The £205m AIM IPO of Winvia Entertainment is being spun as a sign of “renewed momentum” in London’s markets – but set against the broader backdrop of gambling equity flows, it looks more like a niche success than the start of a genuine revival.
Winvia, the UK’s second-largest prize draw operator, floated on AIM in early November with a market cap of around £205m after raising £40m of new money in an oversubscribed institutional placing at 195p per share. The group bundles UK prize draw brands Best of the Best and Click Competitions, alongside a portfolio of Romanian online casino brands, including Princess Casino and Royal Slots. On paper, it’s precisely the kind of cash-generative, digital-first story London should be good at: regulated European exposure, a consolidation angle and clear use of proceeds for M&A and deleveraging.
But Winvia priced into a market that is still structurally weak. London fell to roughly 20th place globally for IPO volumes in 2024, with only about 18 companies listing that year – the lowest new-issue capital raised in approximately three-and-a-half decades. EY estimates that just nine new listings on the LSE in H1 2025 raised £182.8m in total, a tiny number for a market that still likes to call itself a global financial centre. At the same time, the LSE’s main market has suffered 18 consecutive months of net outflows, losing 115 companies between mid-2023 and the end of 2024, as 142 firms delisted or moved abroad and only 27 joined.
Against that backdrop, it’s hard to see Winvia as a turning point. If anything, it fits a narrower pattern: mid-cap, sponsor-backed gambling and gambling-adjacent businesses using the public markets as one option among several for partial liquidity and roll-up capital. Europe has already seen this template work better in local markets than in London. Italian operator Lottomatica listed in Milan in 2023, raising around €600m (up to €690m with the greenshoe) at an IPO valuation of roughly €2.3bn – the largest European IPO by proceeds at that point. In July 2025, Blackstone-owned CIRSA finally came to market in Spain at a €2.5bn valuation, raising about €400m of fresh equity in an oversubscribed deal to pay down debt and fund further acquisitions.
And at the very top end, the capital is clearly moving elsewhere. Allwyn’s €16bn all-share merger with Greek operator OPAP will create the world’s second-largest listed gambling group after Flutter. The combined business will keep its Athens listing but is openly targeting an additional listing on “another leading international exchange such as London or New York” – with no guarantee that London wins that beauty contest.
American dream
Flutter itself is the clearest signal that the gravitational pull for large-cap gambling is now firmly state-side. In January 2024 the group began trading on the New York Stock Exchange while retaining its London listing. Management was explicit that US index inclusion – and by extension, access to the world’s deepest equity capital pool – was a key objective in proposing a transfer of the primary listing. Shareholders duly approved the move in May 2024, with 98% voting in favour of shifting the primary listing from London to New York; by the end of that month the transition was complete and London was demoted to secondary status.
That isn’t just a technical detail. Flutter was a £30bn-class FTSE 100 constituent and the flagship listed gambling stock in Europe. Its decision to treat New York as home and London as a satellite is exactly the outcome UK policymakers had hoped to avoid. Together with other moves – Tui to Frankfurt, and talk of pharma and consumer champions considering US listings – it reinforces the narrative that for globally relevant, high-growth names, the UK is becoming a place you leave, not join.
From a sector perspective, there is still plenty of fuel for more gambling IPOs globally. European gross gambling revenue reached about €123.4bn in 2024, up 5% year-on-year, with online gambling now close to 40% of the market and mobile continuing to gain share. That growth, combined with persistent private-equity ownership across the industry, means a steady pipeline of assets will at some point need an exit – whether via IPO, trade sale or re-leveraging.
The question is where those IPOs print. Recent evidence suggests three main destinations:
- Local European exchanges (Milan, Madrid/Barcelona, Athens) for nationally anchored B2C brands such as Lottomatica, CIRSA and OPAP/Allwyn.
- US exchanges for global-scale groups that want US investor coverage, index inclusion and higher growth multiples – Flutter being the clearest example so far.
- London and AIM for mid-cap, regionally focused or specialist plays like Winvia, where the UK investor base understands the regulatory framework and the story is too small or too local to justify the cost and scrutiny of a New York listing.
On this view, Winvia doesn’t really prove that London is “back”. It simply demonstrates that the market can still absorb well-packaged, mid-cap gambling stories at sensible valuations. That’s positive – especially given how subdued UK IPO activity has been – but it doesn’t challenge the underlying trend of capital, talent and flagship issuers drifting away.
Could reforms change that? Possibly, but the bar is high. Despite tweaks to listing rules and talk of scrapping stamp duty on new issues, commentators still describe the London IPO market as being “in the doldrums”, with new-issue capital at generational lows and the number of quoted companies shrinking year after year. Until there is clear evidence that valuations and liquidity in London are structurally improving relative to New York and leading EU exchanges, rational boards – especially in gambling – are likely to keep favouring either home markets or the US.
So, yes: the fundamentals of the gambling industry suggest we should see more IPOs and listings in the next cycle. Winvia is one early beneficiary of that reopening, and London will probably capture a handful of similar mid-cap deals where the UK story and investor base line up neatly. But if Flutter’s behaviour is any guide, the real centre of gravity for larger, growth-oriented gambling names is shifting decisively away from the UK – and one well-received AIM float isn’t enough to declare that trend reversed.
The post View from the City: Further London listings unlikely amid US and local pull first appeared on EGR Intel.
Winvia’s AIM IPO won’t fire the starting gun on gambling operators and sector-adjacent firms flocking back to London, Julian Buhagiar suggests
The post View from the City: Further London listings unlikely amid US and local pull first appeared on EGR Intel.