€1.2B Revenue. €443M EBITDA. One Bigger Shift – Allwyn Is Becoming More Than a Lottery Operator Under Robert Chvátal
The biggest story in lottery and gaming this quarter is not a number. It is a transformation that quietly rewrote what a modern gaming group can look like.
Allwyn opened 2026 with a quarter that few operators in the iGaming industry could match, posting net revenue of €1.2bn, up 21% year on year, while completing the kind of structural reinvention most companies spend a decade attempting. Adjusted EBITDA climbed 24% to €443m, with margins nudging up to 36.8%. The growth rate is the surface. The structural change is the substance. What sits underneath them is a deliberate pivot away from mature lottery earnings towards higher growth digital and online entertainment assets.
PrizePicks Turns Allwyn Into a Serious North American Player
The clearest evidence of that pivot is PrizePicks. Allwyn’s acquisition of a 62.3% stake in the US daily fantasy sports operator reshaped its North American profile almost overnight. The region delivered €239m in net revenue against just €60m a year earlier, with PrizePicks alone contributing €63m of Adjusted EBITDA in its first partial quarter inside the group.
For an industry watching the US online sports entertainment market mature, this is a statement of intent. Allwyn paid USD 1,504 million (approximately €1,295 million at the time of the transaction) at closing, with a potential earnout of up to USD 1.0 billion tied to performance payable in 2029. That structure tells you how much conviction sits behind the bet. For operators and founders, it is a reminder that the fastest route into a high growth market is rarely organic.
Digital Now Drives the Engine, Not the Margins
Allwyn’s online net gaming revenue reached €540m, up 68% year on year, now representing 48% of total net gaming revenue compared with 36% a year ago. Strip out PrizePicks and the digital story still holds, with iGaming across Continental Europe up 29% and sports betting up 13%.
This matters because total lottery Net Gaming Revenue actually declined 5% against record EuroMillions and Tzoker jackpots in the prior year, though the Continental Europe lottery vertical specifically felt an 11% drop. A less diversified operator would have felt that. Allwyn barely flinched, because its growth is now coming from channels where player engagement compounds rather than depending on jackpot luck. For CMOs in the gaming business, that is the lesson worth underlining.
UK Transformation Moves From Cost to Cash
The completion of the National Lottery technology programme in the UK marks a genuine inflection point. Around 18 million player accounts migrated to new platforms, CAPEX fell 44%, and the group now enters a recovery phase on its investment. UK EBITDA dipped to €4m, but the trajectory is what counts. With a refreshed Lotto format and a planned UK launch of Powerball, the first time the US jackpot game would be offered outside America, Allwyn is positioning the UK for monetisation rather than maintenance.
Capital Discipline Returns After the M&A Sprint
After a frenetic stretch of dealmaking, including the OPAP combination and PrizePicks, Allwyn announced a share buyback of up to €150m and reaffirmed its €1 per share minimum dividend. The mutual decision to withdraw from the proposed Novibet acquisition lowered expected investments in inorganic growth, freeing up management to focus capital allocation toward the new share buyback programme. Net debt sits at €5.35bn, a manageable 2.8x EBITDA.
Future Outlook for the iGaming Industry
Allwyn reaffirmed guidance of mid to high 20% revenue growth and a 37% margin for 2026, with no material impact from geopolitical or macroeconomic pressure. The deeper signal for the iGaming industry is structural. The lottery giants are no longer content to defend mature cash flows. They are buying their way into the fastest growing corners of online gaming, and reshaping the competitive map as they go.
The operators who study how Allwyn balanced lottery resilience with digital aggression will learn more from this quarter than from any forecast.
Source: Allwyn
