ZEAL H1 2026 Results Deliver Record €121.8m Revenue as Margin Slips
A record first half for Germany’s online-lottery leader – and a deliberate trade of margin for growth that operators should read closely.
ZEAL Network SE has reported the strongest first half in its history. The Germany-focused online-lottery operator, which runs LOTTO24 and Tipp24, grew H1 2026 revenue 20% to €121.8m and pulled in a record 659,000 new customers, up 32% year on year. EBITDA rose 10% to €38.9m. On almost every headline line, the numbers moved the right way. On one, they didn’t – and that’s the line worth understanding.
Inside the ZEAL H1 2026 results: the numbers that grew
Revenue of €121.8m (H1 2025: €101.5m) was led by the lotteries business, where revenue climbed 20% to €110.6m. Billings rose 13% to €595.9m. The average monthly number of active lottery customers grew 9% to 1.65 million, and the lottery gross margin improved to 18.2% from 17.3%. Net profit reached €21.8m, up 12%, lifting basic earnings per share to €1.03 from €0.93.
The smaller Games segment grew too – revenue up 17% to €7.8m, with monthly active users up 34% to 35,000 across a B2C catalogue now near 790 titles. Worth noting, and ZEAL discloses it plainly: Games average revenue per user actually fell 13% to €36.86. A bigger, newer user base spending a little less each. Common enough at this stage of scaling.
The margin line the ZEAL H1 2026 results don’t lead with
Here’s the part operators care about. Group EBITDA margin fell – from 34.8% to 31.9%. Nearly three points, gone, in a record half.
The cause sits one line up in the accounts. Marketing spend rose 37% to €39.8m. Cost per lead – ZEAL’s own metric – climbed 7% to €50.20, so the group didn’t just spend more, it paid a little more for each lead it brought in. That’s the trade behind the record intake, and the margin absorbed it. This isn’t a company losing control of costs. It’s a company choosing where its profit goes.
CFO Andrea Behrendt described it as combining growth with selective investment: “We delivered double-digit growth in both revenue and EBITDA while continuing to invest selectively in new products, technology and the further development of our organisation.” Read against the numbers, “invest selectively” is doing real work in that sentence. The investment is visible, and it’s priced.
What the diversification push signals
ZEAL isn’t only winning customers. It’s buying independence from jackpot cycles – the single biggest swing factor in its business. The launch of the Traumautoverlosung (Dream Car Raffle) in April, which handed over a Porsche GT3 RS to its winner in early July, made it ZEAL’s third charity lottery in Germany, following freiheit+ and the Traumhausverlosung. CEO Dr Stefan Tweraser said these offerings “complement our strong market position while reducing our dependence on jackpot cycles.” That dependence is real: ZEAL’s own report shows an unusually strong jackpot environment helped H1, which cuts both ways – it flatters the comparison, and it won’t always repeat.
Then there’s SevenCanyon. On 9 July, after the reporting period closed, ZEAL took full ownership of the company, buying the remaining 96.5% for around £33.8m in cash plus up to £4.8m contingent, funded by a €40m loan. A signal of intent, not a rounding error.
The operator read on the ZEAL H1 2026 results
For anyone running a platform or a P&L, this is a working example of a mature-market playbook: use profitability as fuel, spend it deliberately on share and diversification, and accept short-term margin compression as the cost. The decision it should prompt in your own business is a simple one – are you protecting margin you should be spending, or spending margin you should be protecting? ZEAL has clearly picked a side.
Future outlook
ZEAL confirmed full-year EBITDA guidance of €70-75m, assuming a normal German jackpot environment, and flagged that its €250-260m revenue guidance will be revisited once the IFRS accounting for SevenCanyon is finalised. So two things to watch over the next six to twelve months. First, whether the group margin starts climbing back as this half’s marketing investment converts into retained, active customers. Second, how much SevenCanyon adds once it consolidates – and whether it lifts guidance or simply reshapes it. The growth is proven. The payback is the open question.
Source: ZEAL Network SE
