evoke, whose brands include William Hill, 888 and Mr Green, has bought New Gambling Solutions, which operates Winner.ro, the number seven online betting and gaming operator in Romania.
evoke will inject its Romania business plus a cash consideration of €10m in exchange for a 51 per cent share in the enlarged Romania business, which will bring together 888.ro with Winner to create the number four group in the market with combined market share of approximately seven per cent. The combined Romania business, NGS, will operate a multi-brand strategy, leveraging a local hero brand alongside a highly-complementary, world-renowned casino brand.
Based on a 2026 earn-out calculation, evoke will own between 51 per cent and 57 per cent of the business, with an option at its sole discretion to increase ownership to 100 per cent from the third anniversary of completion.
The large and fast-growing Romanian market was worth approximately €1.1bn in net revenue in 2023 and is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 13 per cent from 2023-2026 (Regulus Partners). The attractive market dynamics are creating rising barriers to entry, with strict local regulations and high levels of localisation.
Winner was launched in 2019 and has built a strong market presence through its focused strategy to deliver innovative products, highly localised experiences, and significant local distribution through 20k retail deposit points. In the first 6 months of 2024, Winner delivered gross gaming revenue of approximately €19m.
The combined business will be managed by Nicklas Zajdel, the current Winner CEO who joined the business in 2023 and has since successfully managed the rollout of an all-new product suite, and delivered profitable growth. A highly effective local management team and nearly 80 people in Romania delivers leading local insight and capabilities that provide significant competitive advantages. This will further complement approximately 500 people in evoke based in Romania, which is one of evoke’s strategic centres for Group functions.
Romania will become evoke’s fifth Core Market, joining the UK, Italy, Spain and Denmark. Each of these are large and highly attractive regulated markets, where the Group is well placed to deliver sustainable profitable growth.
Per Widerström, CEO of evoke, commented: “I am excited to announce the addition of Winner to the evoke portfolio. This acquisition is consistent with our strategy to build sustainable market-leading profitable positions in the most attractive markets. It is also consistent with our M&A strategy to focus on low-capital, high-impact combinations that accelerate the delivery of our strategy.
We have enjoyed significant success in Romania, which is an exciting growth market. This combination will cement a leading position for evoke, and I am looking forward to working with the whole team at Winner to deliver ongoing profitable growth and market share gains, as we deliver exceptional products through two incredibly strong and complementary brands. I am delighted to announce the creation of our fifth Core Market and have no doubt that this transaction will deliver significant value creation on top of our previously announced plan.”
Nicklas Zajdel, CEO of Winner, commented: “This is an incredibly exciting transaction, bringing together our local-hero brand, with one of the world’s strongest international casino brands. Romania is a high-growth market, and this combination sets us on the path to a sustainable, profitable, market-leading position. Winner has a strong leadership team and we are building on our success in the market through our highly localised approach, and competitive advantages such as our product platform, our enhanced personalisation, and wide network of deposit points. I look forward to working with the team at evoke to further deploy these competitive advantages across the enlarged business, driving significant benefits to our customers with enhanced personalisation, and ultimately driving our success in the market and value creation.”
Caption: Per Widerström