Lee Hills comments on gambling sector consolidation for iGamingFuture

SolutionsHub CEO Lee Hills has been featured in iGamingFuture, commenting on Bally’s Intralot, evoke and the wider pressure building across mature regulated gambling markets.

The article, written by David Cook, considers whether increasing regulation, taxation and margin pressure are likely to drive further merger and acquisition activity across the sector, particularly in the UK and Europe.

Lee commented that the proposed transaction has the potential to place evoke in a stronger position, with access to greater scale, improved technology and meaningful cost efficiencies. However, he also noted that these benefits still need to be delivered, adding that “a larger combined business is not automatically a stronger one.”

The wider point is one that is likely to become increasingly important across regulated gambling markets. The sector has been discussing consolidation for more than a decade, but there is now growing evidence that a more sustained period of consolidation may be underway, at least in more mature jurisdictions.

In theory, consolidation can provide significant benefits at a time of unpredictability, particularly in markets where taxation, regulation and operating costs are placing increasing pressure on margins. The real test will be whether consolidation benefits customers, supports innovation and creates more resilient businesses, or simply produces larger operators facing the same underlying challenges.

Read the full iGamingFuture article here.