you'll note this chart's not quite the same as we've shown previously. The prior version normalized for 2024, it adjusted the current year margin to a normalized margin, meaning that volatility from the prior year margin still impacts the picture. That version is included in the appendix. To our usual market breakdown, again, it's a strong picture with growth coming from across the portfolio. Our largest market, UK&I, continues to be a standout performer, delivering growth of 15% in online, well in excess of market growth as we continue to regain market share. We also saw sustained double-digit volume growth in the U.K. throughout every quarter of 2025. U.K. retail also saw market share gains as we were flat like-for-like across the year in a market which declined by mid-single digits.
International online NGR grew 2%, slightly behind volume growth of 4% due to soft margins, especially in Brazil and also Australia. Importantly, the second half saw an acceleration in volumes from 1% in H1 to 7% in H2, helped by lapping the regulatory changes in 2024 from Belgium and Netherlands. If we look now by market within international, Brazil had a tough sport margin in H2, falling 3 percentage points year-on-year. Consequently, NGR declined in H2 and brought growth for the year down to flat. However, on the plus side, volumes were up 13% over the year. Market share was maintained over H2, we know other operators were hit by a poor margin too. We delivered a positive contribution to EBITDA despite the new regulation and high competition.
Australia next, where customer-friendly results at several tentpole events suppressed NGR, particularly in the second half of the year. Volume growth fared better with 3% growth in H2 as our refreshed management team have been a catalyst for improving performance and improving profitability. Italy Online was up 5%, growing NGR consistently by mid-single digits in every quarter of the year. Italy Retail also fared well with 7% NGR growth over the year. Other large markets in international continued to see double-digit growth, including New Zealand, Georgia and Spain on this page, but also Canada, Greece and parts of the Baltics and Nordics as well. CEE next, and both Croatia and Poland delivered growth in both NGR and EBITDA and retain their market leadership positions in those markets. Finally, BetMGM also reported an outstanding performance with 34% growth in online revenue.
The key takeaway from this slide should be the unrivaled broad-based growth that Entain enjoys across the diversified portfolio. Looking forwards, we're targeting growth across every one of these online markets in 2026, which positions us very well for 2026 and beyond. Moving on now to EBITDA, which came in ahead of expectations for both Entain and BetMGM. This slide shows our year-on-year bridge with EBITDA excluding BetMGM on the left and then EBITDA including BetMGM on the right. Starting on the left, Entain's EBITDA grew 7% or up GBP 71 million on a reported basis. That 7% becomes 8% on a constant currency basis, and it would be 14% excluding the new Brazil taxes. As usual, as the left-hand side chart shows, our online business is the main growth engine, adding GBP 136 million year-on-year.
Where did that come from? three things. Firstly, NGR growth, as we've looked at on the prior slides. two, efficiency savings, particularly within cost of sales, as our online gross profit margin increased a whole percentage point before Brazil tax. Thirdly, improved marketing returns, enabling us to hold spend broadly flat year-on-year in absolute terms, thereby improving margin. Retail now, we saw EBITDA up GBP 16 million year-on-year, helped by a favorable margin versus our expectations. In addition to Entain's GBP 71 million year-on-year increase from the left-hand side, the right-hand chart adds our share of BetMGM's significant EBITDA improvement of GBP 178 million year-on-year as it inflected to profitability, which gives an all-in total group EBITDA of GBP 1.244 billion, up almost GBP 250 million year-on-year.
That's an impressive 25% growth on a reported basis and a touch higher at 28% in constant currency, and that's all organic growth. As I mentioned earlier, that EBITDA growth is the primary driver of why EPS more than doubled last year. Let's now take a closer look at cash flow and leverage, and as always, there's a detailed cash flow provided in the appendix. As a reminder, adjusted cash flow is effectively our distributable cash, i.e. cash flow pre-equity dividends, and we also exclude working capital noise and strip out M&A and debt movements. In 2025, we delivered adjusted cash flow of GBP 151 million, which is meaningfully ahead of expectations.
You'll remember a year ago, I had guided adjusted cash flow to be broadly neutral, and then by Q3 we were ahead of plan, particularly thanks to BetMGM, and so guidance effectively moved from neutral to GBP 75 million, and then we beat that too. What drove the outperformance? Firstly, Entain's EBITDA beat guidance, and secondly, BetMGM returned more cash to parents than guided, $270 million in total for 2025, which far exceeded expectation. Finally, a net favorable movement across other cash items, including lower interest costs following our debt refinancing efforts last year. Net debt ended the year at GBP 3.6 billion, with the improvement in adjusted cash flow offset by an FX translation bad guy of over GBP 100 million and the working capital outfo that was as expected.
Overall, reported leverage of 3.1 x is in line with where we expected it to be, but more insightfully, look-through leverage of 3.6 x saw a meaningful improvement, down from 4.3 x in the prior year, reflecting EBITDA growth, improved cash flow, and a reduction in the remaining DPA balance. Our cash flow and look-through leverage improved significantly. Our available cash remains strong at over GBP 900 million, and we have a healthy debt maturity profile with our next significant maturity of around 20% of the debt not falling due until 2028. A few quick comments on BetMGM now. Won't be new news, but it's still important given its significance to the group's priorities, particularly cash generation.
BetMGM had a fantastic year and delivered ahead of its upgraded expectations, with total revenues up 33% and EBITDA up over $460 million year-on-year as it moved into profitability. This inflection triggered the start of cash returns to parents, with $270 million distributed in 2025, including excess cash from the 2024 year end. The strong performance last year was driven by BetMGM's disciplined execution, underpinned by a leading iGaming offering, and BetMGM remains on track to deliver approximately $500 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2027. Since we created BetMGM around eight years ago, total net investment between parents now sits at almost exactly $1 billion. With approximately $500 million of EBITDA next year, it's easy to see that the ROI on that investment has been excellent.
Last slide from me, the outlook for 2026. Remember, the appendix includes a detailed guidance slide for modeling purposes, as well as a slide on the BetMGM Parent Fee mechanics. To be consistent with prior years, when I refer to Entain EBITDA, this is before Parent Fee income, which does start in 2026. For 2026, we expect online NGR growth of 5%-7% on a constant currency basis, with broad-based growth across the portfolio. Online EBITDA margin is expected to drop to 23%-24% in 2026 following the increase in U.K. gaming taxes, including our expectation of mitigating approximately 25% of that cost in 2026. Stella will talk about it more shortly, our upgraded mitigation expectation today is to improve cost mitigation to over 50% of the U.K. tax impact from 2027 onwards.
The efficiency plans which Stella will take you through will support an upward trajectory for both EBITDA and EBITDA margin from 2027. With 5%-7% online NGR growth and 23%-24% online EBITDA margin, we're comfortable with current market expectations for 2026 Entain EBITDA, which represents a small decline year-on-year. However, when combined with growth in the U.S., EBITDA, including the U.S., will be broadly stable year-on-year. Broadly stable, of course, represents significant underlying growth before absorbing the U.K. gambling tax rises. Another consequence of the U.K. tax rise is that we lose a year on a deleveraging profile because now look-through leverage will be broadly stable in 2026 before resuming deleveraging thereafter. Two more bits of guidance to touch on. Firstly, marketing phasing.
Because 2026 is a World Cup year, we expect approximately 55% of marketing spend to be in the first half, consistent with previous tournament years. Secondly, now that BetMGM is sustainably profitable, our ETR guidance going forward is on an including U.S., basis and the new ETR, so effective tax rate, the new number is 30%. This is higher than 2025 due to the U.K. tax increase, as we'll now have less profits in the U.K. which are taxed at a below-average ETR. That adverse change in geographical mix pushes up the group's blended ETR. In addition, there's a slide in the appendix which takes you through expected tax accounting treatment of our share of the $1 billion of available brought-forward losses in BetMGM.
In short, a deferred tax asset is expected to be recognized in 2026, which will give a boost to EPS in 2026, but then available losses are no longer benefiting EPS in the following two to three- years. Cash tax is not impacted. In summary from my section, we expect 2026 total group EBITDA, including BetMGM, to be stable year-on-year despite digesting the significant increase in U.K. taxes. How do we achieve that? We operate in growth markets where we have the most diverse set of podium positions globally. We have structural sustained growth built into our model. We also have a gaming-led business in the U.S. without material exposure to prediction markets. Those combined give us confidence that underlying growth will continue into 2026 and beyond.
On a final note, I'm proud to say that our EBITDA of just under one and a quarter billion pounds is now twice the size of the first EBITDA number that I reported seven- years ago. Is many multiples bigger than when my early days at Gala Coral. It's been quite a journey. It's, it's been hugely eventful, it's been highly rewarding, and I'm delighted to be leaving the business with great momentum across an outstanding global footprint, yet still with so many great opportunities ahead. It's also clear that in Mike, I'll be handing over the Chief Financial Officer reins to a hugely capable replacement. With that, I'll hand back to Stella.
Thank you, Rob. It's difficult to beat that 'cause he's got all the numbers and I've got all the fluffy stuff. This isn't the audience for fluffy stuff. You like numbers. I'll do my best, okay? Look, Entain in 2025 did deliver strategically and financially, you know. That is a really good starting point. Now our priorities have to evolve because we have to reflect the next stage in our journey. It's an improvement journey, and we have to build on some of those achievements, but we also have to be bolder in our mindsets. We have to address the significant challenges from the dramatic tax increases in the U.K. What are we doing about it? Well, we're intensifying our focus on cash generation and disciplined capital allocation.
Importantly today, we reiterated our confidence in delivering at least GBP 500 million in annual adjusted cash flow from 2028. Cash generation being a key component of long-term value creation. As you can see from this slide, it is now an explicit strategic priority. Called out in our bonusing for our people, called out in our long-term incentive plans. It's a very important part of where we're trying to go. Before discussing our achievements and progress during 2025 in detail, these next two slides are an important reminder of Entain's foundations. We are a global leader in an industry that is in long-term growth, and we are well-positioned. This slide is a powerful visual representation of the breadth and the quality of our business.
In Entain's 16 largest online markets, we have a podium position in 13 of them. Excuse me. We're in the top four in all 16. Excitingly, many of these positions have the opportunity for significant growth. For example, if you take New Zealand, where we are the partner with the New Zealand government for sports betting, we now have a great opportunity in iGaming when it becomes regulated at the end of 2026 stroke the beginning of 2027. In Spain, we have the great revitalization of our beautiful bwin brand, and we're really hopeful that by the end of 2026 it will also have a podium position. This next slide is also going to be familiar. I'm a bit boring, I keep showing the same slides, but that's consistency for you. Consistency is good.
The left-hand bar chart shows that over 98% of our NGR is locally licensed, and 97% of our online revenue is from markets estimated to grow at least by mid-single-digit CAGR. That is a truly impressive statistic, 97% of revenue coming from markets in good, sustained long-term growth. The pie charts on the right showcase the diversity of the portfolio by both geography and by product. It's the combination of all of these things that gives our business the resilience that it needs, underpinning our ability to deliver long-term shareholder value. Now I'm gonna share a few of the highlights from across our portfolio in 2025. In the U.K., one of our many initiatives was refining our bonusing, using real-time player data to increase segmentation, reduce bonusing as a % of GGR while increasing player value.
This bonus optimization on our central platform is also driving benefits in markets like Brazil, Spain, Portugal, and Canada. Our U.K. retail team continued to raise the bar with an estate-wide rollout of our group bet stations. This has driven an increase in our market share as well as an increase in our Bet Builder staking. In Australia, our new leadership team adopted a disciplined and returns-led approach, retiring some of the inefficient legacy marketing initiatives, while also leaning into AI to produce high-quality creative assets more quickly and at a fraction of the cost. Across the group, we've also reduced non-working marketing spend, centralized performance marketing, and improved our allocation of investment. Our strong performance in Spain reflects that reawakening of the bwin brand. Also markets like Canada, Brazil, Georgia, all benefiting from refining how our brands engage with our customers.
Also some things on product and tech. In Poland, STS migrated onto our Croatia sports book, rebuilt its mobile app, and now has a slicker, faster user experience. In Brazil, we launched Sporting Bot for the Club World Cup, an AI personalized assistant to help our customers enjoy the product more. It's proved to be such a success that it's being rolled out across more markets and more sports this year. That's just a flavor of the strategy in action. We're seeing improvements to the portfolio because we have shared learnings that generate a powerful multiplier effect, supporting our momentum and our operational efficiency. Moving on now to customer acquisition and retention. Again, this slide will be familiar. Net revenue retention is holding strong.
It's above the 85% benchmark. It has been north of 90% for the entirety of 2025. This reflects the work that has been done to close product gaps and improve our customer journeys. You'll see there's a slight drop off in Q4. That is due to customer-friendly sports results. It's nothing structural. Customer acquisition also remains comfortably above the 15% level. If you get the combination of strong net revenue retention and healthy acquisition, that underpins our sustainable growth. These metrics remain strong as we enter into 2026. As I mentioned with our strategic priorities, Entain is now in the next phase of its improvement journey to accelerate forward. Project Roma delivered over GBP 100 million in savings annually.
We can and we have to do more by continuing to improve on our cost of sales, by optimizing marketing rates as a percentage of NGR, and a continued focus on operating efficiencies. We already have multiple work streams identified to deliver against these three key levers. We're also excited by the opportunities that our continued AI enablement program will have for improving the customer experience, the colleague experience, and importantly, for increasing our bandwidth. Whether that's resolving legacy issues, can't say that. Old code. No. our own. Yeah, I can't say it, but you know what I mean. I hope you know what I mean.
Speeding up development cycles to improve the user experience, improving our customer care handling, automating low-quality contracts and legal work, or dramatically cutting the cost of asset generation in our marketing areas. Delivery of these type of group-wide initiatives support our expectations to now offset over 50% of the U.K. tax increases from 2027, up from our previous estimate of 25%. I just wanna do a slight call-out on that. When the tax rates went up, we said immediately we would mitigate 25%. That was the right thing to say 'cause we hadn't done the work at that stage. You need to take the time to add up the numbers, go through the figures, to have the confidence.
We didn't come out of the block shouting it's gonna be 50% or 60% because that would have been, quite frankly, a made-up number. Now, we've done the work, and we've got increasing confidence in our ability to deliver against that, and that is the right way to do these things. Engage into the business, build the confidence, and start to solidify those initiatives. I just wanted to give that flavor. We're not being dramatic and changing our minds. We're just building on what we started to do immediately after the tax increases. Really important points. Let's bring this all together. Despite the jump in those taxes in the U.K., we now remain comfortable with the market expectations for 2026.
When you combine BetMGM and Entain, that means we're delivering a stable set of numbers in 2026 versus 2025. From 2027 onwards, organic growth and those optimization initiatives means that we're going to grow both EBITDA and cash flow, and both on a year-on-year basis and, importantly, versus 2025. By 2028, we've got the building blocks in place to achieve at least GBP 500 million in annual adjusted cash flow. Therefore, that will support our journey to getting our leverage back to our target range of two to three times. Let me briefly wrap up before we go into Q&A. 2025 was definitely a strong year. We delivered growth across the portfolio, and that is a highly attractive portfolio that is well diversified.
Our relative scale means that we will be winners in the U.K. because we will gain meaningful share from the regulated market. Execution is definitely improving. There's definitely a lot more to do. There always is. That's how you keep being competitive. We have a clear pathway ahead. We are confident in it, we are getting more disciplined, and we are accelerating forward. On that note, I would like to open the floor to your questions, and I will return back over here.
As always.
Yeah, share this.
Would you mind, stating your name, your number, and then where you're from, and limit yourself to two questions, please.
Thanks. Morning, everyone. It's Monique Pollard here from Citi. Two questions from me. Firstly, on the U.K. and I, obviously you've delivered a pretty amazing performance today. You're now materially outperforming, let's say, your main competitor and largest competitor in the market, both on iGaming and sports, and even including the comp, on a two-years stack, outperforming on both those metrics and taking material market share. Just wanted to get a sense from you of whether you think that can continue as we go into 2026, given some of the initiatives, that you've taken on. Second question I had was, when we think about, the Q4 win margin, and, you know, that was down 1.4 percentage points in the fourth quarter online sports margin, year-on-year. Obviously the online EBITDA has come in really good.
What are the sort of measures you've taken to protect that online EBITDA margin despite the unfavorable sports results in the quarter? Thanks.
I think that's two questions, so I'll answer one and Rob will answer the other one. Which one should I do? Okay. I'll take the U.K. and Ireland one because it's been great actually, the revitalization that we've seen in the U.K. I actually have the U.K team here, so they are in the audience, so I have to be nice to them. They genuinely have done a great job. We've done lots of things, improved customer journeys, innovated, more innovation yet to come. We're putting a whole new Ladbrokes experience together before the start of the World Cup. We innovated with the first Bet Builder in horse racing. There's a lot of focus and there's a lot of energy.
It's energy is really important in these journeys, that belief and that willing to lean in and get it done. We think there are lots of opportunities both online, where we definitely think we will win share once the new taxes come in place. You know, let's not forget, we have the best retail estate in the U.K. It's nearly 2,400 shops, great shop colleagues. You would be amazed about their motivation. You know, when we do our global employment engagement survey, they score amazingly. You think about, you know, they're not high-paid people, but their motivation and their customer care is just outstanding.
Those things make a difference to how you perform and how you are relative winners in a marketplace that is going through change. We're very optimistic, and I can say this because it's true, the U.K. has got off to a great start in 2026. Yeah.
Onto the online question. As you say, win margin's below expectations, in the end, NGR only +3, but volumes +9. How did we still get there on the EBITDA delivery? The main answer is within that gross profit margin point that I made earlier. We've seen great success, particularly this year, sort of the continuation of Project Roma. Hugo sat in front of me, his team working on things like payment service providers, where we've generated material savings. I referenced it earlier, if you take out Brazil tax, gross profit margin was up about a percentage point. Actually, there were some other tax rises like Netherlands and others that meant that it was even more on an underlying basis. 1 point across the whole online revenue base, and that's GBP 40 million, and actually it's more like 50, 60.
That's the primary answer. Wasn't marketing. We spent exactly as we intended to in the second half of the year. We spent GBP 20 million more than we did in the first half, which is what we guided to last summer. It's really the cost of sales margin or gross profit margin that delivered the catch up against the NGR miss.
Brilliant. Thank you. We'll miss you, Rob.
Oh, thank you.
Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. It's Ben Shelley from UBS. Two from me, if I may. One, could you talk about the growth outlook for the U.K. iGaming business, specifically amid the tax changes in that market? Secondly, on New Zealand, can we expand a bit more on that opportunity? Appreciate it's very early, but what kind of upside do you think that can present to medium-term revenue guidance?
Okay. Well, we'll try and do them sort of. I'll say a bit, you say a bit.
Okay.
Yeah. so growth in iGaming, I mean, clearly there is a market share opportunity here when the taxes go up. If you look at the shape of the business, you know, the bottom 25% share of the iGaming market is through competitors which are very subscale. You know? You know, 1% share of the market, and they're just ill-equipped to ride the storm of this. We feel very confident that we will gain share during that journey of the regulated market. clearly the black market is gonna grow. The moment there aren't enough barriers in the way of the black market, you know, and, you know, there are still four black market operators advertising on the front of football shirts in the Premier League.
I sent a letter, expressing my, you know, concern about that. There is a consultation that's taking place, with government, but quite frankly, that should be dealt with now. Because, for all the reasons, the level of interest in the black market is gonna go up. We are in a very strong position. We're very strong in gaming. We have the scale, to significantly increase share, which I think we will do. We factor that, partly into our numbers. Anything else on the U.K. before I go onto New Zealand?
No, I mean, yeah, we also extended the coin economies.
Yep
Gala and Foxy. It's not just about Ladbrokes and Coral driving growth and gaming in the U.K.. Those brands are responding well too.
Yeah. That's great. Then on to New Zealand, just as a kind of bit of background for everybody in case everybody isn't fully up to speed, we are the partner of government in New Zealand. We are the only licensed sports betting operator, and we have that long-term license agreement. Going forward, towards the end of 2026, maybe the beginning of 2027, there will be licensed operators for iGaming. They're gonna be giving out 15 licenses. We are confident that we'll probably get three of those licenses. I think the opportunity for us is significant because we'll be the only player who will be able to do cross-sell. Yeah?
Therefore, it's too early to say, we haven't explicitly factored it into our numbers, but we have put it forward as one of those opportunity areas that could be significant for us as we go forward. Really exciting. What's great about the team over in Australia and New Zealand under the leadership of Andrew Vouris, is that they're really leaning into this, that they're working very closely with our partners over there. We have two brands. Actually, we do under our licensing agreement. We have the TAB brand, but we also have Betcha. Betcha is more focused on sports in general, whereas the TAB brand is more focused on horse racing. So we have lots of opportunities going forward. Yeah.
Maybe put some numbers on it, Andrew probably won't appreciate this. The opportunity is big. You know, we estimate that there's around a GBP 600 million marketplace, and currently we're less than GBP 200 million. If we have all of sports and a reasonable share of gaming, you know, why can't that below GBP 200 million number go to, say, GBP 300 million? An opportunity for significant growth over a number of years.
Yes.
Very clear. Thanks, guys.
Good morning. Estelle Weingrod from J.P. Morgan. I've got two questions as well. The first one on your online organic growth, revenue guidance. Could you perhaps provide more granularity, more color on the different geographies, what you're baking in, like between U.K. and IC and international? The second one on the Netherlands, I know it's a small market for you now, but just to understand a bit better, you know, how was the exit rate and maybe what you're seeing right now in the market because I think you're now lapping some of the affordability check comps that were implemented last year in February, just to see if you're seeing an inflection in the market now. Thank you.
Have you got the numbers for that?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sure.
You go and then I'll...
Okay
C hip in.
No, we'll do it the other way around. I'll go.
Yeah. Yeah.
First question, the 5%-7% guidance, where does it come from? I mean, unusually, I think it's gonna be pretty uniform across our segments. I mentioned it earlier, but international, for example, was below in 2025, but it had the drag from Netherlands and Belgium. I'll come back to Netherlands. That's now washed through, and it exited with 7% volume growth in the second half of the year. U.K. incredible in 2025 with 15% growth. Of course, it won't be 15% in 2026. I'd expect those segments to be much more uniform. Plus, I mentioned earlier, if you look at the negatives, I'll come back to Netherlands in a moment, but Australia, we do expect Australia to return to growth in 2026.
Brazil, when we annualize against those poor margins in the second half of the year, you'd expect growth in Brazil as well. I think you'll see a more uniform picture. Then the second part of the question, Netherlands. As at Q3, we were -30 at the end of Q3. Q4, I think I'm right in saying, was -2. You can see a massive difference in performance. The objective now is to get back into a little bit of growth, but even if we don't, the key thing is we've washed out that -30 that we were carrying for four quarters.
Yeah. Just one thing to add on Netherlands, it's a terrible combination, as a market because not only have the gambling taxes gone up significantly, but there's huge amounts of friction for players, you know, with very low thresholds in terms of deposit limits, et c.. I think I'm right that there's just another tweak up that's gonna go on in duty rates, I think from January. Is that right? Yes.
Yeah.
I think it's going from 34 to 37.5%, which is again a little bit more friction for players there.
Thank you.
Yeah. Hi. Morning. Richard Stuber from Deutsche Bank. Can I ask just a couple of questions on the optimization plan? You talk about it's gonna be sort of effective from 2027. I was just wondering whether there are any opportunities to accelerate that. You know, why don't you sort of start those plans now? The second question on that as well is, I guess the initial guidance you gave in terms of U.K. tax mitigation was looking at the U.K. market. How much of the optimization plan do you think is related to the U.K. and how much is sort of more sort of global initiatives? Thank you.
Thanks very much. I'll take the first.
Yep.
You take the second?
Yep.
I hope I haven't miscommunicated. Optimization plans take place every single day. It's an ongoing journey. I think the way that I would describe it is, prior to the U.K. taxes going up, we had areas that we were continually thinking about what are the next areas we can improve, whether that's, you know, payment service providers, whether it's, automation, removal in the processes, whether it's using AI to cut down on marketing, production costs. It's an ongoing journey. If you think about the hit in 2026, we take the big hit from gaming, which is the big increase from 21% to 40%, you know, bang, 1st of April. Without mitigation, you know, we'd obviously have a lower run rate.
We are mitigating and optimizing in 2026 to get to the numbers we have. Some of these other initiatives, they organically happen sequentially over time. It will continue to build as we go forward. It isn't a wait and see. I think everybody is very active in the company looking for those improvements in run rate that come from multiple activities. There isn't one big silver bullet, and I think if I were you, I'd be horrified if there was a silver bullet, 'cause why hadn't we shot it, you know?
Therefore, it is literally multiple activities that go into, you know, how we improve the customer experience, how we improve the colleague experience, so we get more efficiency out of them, how we generally cut costs using the tools that are available to us, and how we use AI, which is a huge game changer if it's done in the right way to increase our bandwidth and our capability. Yeah, a lot of people say AI is about, you know, this or that. AI is about enabling us to do more with the resources that we have to help protect us in the future. Yes.
Perhaps the only thing I'd add from a modeling perspective, put it through in 2027. We're happy with where the market sits.
Yeah
26 as it stands. In terms of where is it coming from, where is that initial 25% that we announced last November? That was U.K. Focused. This second 25% is a global view for all the reasons Stella's just said, primarily all online, but you can assume it's sort of uniform or proportionate with the segments. There'll be a little bit of corporate benefit as well, but the lion's share would be online across all the segments. I think that was the question. Yeah.
Yeah. Nope.
Thanks.
Oh. Oh.
Thank you. Adrien de Saint Hilaire from Bank of America, please. Couple of questions. First of all, can you talk about the risk in your view of prediction market platforms coming into your markets, and I say your markets beyond the U.S., obviously. Then Rob, maybe an easy one as a last question. I can see your cash flow slide 21. You have it down in 26, 'cause you've got stable EBITDA, declining CapEx, declining interest, and so on and so forth. What's the moving part? Thank you.
Okay. I'll take the first question on prediction markets outside the U.S. I might even comment on it in the U.S. as well. In the U.S., there is a unique set of circumstances. You know, it doesn't get taxed like sports betting, and it is not approved by the state regulators, which means that there is a huge amount of prediction markets goes through non-regulated states, particularly California and Texas. I think the percentage going through those two states is, I don't know, it's something like 80% of the total volume. There's also a huge amount of play of underage players.
In the U.S., you've got to be 21 to play, 18 to 21-year-olds are playing prediction markets, and they're playing prediction markets in non, regulated states. It doesn't touch us that much in the U.S. because we are very much stronger in iGaming, and we never had a business to protect in those non-regulated states. It is a bit of an anomaly in the U.S. Let me be clear, when people play the prediction markets in sports, it looks like a sports bet, it sounds like a sports bet, and it acts like a sports bet. I don't think anybody should be in any doubt. It's sports betting. Now, what happens to that legally in the U.S. is hugely complicated.
There are lawsuits going on all over the place. We are not getting involved with that. a it's not a market that we probably would be that successful in anyway. Secondly, we have to protect our long-term, mature, stable business and have a strong relationship with the regulators. You know, we are in Nevada. Other sports players are not in Nevada. It is a key part of our, of our offering. Just wanted to say that. If you look outside the U.S., Equivalents to prediction markets, effectively like betting exchanges with Betfair in the U.K., have existed for decades, and it takes a small single-digit share of the market. There are not the structural reasons for prediction markets to be, you know, the hot topic, the flavor of the month in other markets.
Indeed, in some countries, they've already come out and said, "It's illegal." You know, I think the Netherlands have said, "Polymarket, you're out, otherwise it's gonna cost you $450,000 a week in fines." You know? France has come out against it. You know, it is a much smaller threat than I think it is to you know, than people perceive it to be in the U.S., In the U.S., we're quite comfortable with our position, if that helps. Yeah? Sorry for the long answer, I thought it was gonna come up at some time. Do you want to take the easy question?
I'll take the easy one. It's easy if I keep it simple. There is more complexity to it. The simple part of it is Entain EBITDA does go backwards a little bit, as we referenced earlier. Consensus right now is GBP 1,126 million. We delivered GBP 1,160 million in 2025. There's a little bit of a drop there. The second part of the answer is BetMGM. Even though BetMGM EBITDA does grow, remember in 2025, we had an outsized cash distribution, including the 2024 surplus. From a cash perspective, BetMGM is broadly neutral, whereas Entain EBITDA is down a little bit. That's the bulk of the answer. There are some other puts and takes. CapEx is down a bit, interest is down a bit, but that ETR point that I mentioned earlier, that's an offset against that.
The two primary drivers, Entain EBITDA down a little bit and BetMGM cash not up, just flat because of the 2024 credit that came through in 2025.
Good morning. I'm Ricardo Garcia-Chinchilla from Deutsche Bank. I was hoping if you could give us a little bit more of a breakdown of the different buckets for the mitigation strategy for, you know, 2026 and 2027. Is it going to be mostly marketing reductions? Do you guys anticipate, you know, operational efficiencies from, you know, the use of AI? If you could also comment on, you know, how you anticipate the promotional environment to be in the U.K., you know, given that, you know, all of the large players have actually referenced the fact that, you know, 25% of the market, you know, is not going to be able to compete. We anticipate that there is going to be, you know, competition to take that share back.
Okay. Let me just talk a little bit about mitigation. There are many initiatives. The way we try and sort of bundle them up in, in the business, we probably put them into probably eight key buckets of opportunity. It ranges from optimizing our marketing expenditure. It ranges to looking at our cost structure to make sure we're more efficient. It ranges to looking at procurement. Lots of opportunity in, in the very large amount of third-party spend we have. You know, third-party spend is a very interesting area because we get lots and lots of feeds externally. We have lots of licenses externally. We have lots of external legal fees. I, you know, I'm just adding them up, but, you know, giving you a flavor of the different areas that we have.
The devil's in the detail, going down to specific, you know, line-by-line item activities. We also see that there is opportunities, in terms of, you know, hopefully increasing, you know, our trading margin, you know, sequentially over time. It's a long run thing, reducing fraud, yeah? Taking the opportunity to, you know, get rid of bonus abusers. There's lots of things that build those buckets up to where they need to be.
I think the thing that I was trying to say is, you know, we have a detailed roadmap, we have sponsors behind that, we have targets that are being set, and we also have specific targets for how we increase the bandwidth from AI, which means that, if you think about it, everybody who works in a corporate role or a, you know, or a, in-market role or a finance role, they all have to become competent with AI so we can increase efficiency and make those people actually, highly employable for the future. Again, efficiencies flow out of doing those kind of things. There are just many initiatives that build up to the total number. Yeah. Promotional costs. Do you want to have a stab at that?
Yeah, sure. I'll have a go. I think you're right. I think the two obvious large competitors in the UK will lean in as well as ourselves. The fourth largest, probably not so much. There is such a long tail, as we've touched on earlier. When you look at, you know, one of these staggering numbers as a consequence of these U.K. gambling tax increases, when you look at the tax that we'll now pay in the U.K. as a percentage of profit before tax, it's over 80%. In how many sectors and how many parts of the world do you operate in an environment where your income tax rate is over 80%? That's an astonishing number, which essentially means how can sub-scale operators possibly want to do business and spend money here?
I think with the exception of the three larger operators who I fully expect to want to, just like us, capitalize on it and seize the moment to take market share, I think you will see a lot less promos from mid to smaller firms. The unknown dynamic is the black market. Of course, they'll be aggressive. Why wouldn't they be? And quite what the impact of that is, you know, we'll see from April onwards.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
We're just coming up to time.
Okay.
Just one last question on Italy from Andrew Tam from Rothschild. Wasn't touched on a huge amount in the presentation. Obviously remains a key market. A bit of color on the performance this year, and then actually opportunities and actually how you're thinking about going forward and that.
Well, I'm happy to just talk about some of the opportunities, and I'll let Rob, if he's okay, just talk about some of the performance at the moment. We are a distance number three in Italy, but we do have some exciting plans coming up in 2026. I don't want to share the confidential information, but, you know, if you watch this space in the next few weeks, I think we'll be announcing some nice initiatives that will give some more high-profile presence for our business in Italy. There is a quite a detailed plan that has been developed to help optimize our position, recognizing that we are disadvantaged in terms of our footprint because we don't do retail gaming.
That is something that is not available to us because we don't have the license, and the license isn't open for that. There are some other things that we can definitely do, but I don't want to spoil the surprise. I'll talk about the numbers. Yeah.
Can I just clarify, these are organic plans in Italy?
Oh, sorry. Sorry. I'm so sorry. I sorry. I said it.
No, no. Yeah.
They're definitely organic plans. Yes.
Yes.
Yes,
In terms of performance of the business, the way we look at it, we grew online 5% last year, mid-single digits. Retail grew 7%. EBITDA grew 8%. It's a healthy business that's growing nicely year after year after year, that's very well run, tight ship. You know, yes, there's a gap to the top two operators, but we have a great healthy business in the number three, particularly with Eurobet, which is a very strong brand.
Hey, any more questions or are we having to wrap now?
Oh
There was one there.
One more.
One there, one there. Unless it's a hard one.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
I'm Pravin from Barclays. Firstly, on the marketing expense, you sort of mostly answered that, but 45% in second half, given appreciated mitigation in U.K., seems a bit low given its World Cup year. Do you think, is there any scope in your guidance to sort of raise that if the market demands that, if competitors sort of market hard in second half? Secondly, on regulation, is the worst behind us, or you are still hearing anything in any of your markets there? Thank you very much.
On the marketing expense, we're investing, well throughout the year. We're just shifting it forward because it's World Cup year. World Cup, even though it's sort of June, July, it goes over 39 days, which is the longest World Cup there's ever been, and there's more teams than there's ever been, means that the activity for acquisition, which is one of the things you really want to do in a World Cup, comes, you know, quite a lot before then. You know, you do a build-up in terms of marketing. It does pull investment through into H1, but hopefully that acquisition then rolls through into H2. You know, I'm a marketeer by training. If we have any spare money, I'll always put more money into marketing.
We have to deliver the numbers too, I realize that. That's obviously, you know, an area that we'd always look at, going forward. I think World Cup is a great opportunity. I think it's gonna be a bit of a roller coaster ride because there's so many teams playing. In the early days, the margins may be volatile, but hopefully net-net, the whole thing is going to be an amazing thing, particularly for some of our markets. Given it's in the Americas, our business in Brazil will be really engaged in it. Our business in Canada. By the way, Canadians, they love betting on soccer. Yeah? They absolutely love betting on soccer.
Also, we've got quite a lot of our markets have teams already in the World Cup final. You know, we have a high overlap, so I think it will be good for us.
The U.S., of course, BetMGM.
Of course, BetMGM, that small company in the U.S. Regulation. Look, I think it is, you know, it's our duty to flag the challenges of the, you know, increase in taxes and the increase in regulation, that it does fuel the black market. I think we talked about Netherlands earlier. I mean, that is the perfectly worst mix. You have highly frictional regulation and high taxes, their own government or the regulator says that over 50% of their market is black. You know? That is a place that, you know, no sensible government would want to go into, in my view, because actually, it's just fueling profits in a different part of the world.
I think it is the job of people like ourselves, to flag the dangers of the black market, to try and dissuade other places going like where the Netherlands has gone.
Yeah. Can I just make one point of clarification on marketing? We do expect marketing to increase in absolute terms. You know, you can probably model broadly in line with revenue, so the marketing rate holding firm, it's just the weighting that's H1 related, right? Yeah, then on regulation, aside from the U.K., everything else looks a lot more of a balanced picture, which is nice. I know the Republic of Ireland, we have to do a wallet decoupling, which is, you know, a small adverse move there. In Germany, it looks like, touch wood, this might be the year that we get an increase in the slots cap, which as you'll know, has driven the slots market to be 70%-80% black. That could be significant for us.
We have New Zealand iGaming, and other examples of clamping down on the black market as well. Aside from the U.K., and that's a big an aside, but aside from the U.K., it's a more balanced regulatory outlook.
Yeah
I would say.
Thank you.
Thank-
On the way, Rob.
I draw your attention to the two slides that Stella talked about.
Oh
A bout our podium positions and our quality of our foundations.
Yeah
Of our portfolio, which gives us that resilience and the ballast to absorb any regulatory changes.
Exactly. I think we're gonna have to wrap it up now. Before we do, I just wanted to say a huge thanks to Rob for his huge dedication and passion for this business. He's been in it for 13 years, I think. I do think if I chopped his arm off, it would actually say Entain.
Purple blood.
Should we try? No, no. Genuinely, thank you so much, Rob. Really appreciate it, and I'm sure everybody in the room, along with all your Entain colleagues, is wishing you the very best in your new ventures when you eventually start them. He's not going anywhere just yet. He's helping us out on some things until the end of June. Mike takes over formally as the Chief Financial Officer tomorrow. Rob's still with us, and we just say thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks. [crosstalk] Thanks. Rob, thanks. I'm just gonna say something. Rob, soak that in. You never get clapped at one of these events, ever. Yeah? This will be the first and last time you get a round of applause.
Well, thank you very much, everyone. I do really appreciate it. As I said earlier, it's been quite a ride. You can tell I've been here a long time, and also I don't wear suits very often because I looked this morning and I've got GVC Business cards. Yeah, thanks everyone.
Funny. Thank you very much.