Tabcorp to Acquire BetMakers Technology Group for $267 Million

Tabcorp has agreed to acquire wagering technology provider BetMakers Technology Group in a deal worth approximately AU$267 million, marking the biggest acquisition by Australia’s largest gambling company since Gillon McLachlan took over as chief executive in 2024. The two companies signed a binding Scheme Implementation Deed on Monday, with BetMakers shareholders set to receive $0.24 per share in cash — a premium of roughly 41% to the stock’s average price over the past month.

The transaction, structured as a scheme of arrangement, values BetMakers at an equity value of about $283 million on a fully diluted basis. Shareholders can elect to receive up to 25% of their total consideration in Tabcorp shares instead of cash, with any new stock priced at the greater of $1.00 per share or Tabcorp’s five-day volume-weighted average price ahead of the record date. Tabcorp says it will fund the cash portion from existing resources without stretching its balance sheet, and expects the deal to close in the third quarter of its 2027 fiscal year, pending shareholder and regulatory approval.

Why Tabcorp Wants BetMakers’ Tech Stack

BetMakers has spent the past two years rebuilding its business around wagering technology, and its footprint now includes the Apollo wagering platform and the RaceOdds horse racing solution, along with the company’s recently completed acquisition of the Las Vegas Dissemination Company. BetMakers has also inked partnerships with operators like Betfair Australia — which it powers alongside CrownBet — and UK-facing gambling group evoke on horse racing wagering.

Tabcorp CEO Gillon McLachlan said the acquisition will “accelerate” the company’s strategy across multiple fronts. “BetMakers has undergone a significant transformation over the past two years and built impressive wagering technology and a talented team,” he said. “Accessing those advantages will uplift our own tech capability and fast track our product ambitions, particularly for our unique media and tote offering. Combining BetMakers’ business with our rights, content and customer relationships creates a differentiated offering that will unlock growth and deliver attractive financial returns.”

Tabcorp expects the combined business to generate roughly $30 million in annual cost synergies within two years of closing, and projects the deal will be earnings-per-share accretive from year two and double-digit accretive from year three. Pro forma leverage is expected to sit at a conservative 1.9x net debt-to-EBITDA as of December 2025, before those synergies are even factored in. The enterprise value works out to roughly 6.1 times EV/LTM EBITDA once full run-rate synergies are included.

A Deal Years in the Making

Monday’s announcement caps off more than nine months of negotiations between the two companies, and comes roughly six months after an earlier round of talks reportedly fell apart. In its most recent quarterly update, covering the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, BetMakers reported revenue growth of 9.4% to $24.2 million and adjusted EBITDA of $4.5 million — an 89% increase year-over-year.

BetMakers CEO Jake Henson framed the tie-up as a natural fit given the two companies’ overlapping ambitions. “Having spent time with the Tabcorp team, it is clear we share a common purpose: to build a market-leading global wagering and media business,” Henson said. “Bringing together Tabcorp’s rights, content and relationships with BetMakers’ platforms, data and B2B wagering services will create a more complete and compelling global offering for our customers and an exciting future for our people.” The BetMakers board has unanimously recommended the offer to shareholders.

What It Means for the Global Wagering Market

For Tabcorp, the purchase extends the company’s push toward what it has previously called a “greater connection” between its digital, retail and media assets — a strategy it pointed to as a key growth driver in its first-half results earlier this year. Layering BetMakers’ B2B wagering technology and data infrastructure onto that foundation gives Tabcorp a platform it can potentially license to other operators globally, not just use internally.

The deal also lands at a moment of heightened scrutiny of digital wagering practices and consumer protections across the industry, adding pressure on legacy operators like Tabcorp to modernize aging back-end systems rather than build replacements from scratch. Buying an established, already-integrated technology supplier like BetMakers — rather than spending years developing comparable capability in-house — reflects that broader industry shift toward consolidation as operators race to keep pace with more nimble, tech-first competitors. With the maximum scrip issuance capped at 70.7 million shares, or about 3.1% of Tabcorp’s total shares outstanding, the transaction is also structured to limit dilution for existing Tabcorp investors while still giving BetMakers holders some upside exposure to the combined company going forward.