Grandstand (Formerly Gambling.com Group) Q2 Revenue Falls 5% as Company Bets on Diversification

Grandstand, the affiliate and media giant that rebranded from Gambling.com Group earlier this summer, posted a five percent drop in second-quarter revenue to $37.8 million, but CEO Kevin McCrystle says the company has never been more diversified in its 20-year history. The results reflect a deliberate pivot away from pure performance marketing and into a broader mix of data services, advertising technology, and consumer products, a strategy the company has been telegraphing to investors for much of the year.

Six-month revenue for the company fell three percent to $78.2 million, while adjusted EBITDA dropped 44 percent across both the quarter and the half, landing at $7.7 million and $16.7 million, respectively. Net loss narrowed 66 percent in the second quarter to $4.6 million but widened 166 percent over the first half of the year to $5.8 million. Gross profit for the quarter fell 14 percent to $31.8 million, with cost of sales jumping 119 percent to $5.9 million as the company leaned harder into diversifying its traffic sources rather than relying on its historically dominant SEO-driven affiliate model.

A Rebrand Meant to Match the Business Model

The revenue slide comes just weeks after the company formally changed its corporate name from Gambling.com Group to Grandstand, a shift that took effect in late July when its Nasdaq ticker flipped from GAMB to GRSD. The rebrand wasn’t cosmetic housekeeping — it was designed to draw a hard line between Grandstand, the corporate parent, and Gambling.com, the consumer-facing comparison and reviews site that keeps operating under its original name. The distinction matters because the underlying business has grown well beyond a single affiliate brand. Grandstand’s portfolio now spans OddsJam and RotoWire for real-time sports data, Casinos.com and WhichBingo as additional consumer properties, Grandstand Partners for audience monetization, and Spotlight.Vegas for ticketing and live-event access in Las Vegas.

McCrystle has described the new name as capturing the company’s position as “the intelligence layer” sitting at the center of the sports and gaming ecosystem — language that shows up again in the Q2 earnings commentary. It’s a framing built to convince investors that Grandstand is less exposed to the swings of any single traffic channel or Google algorithm update than it might have appeared as “Gambling.com Group,” even as this quarter’s top-line numbers show that transition still has real short-term costs.

Betting Big on Data and New Products

The headline revenue decline masks a business that’s actively rewiring itself under the hood. Data services revenue climbed 12 percent to $11.2 million, and McCrystle said the company’s OpticOdds solution — which supplies real-time odds and line-movement data to sportsbooks, trading desks, and fantasy platforms — grew at a “significantly higher rate” than that broader segment average. Marketing revenue, meanwhile, slipped 10 percent to $26.5 million, but McCrystle pointed to a silver lining: non-SEO revenue accounted for two-thirds of that marketing total, which he said “gives us increasing visibility for a return to full-year marketing revenue growth next year.”

This week the company also rolled out Rollcard, a new debit card product aimed squarely at high-rollers, giving Grandstand another direct line to consumers beyond its traditional affiliate and comparison-site model. It’s the kind of product that wouldn’t have fit neatly under the old Gambling.com Group banner, and its timing — landing in the same week as the Q2 report — looks designed to reinforce the diversification narrative McCrystle is selling to shareholders. Rather than just steering bettors toward sportsbook sign-up offers, the company is trying to build recurring, direct-to-consumer revenue streams that don’t depend on search rankings or affiliate commission rates set by operators.

Looking Ahead to Full-Year Growth

McCrystle framed the quarter as evidence the company’s broader strategy is already taking hold, even if the top-line numbers haven’t caught up yet. “Our business is significantly more diversified than at any other time in our 20-year history and Grandstand today is established as the intelligence layer at the heart of the sports and gaming ecosystem,” he said. He pointed to the Rollcard launch specifically as a way to “directly engage with consumers, further deepening our relationship with our audience.”

Looking further out, McCrystle cited the company’s ongoing AI transformation, enterprise data growth, and audience engagement initiatives as reasons to expect a turnaround in the back half of the year. “Our AI transformation, consistent strong enterprise data growth, audience engagement initiatives and diversified marketing business, position Grandstand to return to top-line growth and increase cash flow in the second half of 2026 and into next year,” he said. That AI push follows a broader restructuring the company undertook earlier this year that included notable staff reductions as it shifted resources toward automation and data products.

For a company whose identity has shifted dramatically in just a few weeks — new name, new ticker, new consumer product, and a reshaped cost structure — the next two quarters will be the real test of whether the diversification bet starts paying off on the top line, not just in the boardroom narrative. Bettors who lean on DraftKings promo code offers and odds-comparison tools are, in effect, already relying on exactly the kind of data infrastructure companies like Grandstand are now positioning as their core growth engine going forward.