There is no shortage of M&A activity in iGaming. Consolidation is happening across the value chain, from operators to platforms and content suppliers. From a supplier perspective, an acquisition is often seen as a quickfire route to growing their size and stature. However, these deals are worthless if they fail to benefit operators in helping to drive their business forward through third party partnerships.
Too often, a supplier looks to grow its product portfolio through the purchase of a company without adding real value to the operators it serves. This tends to happen when a deal is driven primarily by opportunity rather than strategy, for example, acquiring a business simply because a competitor has made a similar move. Wider portfolios look good on paper but can make little practical change to what operators can actually access. That distinction often gets overlooked when analysing M&A within our industry.
Fundamentally, effective M&A activity requires a thorough process that goes beyond simply looking at revenues or profits. Multiple factors need consideration to ensure a deal maximises its potential to benefit the wider ecosystem.
The discipline behind a good deal
Two companies can announce a deal with strong logic on paper, overlapping customer bases, complementary products, a clear commercial rationale, and still fail to deliver anything meaningful a year later. The difference usually comes down to what happens away from the headline announcement.
Most of that work happens before signing. It begins with proper preparation to better understand what strategic initiative the company is aiming to fulfil, screening the market properly, and mapping out which targets will create value rather than just adding scale. Culture is the part most likely to get waved through in the excitement of a deal, and it’s often the reason integrations stall.
Deals that are clear from day one on governance, how the acquired business will sit within the group, and what the complete package looks like tend to reach operators faster and with fewer surprises. Deals that leave those questions open, tend to show up as delays, inconsistent messaging, or products that technically exist but never quite land with the partners they were meant to serve.
Throughout the whole process, the key factor to keep in mind is what this means for operators. An acquisition should translate into something operators can actually use and benefit from commercially.
The right fit with Splash Tech
RubyPlay’s acquisition of Splash Tech is a good example of this approach in practice. We clearly identified from the outset that we wanted to move beyond the traditional content silo and firmly establish ourselves as a content and engagement platform provider. We wanted to address the challenge of player acquisition and retention that our operator partners face and concluded that M&A was the strategic route to elevate our offering and better serve them.
Splash Tech brought jackpot and free-to-play capabilities that fitted directly into our existing engagement suite, alongside free spins, rewards, missions and tournaments. From our perspective, that gave us a broader, more complete engagement offering that would ultimately benefit operators worldwide.
The jackpot engine works across verticals rather than being tied to a single product, so operators can turn slots, live casino or sports bets into a jackpot opportunity. That gives them more flexibility to differentiate their offering, both between brands and within the same market.
The free-to-play tools add another layer, giving operators ways to drive acquisition and retention that sit outside traditional bonusing. Taken together, this widens the toolkit operators have for engagement and does so without adding the cost pressure that heavier promotional spend usually brings.
None of this strategic value happens organically when two companies combine through M&A. It is the product of proven disciplines I apply to any acquisition: understanding what the target does well, looking at how it complements what already exists, and integrating it properly so operators see the full benefit. Unlocking these new revenue streams can define a successful supplier acquisition, leaving operator partners with better tools than they had before.