Image credit: Source: Bally's Corporation second-quarter 2026 earnings release. Never imply stock depicts the actual event.
Bally's Corporation put a number on Britain's gambling tax hike for the first time: $39 million in gross negative EBITDAR hit to its Intralot B2C segment in the second quarter, of which it clawed back roughly 65% through growth and cost control alone. The company reported the figure August 14 alongside consolidated Q2 2026 revenue of $792.2 million, up 20.5% year over year.
The UK's Remote Gaming Duty rose from 21% to 40% effective April 1, 2026, and this was the first full quarter Bally's absorbed it. Rather than the loss Flutter Entertainment booked from the same tax rise, Bally's says its UK online business kept accelerating through it: constant-currency revenue growth went from 10.5% in the first quarter to 11.6% in the second, and hit roughly 13% year over year in July. Chief executive Robeson Reeves said the company achieved that "without incremental marketing spend," with planned marketing reductions still to begin in the second half.
That distinction matters for the rest of the industry. The UK duty rise has already forced one distressed sale, Bally's own pending acquisition of evoke plc, and pushed Betfred to drop its near-decade Super League sponsorship as tax pressure reaches marketing budgets. Bally's numbers are the first public evidence that an operator can absorb most of the hit through top-line growth rather than through cuts, though Reeves' own caution, that "market consolidation" pressure is building "post-World Cup and through the fall tax season," suggests the easier part of the adjustment may be over.
Bally's Intralot B2C revenue, the segment carrying the UK tax exposure, rose 22.3% to $243.5 million in the quarter, helped by the addition of Intralot's own sports betting business in Turkey. North America Interactive revenue grew 16.9% to $66.1 million, which Reeves said is now running at "over $250 million of annualized revenue" and contributing positively at the segment level for the first time.
Away from the UK tax line, Bally's used the same release to disclose a run of lottery-technology contract wins landing in a single quarter: a 15-year electronic gaming machine monitoring licence in Victoria, Australia in April, a contract of up to 12 years with Chile's State Lottery, a new agreement with Hellenic Lotteries in Greece in May, and selection by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation as its new lottery technology provider in June. Reeves framed the cluster as deliberate: "We are bringing in the right leadership and technology capability, including utilizing expertise from the legacy Gamesys business, to optimize the service and technology we deliver for our lottery partners."
Growth bought time, it did not cancel the tax
The 65% offset is real, but it is not the same as the tax not existing. Bally's covered roughly $25 million of a $39 million hit with growth and cost discipline it has not yet had to spend on marketing to sustain, and Reeves is already flagging tougher competition ahead. The lottery contracts, four jurisdictions in one quarter, read as the hedge for when that growth rate cannot keep outrunning the duty on its own.