Lottomatica-CIRSA Merger: What It Means for UK Gambling
Two of Europe’s biggest gambling groups have taken a formal step towards becoming one. On 8 October, the boards of Italy’s Lottomatica and Spain’s CIRSA signed off a joint merger plan that would see CIRSA absorbed into Lottomatica, creating a company with a presence stretching from Rome to Latin America. The deal is not finished – shareholders and regulators in several countries still have to sign off on it – with completion pencilled in for the second quarter of 2027.
What’s actually changed
Lottomatica Group and CIRSA Enterprises have signed a joint plan for CIRSA to be absorbed into Lottomatica, setting terms for a cross-border merger that would leave Lottomatica as the continuing legal entity, with shareholder approval, regulatory authorisations and other conditions still outstanding before the merger can take effect in the second quarter of 2027.
Under the agreed terms,
CIRSA shareholders will receive 0.668 newly issued ordinary Lottomatica shares for each CIRSA share, and CIRSA also plans to pay an extraordinary dividend of €1.56 per share before the merger takes effect, amounting to about €262 million.
The deal needs more than a shareholder nod.
The merger still requires regulatory approval, including competition clearance in Italy and Spain, with antitrust filings submitted to Italy’s Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato and Spain’s Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia.
Regulatory submissions also cover Mexico’s National Antimonopoly Commission and Morocco’s Competition Council, alongside foreign investment notifications in Italy and Spain and a notification to the European Commission under the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation.
Shareholders on both sides are due to vote by the end of November 2026.
On completion, the enlarged group would keep the Lottomatica name and its Rome headquarters, while
Lottomatica recorded approximately €45 billion in betting stakes and €2.3 billion in consolidated revenue in 2025, while CIRSA holds online gaming licences in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay and Mexico and operates in 11 countries.
Existing management stays largely in place, and Blackstone, CIRSA’s majority owner, is set to gain two seats on an expanded 13-member board.
What it means for you
If you hold an account with a UK-licensed casino or betting brand, this deal has no immediate bearing on your terms, deposit limits or safer-gambling tools. Neither Lottomatica nor CIRSA operates a household-name consumer brand in the UK market in the way Flutter, Entain or bet365 do; their core strength lies in Italy, Spain and Latin America. There is no suggestion in the merger documents of a UK licence application or a push into the British market as part of this transaction.
That said, UK players should understand it as part of a wider pattern of consolidation among the operators that increasingly compete for the same international licences, suppliers and investment capital that also serve the UK industry. Mergers of this scale can shift where investment goes and how aggressively groups bid for new markets, which can eventually feed into which brands apply for UK licences or which suppliers power the games you play.
The bigger picture
The transaction continues a deal first struck in September, when the two firms agreed principal terms for what they billed as a combination creating one of the world’s largest listed gambling groups.
Lottomatica and CIRSA presented the enlarged group as a global gambling company with annual revenue above €4.5bn and pro forma adjusted EBITDA of more than €2bn.
The rationale is largely geographic: pairing Lottomatica’s Italian strength with CIRSA’s footholds across Spain, Latin America and North Africa, rather than any ambition to challenge the established order of UK-licensed operators.
For British readers who follow this site because of what UK regulators do to operators here, the relevance is indirect: it is a reminder that the gambling industry your account sits within is becoming more consolidated globally, even where the immediate deal-making happens far from the UK Gambling Commission’s jurisdiction. Any future move by the combined group into Britain would bring it squarely under the same licensing conditions, affordability rules and advertising codes that already apply to every operator serving UK customers.
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