Seriously, europes gambling industry produced its biggest deal in years in early September 2026, and it happened almost entirely outside the crypto conversation... On 2 September, Italys Lottomatica and Spains Cirsa agreed an all share merger that creates a group with roughly 2 billion euros in pro forma adjusted EBITDA and more than 4.4 billion euros in revenue for the twelve months to 30 June 2026..... Measured by earnings, that is now the second largest listed betting and gaming company on the planet.
Often, only Flutter is bigger... Entain, Allwyn, Evolution and Ballys Intralot all slide down the table because of one signature. The size is not the intresting part. What the combined company is actually made of, and what it deliberately does not touch, tells you far more about where regulated gambling is heading.
What Lottomatica and Cirsa actually agreed
The structure is clean. Cirsa shareholders receive 0.668 newly issued Lottomatica shares for every Cirsa share they hold.... No cash changes hands. That values Cirsas equity at arround 2.8 billion euros, or roughly six times its expected 2026 EBITDA of 800 to 820 million euros.Lottomatica shareholders end up with 67.5 percent of the combined company and Cirsa shareholders with 32.5 percent... The Lottomatica name survives.... The merged group will be listed on both Euronext Milan and the Spanish stock exchanges. And completion is expected in the second quarter of 2027, which is a long runway even by gamblng M&A standards.The financial promises attached to the deal are specific.... The companies expect around 115 million euros in annual pre tax cash synergies, mostly from operating and financing savings, fully realised by the third full financial year after completion. They also flagged up to 4 billion euros returned to shareholders trough dividends and buybacks over the three years that follow.
To be fair, blackstone, which has controlled Cirsa since 2018, rolls its holding into the new entity and remains the largest single shareholder with roughly 24 percent.... The board expands to 13 directors: the 11 existing Lottomatica directors plus two Blackstone nominees. Lottomaticas Guglielmo Angelozzi continues as chairman and chief executive, and Cirsas senior managemnt stays in place running the Spanish and Latin American operations.
How big is the combined group compared to Flutter, Entain and Evolution
Gambling companies report earnings in three different currencies on four different bases, which makes cross company comparison genuinely annoying. Below is a like for like ranking of the largest listed operators by their most recetn adjusted EBITDA figure, converted to euros at early September 2026 rates. Half year actuals are annualised and labelled as such. This table is CryptoCasino.Vegas research compiled from company guidance and interim reports.
| Group | Adjusted EBITDA (EUR) | Basis | Core earnings base |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flutter Entertanment | ~2.28bn | FY2026 guidance midpoint (2.655bn USD, cut by 210m USD in August) | US, UK, Italy, Australia |
| Lottomatica + Cirsa | ~2.00bn | Pro forma combined, 12 months to 30 June 2026 | Italy, Spain, Latin America |
| Allwyn | ~1.80bn | H1 2026 actual of 901m annualised | Lotteries, Czechia, UK, US |
| Evolution | ~1.35bn | H1 2026 actual of 676m annualised | B2B live cassino, global |
| Entain | ~1.05 to 1.11bn | FY2026 guidance of 910m to 960m GBP, excluding CEE | UK, BetMGM, Australia, Brazil |
| DraftKings | ~0...60 to 0.77bn | FY2026 guidance of 700m to 900m USD | United States only |
Two things stand out.... Flutters lead is smaller than most peolpe assume, and it shrank in August when the company cut full year guidance by 210 million dollars...... And Evolution, the company whose games actually run inside almost every crypto casino you have ever deposited into, sits fourth on this list despite an EBITDA margin of 65.6 percent in the first half of 2026. Scale and profitability are not the same measurment.
Why Cirsa sold at six times EBITDA
Sometimes, six times earnings is not a premium valuation. , It is what the market currently pays for gambling revenue that comes out of physical estates in tax exposed European markets.
Cirsa is a genuinely well run business. Its second quarter of 2026 produced record operating profit of 208.9 million euros, the first time the company cleared 200 million in a single quarter, on revenue growht of 9...1 percent across the half... Its Slots Spain division grew revenue 12.2 percent and EBITDA 17.4 percent to 128.3 million euros, the strongest performance in the group. the casinos unit brought in 524.6 million euros of net operating revenue in the half, up 10.2 percent.
None of that earns a high multiple, because the earnings are attached to arcades, betting shops and physical cassino floors in Spain, Panama, Colombia and Italy. Cirsas EBITDA margin sits around 40 percent. Evolution, selling software over the internet, runs at 65....6 percent. That 25 point gap is the entire explanation for why one company trades at six times earnings and the other does not.
Where the merged group actually makes its money
The pro forma breakdown is the most revealing disclosure in the whole announcement.
| Segment or geography | Share of pro forma adjusted EBITDA |
|---|---|
| Onine sports betting | 48% |
| Distributed gaming (retail machines, shops, arcades) | 27% |
| Casinos | 25% |
| Italy and Spain combined | 80% |
| Markets where the group is already number one | 97% |
Why the second biggest gambling group has almost no crypto exposure
Here is the part that matters for anyone reading this from a crypto wallet. A company about to become the second largest gambling operator in the world will have essentially zero crypto payment exposure on day one. Italian and Spanish licensing frameworks do not permit crypto deposits at licensed operators. Neither does the Colombian or Panamanian regime that covers a fifth of Cirsas earnings.Compare grotwh rates.... Tracked crypto casino deposit volume reached 44.7 billion dollars by late July 2026, up 84 percent year on year. , The Lottomatica and Cirsa combination is projecting 115 million euros of cost synergies and a shareholder return programme, which is a different kind of ambition entirely. , One side of the industry is buying market share it allready dominates. The other side is adding users in markets nobody has licensed yet.In theory, that divergence is not a temporary quirk... Licensed European operators carry local tax rates, machine estates, retail leases and marketing restrictions that make organic growth structurally slow.. Consolidation is the only reliable lever left.. Crypto native operators carry none of those costs and none of those protections, which is exactley why their growth curves and their regulatory risk both look nothing alike.
