Bally’s Intralot Makes £243 Million Bid for evoke. Kokkalis Eyes a New Gaming Giant.

Bally’s Intralot has submitted a firm offer to acquire the entire share capital of evoke plc, the London-listed owner of William Hill, 888 and Mr Green. The deal, announced in Athens on 5 June 2026, values evoke at roughly GBP 243.1 million. What stands out is not the price. It is how the deal is paid for, and who is driving it. The group’s chairman has spent decades turning a Greek lottery operator into a global force, a story we covered in how Sokratis Kokkalis built Intralot into a lottery power. This bid is the next step in that arc.

Key Facts

• evoke shareholders are entitled to 0.537 new Bally’s Intralot shares for each evoke share, to be listed on Euronext Athens following a share capital increase
• The shares offer represents about 52 pence per evoke share, based on a Bally’s Intralot price of EUR 1.12
• A cash alternative of 52 pence per share is available but capped in aggregate at GBP 117.1 million
• The cash element is funded by a bridge facility of up to EUR 200 million from Deutsche Bank and Jefferies Finance
• A second lien term facility of up to GBP 889 million has been committed by a steerco of TPG, Oaktree and OHA to refinance evoke’s senior debt maturing in 2028
• Completion is expected between the final quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027

Market Context

The transaction is being effected through a scheme of arrangement under Gibraltar law, where evoke is incorporated, with the right reserved to switch to a takeover offer if needed. evoke shareholders must approve the scheme, and Bally’s Intralot shareholders must approve the issue of new shares to fund it. Two sets of investors, two votes, one outcome riding on both.

The bidder is moving from a position of strength. Earlier this year the group posted figures we examined in Bally’s Intralot’s EUR 268.1 million Q1 growth under Reeves and Chrysos, and that momentum is what makes a paper-funded bid of this size credible. Here is the part worth reading twice. The cash on the table is small. The debt being moved is enormous. A GBP 117.1 million cash cap sits beside an GBP 889 million refinancing line. That tells you exactly what kind of deal this is.

Vertical and Product Focus

For Bally’s Intralot, the appeal is reach. The group already combines digital B2C operations with a long heritage in regulated lottery, and it has positioned itself as an independent operator across online gaming, lottery, iLottery and sports betting. Folding in evoke adds some of the best-known brands in British betting and a substantial regulated online footprint. The combined business would span both the retail-rooted lottery world and the online-first betting world, which few groups manage to hold together at scale.

But the logic runs the other way too. evoke has spent years carrying debt that matures in 2028, and refinancing that wall on its own terms was always going to be hard. An acquisition that arrives with GBP 889 million of committed refinancing solves a problem the company could not easily solve alone.

Strategic Industry Positioning

Chairman Sokratis Kokkalis framed the offer as the start of a new chapter and an attempt to build a strong global player in gaming. The ambition is real. So is the read beneath it. This is consolidation driven by balance sheets rather than bidding wars, and that is the signal operators should take from it. When a stretched debt load becomes the entry point for a takeover rather than a deterrent, every operator carrying a 2028 maturity should be looking at their own position with fresh eyes.

Source: Bally’s Intralot