Why private equity is buying up iGaming's supplier tier

Private capital has become one of the most consequential forces in gambling technology. Over the past two years, buyout and infrastructure funds have moved from the sidelines to the centre of the industry’s deal flow, taking suppliers private, backing platform roll-ups and financing operators’ expansion. The pattern is familiar from other regulated sectors — and it is reshaping who owns the plumbing of online gambling.

The thesis behind the buying

The attraction is straightforward. Regulated gambling suppliers tend to be capital-light, highly cash-generative and protected by licensing barriers that keep new entrants out. A payment processor, a platform provider or a testing lab sells to many operators, earns recurring revenue and is insulated from the swings of any single betting market. For a fund with a long hold period, that profile — steady cash flows behind a regulatory moat — is close to ideal.

Public markets, by contrast, have often valued these companies cautiously, wary of regulatory headlines and uneven quarterly numbers. That gap between private and public valuation is the engine of the trend: when a listed supplier trades below the multiple its cash flows would command in private hands, a fund can pay a premium to public shareholders and still expect a return.

The landmark deals

The clearest example is Apollo’s roughly $6.3bn take-private of IGT’s gaming and digital businesses together with Everi, completed in July 2025. The transaction pulled two listed companies off public markets and combined them into a private operator that continues under the IGT name — a textbook private-equity consolidation of a supplier segment.

Payments has seen the same pattern. Nuvei, the payment processor with a dedicated iGaming and sports-betting acquiring business, was taken private by Advent International in a deal of roughly $6.3bn in 2024. Pay-by-bank pioneer Trustly sits under Nordic Capital, and account-to-account provider Zimpler and open-banking specialist Brite Payments have both drawn growth capital as the payments tier has become a battleground.

Lottery, with its long licences and predictable revenue, has attracted the same patient money in a different form: the Allwyn–OPAP combination that closed in early 2026 created one of the world’s largest listed lottery groups, backed by a private-capital sponsor that had already built Allwyn through years of national-lottery acquisitions.

What changes when a fund owns the supplier

The consequences ripple down the value chain. A privately owned supplier is freed from quarterly earnings pressure and can invest for the long term — but it also carries the leverage and return expectations that come with a buyout. For operators that depend on these suppliers, private ownership can mean a sharper commercial posture: tighter pricing, faster consolidation of overlapping products, and a push to cross-sell across a broader platform.

It also accelerates the platform-standardisation theme. Funds tend to buy adjacent capabilities and stitch them together, so an operator that once integrated a payments provider, a KYC vendor and a platform separately may increasingly find them under common ownership. That can simplify procurement — one relationship instead of three — but it also concentrates dependency, and with it pricing power, in fewer hands.

The wider picture

Private equity’s arrival is both a vote of confidence and a warning. It confirms that regulated gambling suppliers are seen as durable, cash-rich assets worth owning through a cycle. But it also thins the pool of listed pure-plays available to public investors and hands control of critical infrastructure to owners whose horizon is an eventual exit rather than a permanent presence in the industry.

For now, the buying continues. As long as public markets keep discounting these businesses and funds keep raising capital, the incentive to take suppliers private will remain — and the map of who owns iGaming’s supplier tier will keep being redrawn. The full record of recent deals is set out in our State of European iGaming 2026 report.

FAQ