Allwyn has agreed a €50m deal with Kambi to develop its own sportsbook platform, taking a different route towards a long-standing technology ambition after its proposed acquisition of Novibet fell away earlier this year.
The agreement, announced on 10 November, gives the lottery-led gaming group a perpetual global licence to Kambi’s sportsbook source code for its digital and retail operations. Kambi will support implementation, build and train a dedicated team, and subsequently transfer that team to Allwyn. A separate long-term agreement keeps Kambi involved in trading and risk management.
That structure makes this a more interesting transaction than a straightforward change of software supplier. Allwyn is acquiring the means to direct more of its own development, while retaining specialist services from the business supplying the underlying technology.
The financial commitment also extends beyond the headline fee. Allwyn expects additional annual central costs as it builds the capabilities needed to run the operation. The commercial outcome will depend on how effectively it converts that spending into better products, shared efficiencies and sustainable growth.
A different route after Novibet
The history matters. On 30 December 2024, Allwyn agreed to buy 51% of Logflex MT Holding, Novibet’s owner, for an initial €217m, with up to €110m in additional performance-related payments. Its announcement highlighted Novibet’s proprietary technology and the opportunity to strengthen Allwyn’s online betting capabilities.
On 4 March 2026, Allwyn and Logflex said they were withdrawing the transaction from review following feedback from the Hellenic Competition Commission. The regulator subsequently explained that its objections concerned the loss of competitive pressure from Novibet and the strengthening of Allwyn’s position in affected Greek markets. The parties abandoned the transaction; it never became the completed acquisition originally envisaged.
The Kambi agreement offers another way to obtain a technology foundation and the expertise to develop it. Licensing an established platform is a materially different proposition from acquiring control of a competing operator, with its customers and market position.
Allwyn’s wider structure has also evolved. The combination of Allwyn International and OPAP completed on 24 March 2026, bringing the businesses together in an Athens-listed group. A common sportsbook platform now has to serve a business with different markets, operating traditions and customer expectations.
Kresimir Spajic, chief executive of Allwyn Digital, presents the Kambi agreement as a way to improve product differentiation and development speed. Those are practical ambitions: control over the development schedule can determine how quickly an operator responds to a local opportunity or fixes a persistent customer problem.
The fee is only part of the cost
Allwyn says the €50m consideration will fall over the three years to 2029, with approximately half incurred in 2027. It expects that expenditure to be capitalised.
Alongside it, additional central sportsbook capabilities, including trading, pricing and risk management, are expected to increase annual central costs by an amount in the low tens of millions of euros from 2027. Allwyn anticipates later savings within its operating segments and benefits from growth and cross-selling.
This is where the economics deserve attention. Capitalising the initial expenditure changes when costs appear in earnings; the cash commitment still needs to earn a return. The recurring cost base then needs enough activity, development output and operational benefit to justify maintaining it.
The group reports sports betting gross gaming revenue of more than €800m for 2025, giving the project an existing business to support. GGR measures stakes retained after winnings, before the business’s other costs. It provides a sense of scale, rather than a measure of the cash available to fund this programme.
Our assessment is that the strongest case for a shared platform lies in reducing duplicated work. A capability developed once may be adapted across several operations. That advantage weakens if every market requires extensive separate rebuilding, or if central priorities repeatedly displace valuable local improvements.
Allwyn’s challenge is to centralise the work that benefits from scale while preserving the flexibility that makes an individual brand competitive.
Why Kambi remains involved
For Kambi, the arrangement creates a further way to earn from technology developed over more than 15 years. Chief executive Werner Becher described Allwyn’s selection as an endorsement of the platform’s strategic value and its ability to support regulated operations at scale.
The supplier expects the agreements to contribute approximately €45m-€50m to operating profit over 2027-2031, based on its current assumptions. That is Kambi’s projected profit contribution across the agreements, a different measure from Allwyn’s €50m consideration. Kambi also expects additional operating expenses during the 2027-2029 implementation period.
Its continuing trading relationship is significant. Source code gives an operator a foundation on which to develop software. Pricing markets and managing exposure during live sport require a further combination of data, models, expertise and operational judgement.
As we examined in our earlier report on Kambi’s AI-powered live-betting delays, decisions about pricing and acceptance can shape the customer experience as directly as the interface itself.
The Allwyn structure recognises that distinction. It combines greater control over platform development with continued access to Kambi’s specialist trading and risk capabilities. As Allwyn also builds central expertise in these areas, clear responsibilities between its teams and the supplier will matter, particularly when a pricing problem needs an immediate response.
Migration will test the promise
A platform agreement creates the opportunity to improve a business. Delivering that improvement requires a careful transition.
For a sportsbook, continuity includes keeping markets available, settling bets correctly and maintaining dependable connections with account, payment and customer-protection systems. Problems at those boundaries can become visible to customers long before a promised new feature arrives.
The transfer of a trained team should help retain knowledge of how the software works. Allwyn will still have to give that team clear priorities, sufficient resources and a workable relationship with its existing operations. Conflicting requests from several brands can consume the development capacity that consolidation was intended to release.
There is also a resilience trade-off. Shared software can make improvements easier to distribute, but a poorly contained fault can affect several operations. Testing, security, release management and the ability to isolate a problem become part of the commercial value of the platform.
Allwyn’s announcement does not give a detailed public timetable for each brand’s migration. The useful milestones will therefore be specific: which operations have moved, whether service has remained stable, and what the common platform lets them do more effectively.
Growth brings responsibilities of its own
The agreement sits within a wider effort to control more technology and content. Allwyn separately announced plans to acquire the remaining 30% of Instant Win Gaming for approximately $120m, following the minority shareholders’ exercise of a put option. Completion is expected in the first quarter of 2027.
Owning content and directing distribution can create opportunities to introduce customers to additional products. In our view, investment in that capability should be matched by an equally serious ability to recognise harmful changes in play and apply appropriate safeguards. Faster development and more effective marketing increase the importance of sound operational judgement.
British readers will know Allwyn through the National Lottery, which its UK business began operating in February 2024. Our recent examination of Allwyn UK’s leadership changes considered how technology investment translates into dependable service and commercial performance. This international sportsbook project poses a similar execution test in a separate part of the group.
Control has to earn its keep
Allwyn has chosen a credible route towards greater technological control: established software, implementation support, a team transfer and access to specialist trading services. It can build from a working foundation while developing the organisation needed to maintain it.
The strongest evidence of success will come from faster useful improvements, reliable service and a clearer relationship between the central cost base and benefits across the brands. Those measures will show whether the promised flexibility survives the practical demands of running a complex betting business.
For Kambi, the deal demonstrates that an operator’s ambition to develop its own platform can remain a commercial opportunity for a supplier. For Allwyn, it brings the freedom to make more decisions, together with the responsibility to show that those decisions produce a better business.