- Entain’s online gaming revenue rose 9% at constant currency in the first half, against 4% for sports.
- The group’s sports margin ran 0.5 points below normal for the half before recovering in the second quarter.
- BetMGM’s second-quarter iGaming revenue hit $483 million, up 8%, while online sports revenue stayed flat at $228 million.
- Group underlying EBITDA slipped 2% to £479 million as Entain began a phased exit from Central and Eastern Europe.
LONDON – Entain’s casino and slots revenue grew more than twice as fast as its sportsbook in the first half of 2026, with online gaming revenue up 9% at constant currency against 4% for sports, according to interim results the operator published on Aug. 13.
Total online net gaming revenue rose 7% across the half on volume growth of 9%, and the gaming line did the heavy lifting inside that number, according to Entain’s 2026 interim results. Group revenue grew 5% and retail 1%. The online business turned an underlying EBITDA margin of 21.4%.
The Sportsbook Brought The Players, The Tables Kept The Money
Football shaped the half. Entain counted first-time depositors across its brands at double the level of the 2022 World Cup, and Chief Executive Stella David credited “strong player engagement across the Group throughout the World Cup tournament.” Those deposits landed in accounts that play everything, not only the match markets.
The tournament did not deliver a clean sportsbook result. Entain’s sports margin sat 0.5 percentage points below normal across the six months and recovered to 0.4 points above normal only in the second quarter, after results ran the players’ way earlier in the year. Brazil shows the cost in isolation: revenue there fell 25% on what the company called a highly adverse first-quarter sports margin, with sports wagers up 10% underneath it.
The gaming-led pattern held region by region. Online net gaming revenue grew 13% in Australia and 11% in Canada, and Spain was the fastest-growing European market at 28%. In the UK and Ireland, gaming revenue rose 13% against 11% for sports.
A Casino Hold Is Designed, A Sportsbook Hold Is A Residual
That gap is arithmetic rather than luck, and it is the structural reason a gaming line moves more smoothly than a sports line. A sportsbook prices a market and then waits to see which way the games land, so its take is whatever survives the results. A casino game’s take is fixed by its rules before a card is dealt.
The standard six-deck blackjack game, dealer standing on soft 17, doubling on any two cards, doubling after splits and late surrender, gives the house about 0.34% of each wager against perfect basic strategy, or roughly 34 cents per $100 staked. Looser rule sets in common use run closer to half a percent. Neither figure moves because a favorite lost.
What moves the number is a rules change, which is what makes any blackjack house edge comparison worth reading. Paying a natural 6:5 instead of 3:2 adds about 1.39 percentage points to the edge without changing how often a natural is dealt, which stays near 4.75% of opening hands. The payout shifts, the probability does not, and the house keeps the difference.
Volume growth of 9% applied to a constant like that compounds into a revenue line. Applied to a sports margin, the same volume growth produces whatever the weekend allows. That difference accounts for most of the distance between 9% and 4%, and it shows up in the live studio product as well, where the live dealer online blackjack format deals the same fixed rules at higher hands per hour.
BetMGM Shows The Same Split In The United States
Entain’s release does not break out online casino performance at BetMGM, its 50/50 joint venture with MGM Resorts. It records that the venture reached sustainable profitability in 2026 and has begun paying parent fees to its owners, worth £6.7 million to Entain in the half. It also reconfirms BetMGM’s full-year guidance of $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion in revenue and $300 million to $350 million in adjusted EBITDA, tracking toward the lower end.
The split itself sits in BetMGM’s second-quarter business update, published July 28. Net revenue of $711 million was up 3%, made up of $483 million in iGaming, up 8%, and $228 million in online sports, flat year over year.
Market share tells the same story. BetMGM held 13% of gross gaming revenue across its active markets, built from 20% in iGaming and 8% in online sports. Chief Executive Adam Greenblatt said the operator “continues to execute with discipline” with player fundamentals healthy, though average monthly actives fell 3% to 875,000.
That 20% iGaming share measures how much of the regulated table and slot play in its live states a single brand holds, and it dwarfs the same company’s standing in sports betting. Offshore sites still take players from states without a licensed market, but they hold no state license, so no regulator checks the rules behind their games the way one does for legal online blackjack in regulated states.
What Entain Cut Loose
Entain also took its first step out of Central and Eastern Europe. The company agreed to an initial 20% divestment at €425 million, implying an enterprise value of €2.1 billion for the unit, and now reports the region as discontinued operations.
Group underlying EBITDA of £479 million was down 2% year over year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share fell 19% to 20.3p on lower EBITDA, lower BetMGM joint venture income and a higher effective tax rate, and the interim dividend rose 5% to 10.3p.
Entain guided full-year online net gaming revenue growth of 5% to 7% at constant currency, a full-year online EBITDA margin of 21% to 22%, and group underlying EBITDA of £910 million to £960 million excluding parent fees.