Evoke absorbs £46m duty hit in H1

• Evoke group revenue held at £887.5 million in H1 2026, up 2% once the closure of loss-making shops is stripped out of the comparison.
• Adjusted EBITDA fell 9.5% to £150.2 million after a £46 million jump in gaming duties.
• The Bally’s Intralot takeover, agreed at 52 pence a share in June after a strategic review triggered by the UK’s duty rise, heads to a shareholder vote on 17 August.

Evoke absorbed a £46 million rise in gaming duties across the UK, Italy and Romania in the first half of 2026 without letting group revenue slip, holding steady at £887.5 million.

Adjusted EBITDA fell 9.5% to £150.2 million, and the company said it offset over half of that headwind through lower but more effective marketing, improved promotional efficiency and operational cost savings.

What the numbers mean

£887.5 million in revenue is essentially unchanged from the £887.8 million Evoke posted a year earlier. That flat comparison hides a smaller estate.

Evoke has closed around 270 betting shops over the past year. On a like-for-like basis, comparing only the shops and products that existed in both periods, revenue actually grew 2%.

Adjusted EBITDA strips out one-off costs and non-cash charges to show underlying trading profit. It is the number investors watch most closely, and it fell to £150.2 million from £165.9 million, a drop of 9.5%, almost entirely because of higher gaming duties.

The UK’s Remote Gaming Duty rose from 21% to 40% on 1 April, part of a wider set of tax changes the UK government announced in November 2025. That same environment has already led peers such as Entain to announce cuts of around 500 jobs.

Sean Wilkins, Chief Financial Officer at Evoke, broke down exactly where the £46 million duty increase landed, on the earnings call:

“Well, two thirds of it was from the U.K. So U.K. was GBP 30 million, of that GBP 46 million.”

“I’ve already told you that Italy was circa 10, which means the rest is really from Romania.”

Divisions diverge sharply

UK&I Online, the group’s biggest earner, grew revenue around 4% and lifted Adjusted EBITDA 28.3% to £77.0 million, an increase of £17.0 million, even after the new UK duty rate kicked in. Wilkins credited marketing discipline, with spend down 18.5% to £115.8 million while revenue still grew.

888, by contrast, kept shrinking on purpose, as Evoke continues prioritising higher-value customers over cheaper volume. The division also worked through a reputational hit during the half, after a jackpot glitch mistakenly credited large sums to William Hill and 888 players in March, triggering a clawback dispute with affected customers.

Retail told a similar story of a smaller but healthier business. Reported revenue fell 2.6% to £245.6 million because of shop closures, but like-for-like revenue rose 4%, and Adjusted EBITDA climbed 5.4% to £31.2 million.

Evoke ended the period running 1,024 shops, down from 1,302 a year earlier.

International was the weak spot. Revenue slipped 1.9% to £293.8 million, with strong gains in Italy (21%) and Denmark (13%) offset by declines in Spain, Romania and other markets.

Adjusted EBITDA there dropped 20.9% to £67.6 million, squeezed by Italian and Romanian duty rises and a shift toward higher-tax markets. Sportsbook stakes fell 9.0%, but the group’s betting net win margin improved from 12.7% to 13.2%, which Wilkins put down to product mix:

“We have intentionally been focused on the higher margin products, particularly ACCAs and bet builders.”

A deal with deep roots

The Intralot takeover did not appear overnight. Evoke launched a formal strategic review in December 2025, weeks after the UK’s Autumn Budget nearly doubled Remote Gaming Duty, with advisers Morgan Stanley and Rothschild engaged to explore a sale or break-up of the group.

By April 2026, Evoke confirmed an initial proposal from Bally’s Intralot at 50 pence a share, valuing the group at just £225.3 million against roughly £1.8 billion of debt. Terms firmed up in June to 52 pence a share and £243.1 million, and the board recommended the deal.

Shareholders now vote on 17 August, with completion still targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026 or the first quarter of 2027. The board is not issuing forward guidance while that process runs.

Evoke’s H1 report names three strategic priorities that have stayed constant through the disruption: delivering profitable revenue growth, improving operating efficiency, and maintaining disciplined capital allocation.

Per Widerström, CEO of Evoke, addressed the pending deal directly on the call:

“Our operational priorities are unchanged. We remain focused on maintaining momentum, serving our customers, supporting our colleagues, meeting our regulatory obligations, and managing the business with discipline through the completion of the transaction.”

On the efficiency priority, Wilkins pointed to the retail closures as proof the strategy is working:

“What we have done is we have cut out loss-making stores, and that has meant that we are more profitable in spite of having lower revenue.”

The capital-allocation priority is under the most visible strain. Underlying free cash flow was £85 million for the half, and cash excluding customer balances stood at £105.6 million at 30 June, giving total liquidity of around £150 million.

Net debt rose roughly £37 million to £1,899.4 million, pushing leverage to 5.6 times Adjusted EBITDA from 5.2 times at the end of 2025. No dividend is being paid, and none will be until leverage falls to 3 times or below.

Evoke said engagement through the FIFA World Cup provided a good foundation heading into the new football season. Product upgrades in Spain and continued cash preservation in Romania are next up for International, while the wider UK sector also faces a 25% licence fee rise from the Gambling Commission in October.

For now, Evoke’s own trajectory depends on shareholders backing the Intralot deal and regulators clearing it.