By DhanushVignesh Babu
(Reuters) -Flutter Entertainment said on Tuesday it would buy Snaitech for 2.3 billion euros ($2.6 billion) including debt from gambling technology group Playtech, cementing its position as the leading gambling firm in Italy.
The deal is to close by the second quarter of 2025 and will add to earnings per share immediately for Flutter, the world’s largest gambling company.
It will also see one of Italy’s biggest gambling companies change hands and leave Playtech to focus on its operations as a business-to-business software provider.
The Italian gambling market is the largest in Europe, but online penetration lags behind countries such as the UK and Australia, analysts said.
“It is expected that over the next three years, there will be a larger digital presence driving the online market growth,” Davy Research analyst Paul Ruddy said in a note, referring to the regulated Italian market.
It marks the second deal in a week for Flutter, which announced last Friday it would buy a 56% stake in Brazil’s NSX Group, the operator of Betnacional, for about $350 million to expand in the soon-to-be regulated Brazilian market.
The move comes as Flutter, which has seen an influx of new customers and revenue from the United States, continues its aggressive international expansion.
Earlier this year, the company, whose brands include Paddy Power and Poker Stars, shifted its primary listing to New York from London.
The acquisition will strengthen Flutter’s standing in Italy, giving it an online market share of about 30% when combined with existing Italian operations, Flutter said. Flutter already owns Sisal, one of the largest online gambling operators in Italy.
Italy’s market dynamics include a relatively high spend per adult as a percentage of GDP and a growing share of online revenue from mobile devices, Berenberg wrote in August.
The brokerage also said that the recent regulatory reform of online gambling in Italy should provide stability over the next nine years, particularly on issues such as taxation.
Flutter is in more than 20 countries globally, including the booming U.S. market where it operates the FanDuel brand.
Playtech has operations in 19 countries. Snaitech, its business-to-consumer unit, made 946.6 million euros in revenue last year.
The two parties have been in talks regarding Snaitech since August.
Shares in Playtech fell 2.9% at 0916 GMT while the owner of FanDuel and Paddy Power gained 0.7%, reaching their highest level since March 2024.
($1 = 0.8988 euros)
(Reporting by DhanushVignesh Babu, Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru and Alberto Chiumento in Gdansk; Editing by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan, Keith Weir and David Evans)