Inside Flutter’s push to scale up AI

• A new State of AI in Gaming 2026 report, drawing on 83 gambling companies and 113 regulators, puts the sector’s average AI maturity at just 45 out of 100.
• More than 80% of companies surveyed already use generative AI, though far fewer have moved into agentic AI systems that can independently plan, decide and act.
• Flutter Entertainment’s technology leaders described their AI approach in comments published following this year’s TechConnect event in Cluj, Romania.

Flutter Entertainment executives have described how the operator is applying artificial intelligence across fraud and security protection, personalisation and player protection. Their comments were published following this year’s TechConnect, an internal gathering of Flutter’s global technology teams.

In a new article on its corporate site, Flutter outlines how AI is being applied across the business, interviewing technology leaders across its brands. The piece follows a new industry report that found gambling companies lag other regulated sectors on AI maturity.

Data as the edge

Every operator now has access to broadly the same AI models. What separates them, according to Karl Wintrell, Chief Technology Officer for Global Platforms at Flutter, is the data behind them.

“As the largest global betting and gaming operator, we have access to an incredible amount of data.”

Wintrell pointed to financial services and e-commerce as sectors further along in applying AI to customer decisions, framing both as models for gambling operators to learn from.

That comparison lines up with the State of AI in Gaming 2026 report, produced by UNLV’s International Gaming Institute and KPMG, drawing on survey responses from 83 gambling companies and 113 regulators. The report found gambling companies are more closely aligned with regulated financial services than with retail or media in how they prioritise AI.

The study calculated an average AI Maturity Index score of 45 out of 100, with governance the weakest dimension at just 30. Land-based operators scored 39, well below the 54 recorded by online operators.

Flutter’s scale is visible elsewhere in its infrastructure too. Betnacional completed Flutter’s fastest-ever platform integration earlier this year, migrating onto Flutter’s proprietary risk and trading systems ahead of the World Cup.

Fraud, code and culture

Security is one area where Flutter says the technology cuts both ways. JJ Agha, CISO and Enterprise Software SVP at FanDuel, said attackers are already using AI, which makes matching capability essential.

“We know that attackers are also using these AI models, and we’re using it too. It helps even the playing field for us.”

Agha pointed to payments as a sector worth benchmarking against, citing its experience hardening systems against automated, AI-enabled fraud and bot activity.

Inside the business, Sara Sousa, General Manager at Blip, Flutter’s Porto-based sports betting hub, said the priority is building engineering capability rather than chasing tools for their own sake. Blip has launched an internal AI Hub with learning paths from basic to advanced topics.

The hub ran its first Leap AI Day this year, combining a keynote with hands-on workshops and a competition to build working AI-powered solutions. Sousa summed up the guiding principle as “earn your license,” the idea that a tool is only as powerful as a team’s ability to use it well.

Tony Stokes, Group Director of Enterprise Technology, framed the same shift in more personal terms for staff across finance, marketing and technology roles.

“People have AI as a thinking partner to help with their day-to-day work, whether in finance, marketing or tech. It’s like a daily tutor for our people, it’s helping to make our people more effective.”

Personalisation and protection

Karl Wood, Director of Technology at tombola, expects customer experience to become the next AI battleground, with personalisation moving from cohort-level targeting to the level of a single player.

tombola is already using generative AI to assist with game design and animation, work that sits alongside the operator’s recent in-house release of five Monopoly-branded bingo games, its biggest coordinated launch since 2016.

Mike Foster, CIO at Sportsbet, highlighted real-time player protection as one of the more mature use cases already live across Flutter’s brands. The tool flags outlier deposit behaviour so customer service agents can prompt players to reflect in the moment.

It runs as Real-Time Intervention at Sportsbet, launched in 2022, and Real-Time Check-In at FanDuel, launched in 2025 and adapted from Sportsbet’s model. Sportsbet’s version predates jurisdictions such as New Jersey, where regulators are moving towards automated monitoring and intervention requirements for at-risk players.

Foster also pointed to where the technology could go next.

“You could have us building a whole new app in real time, tailored right to what the customer wants to bet on.”

Foster framed this as a future possibility rather than a live Flutter product.

The comments follow Flutter naming Dan Taylor as its next group CEO, due to succeed Peter Jackson on 1 October 2026.

Regulators are moving in parallel. Australia’s communications regulator has already begun mapping AI use across the wagering sector, and similar scrutiny is likely to spread as more operators publicise their AI roadmaps.

For Flutter, the message from TechConnect was that the advantage will come less from access to AI itself. It will come from how quickly the lessons from Cluj, Porto and its other technology hubs translate into products already live with customers.