FDJ United will conduct a market review, signalling potential divestment and market exits, the operator announced during its H1 2026 results report.
The operator is seeking to stabilise its gross gaming revenue (GGR) and mitigate the impacts of gambling tax increases in various jurisdictions.
Stéphane Pallez, president and CEO of FDJ United, commented: “The group’s performance in the first half of the year continued to be impacted by increased taxes.”
That impact was visible in the results – while GGR was down 1.3% year-on-year, the higher tax rates contributed to an even steeper erosion of net revenue at 4.5%.
Not all of the figures can be attributed to tax pressures, however.
EBITDA was down from €441m in H1 2025 to €404m, while adjusted net profit was down 19% from €222m to €180m.
Pallez also pointed towards the impact of “exceptional heatwaves, which have weighed on traffic at points of sale in France.”
As a result of these headwinds, FDJ will now consider pulling its online betting and gaming operations out of certain regions, as well as the sale of some parts of the business.
What is being reviewed?
FDJ will be reviewing its online betting and gaming business unit – this spans operations in the UK, Netherlands, Scandinaindred holds licences in
The €2.45bn deal to acquire Kindred Group was completed in October 2024, bringing FDJ’s lottery operations together with Kindred’s portfolio of online brands including Unibet and 32Red.
Unibet is active beyond Europe in Ontario and Australia, but in the name of optimising its “reit operates in
It was in online betting and gaming where tax hikes took their highest toll on revenue.
It’s notable that excluding the Netherlands and UK from the company’s results, GGR rose 6.6% and net revenue was up by 0.6%.
However, the cumulative effect of tax increases on gaming in France, the UK, the Netherlands and Romania totalled nearly €24m according to the report and led to a 7.4% fall in net revenue to €431m.
Will FDJ exit the UK and the Netherlands?
The report notes the particular difficulties in both the UK and Dutch markets, however in the Netherlands, business appears to be improving.
While Q1 saw a 15% year-on-year decline in GGR, this decline was reduced to 4.1% by Q2.
This news tells us both that FDJ’s troubles in the country are not entirely down to tax reforms, and also that it is moving in the right direction.
Ever-tightening market restrictions in the Netherlands have increasingly damaged the GGR of regulated operators in the jurisdiction, so FDJ is not alone in fighting against multiple headwinds there.
FDJ offers little detail about the UK, but with remote gaming duty jumping from 21% to 40% from April 2026, and the remote betting tax set to increase from 15% to 25% in 2027, the challenges are clear.
However, the language suggests that these may not be the points of exit hinted at by the market review.
Instead, the report notes that in the UK, the “ongoing action plan will begin to yield results by the end of 2026.”
It also reads: “Within the Online betting and gaming BU, the new management team is committed to implementing action plans designed to gradually restore performance, notably by turning around operations in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, prioritising marketing investments and optimising the player experience.”
What could FDJ sell?
Non-core assets within the payments and services business unit are the most definitively in the crosshairs according to the announcement.
Assets that would fall into this category are not specified, but could include Aleda, Bimedia and L’Addition, all payment services that FDJ has acquired over the past seven years.
Notably, they all were acquired before FDJ bought Kindred, at which point the centre of gravity of the company shifted slightly.
The lottery and retail sports betting business units are still by far the largest segments of the company, having drawn €3.43bn and €1.24bn in revenue for H1, respectively.
But the €30m revenue drawn from the payments and services arm pales in comparison to the GGR of online betting and gaming, which was €702m.
An EBITDA loss of €3m also paints a picture of a business unit that would also struggle to justify its continued existence based on underlying profitability.
