£15.5M Revenue, £6.6M EBITDA: Mark Segal Grows Gaming Realms Despite a 40% Remote Gaming Duty
The Slingo maker’s half-year numbers offer an early read on how the supplier side is absorbing the UK’s steepest online gaming tax rise.
Gaming Realms plc expects to report Group revenue of approximately £15.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of £6.6 million for the six months to 30 June 2026, with its core content licensing business growing revenue by around 9% and adjusted EBITDA by around 16% year on year. The Gaming Realms H1 2026 trading update, also confirmed UK revenue rose 3% despite Remote Gaming Duty nearly doubling to 40% in April – the detail most of the industry will read first.
Why the Gaming Realms H1 2026 results matter for UK iGaming now
Timing gives this update weight beyond its size. RGD moved from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026, so this is a full quarter of trading under the new rate, published by a listed company with UK exposure. The duty falls on operators rather than suppliers, but the sector-wide worry has been flow-through: tighter operator margins leading to reduced promotion, softer player spend and pressure on supplier commercials. Gaming Realms’ figures – UK revenue up 3%, gross gaming revenue now above the levels seen before the 2025 staking limit changes – are the first meaningful evidence that, for content players earn out anyway, that squeeze has not materialised. One company is not a sector. But it is a data point operators’ content teams did not have last week.
What the H1 2026 trading update shows: revenue, adjusted EBITDA and Slingo momentum
Read the headline figures carefully. Group revenue of c.£15.5 million compares with £16.0 million a year earlier, and adjusted EBITDA of c.£6.6 million against £7.5 million. That is a decline – driven, the company says, by non-core brand licensing revenue falling to £0.7 million from £2.4 million, after the prior period included a multi-year brand licensing renewal. Strip that out and the core licensing business added roughly £1.2 million of revenue and £0.8 million of EBITDA, the operating leverage showing in the faster profit growth.
The half also brought launches in four new markets – Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Peru – a deeper push into Spain with William Hill, and 11 new game releases, three of them from the newly established Lucky Lunar studio. Net cash stood at £13.5 million after £6.0 million went back to shareholders through the ongoing buyback.
CEO Mark Segal said it had been “particularly encouraging to see UK revenues grow and gross gaming revenue return above pre-staking-limit levels, despite the increase in Remote Gaming Duty from April, demonstrating the strength of our content and the effectiveness of our recent product innovations.”
The operator read: the Alberta iGaming launch is the growth story
Here’s the part operators and platform teams care about. Post-period, Gaming Realms went live in Alberta on day one of the province’s newly regulated iGaming market, taking its distribution footprint to 33 regulated markets. The company called Alberta a significant opportunity given its population and existing North American partner relationships – and the pattern across this half, from West Africa to Peru to Canada, says supplier growth in 2026 is being built on newly regulating markets rather than squeezed out of mature ones. For content directors, the practical signal is that Slingo-style proprietary formats travelled well enough to justify day-one slots in a brand-new market.
The caveat worth naming in Gaming Realms’ H1 2026 numbers
Reported Group revenue and EBITDA both fell year on year, and the growth narrative rests entirely on the ex-brand-licensing comparison. That adjustment is legitimate – a one-off multi-year renewal genuinely distorts the comparative – but it means the headline “up 16%” needs its qualifier. Adjusted EBITDA is also stated before share-based payments. And a 3% UK revenue rise, while notable in context, is resilience rather than momentum.
Can Gaming Realms sustain its H2 2026 momentum?
The Board says it remains on track to meet full-year market expectations, pointing to North American growth, further market regulation and the new-game pipeline. The two things to watch through H2 are concrete: how quickly Alberta scales against those expectations, and whether other UK-facing suppliers reporting this season show the same duty resilience – or reveal that Gaming Realms’ half was the exception rather than the rule.
Source: Gaming Realms
