The world's largest online betting group is changing chief executive at the exact moment its most important market has stopped cooperating. Flutter Entertainment confirmed that Peter Jackson steps down at the end of September, with international chief Dan Taylor taking the wheel on 1 October — and paired the news with a heavy quarterly loss and a cut to full-year guidance.
Key takeaways
- Peter Jackson leaves the CEO role at the end of September after nearly nine years; Dan Taylor takes over on 1 October.
- Q2 net loss of $296 million, against a $37 million profit a year earlier.
- Group revenue up 3% to $4.33 billion — ahead of forecasts — but US sales fell 6% to roughly $1.7 billion.
- US sportsbook revenue dropped 15%; average monthly players across the group fell 11%.
- Full-year revenue guidance cut to a $17.91 billion midpoint; earnings guidance trimmed by $210 million to $2.655 billion.
- Shares fell 5.5% in premarket trading.
Flutter — owner of FanDuel and Paddy Power — set out the succession plan alongside second-quarter numbers that showed the pressure building in the United States, where both wagering activity and customer retention came in under plan.
Jackson out, Taylor in from 1 October
Jackson framed the timing as the natural moment to hand over. He will stay on in an advisory capacity through to the end of the year to help the transition bed in.
His near-decade in charge reshaped the business through acquisitions and international expansion, taking it from its Paddy Power Betfair identity to a US-listed group of a very different scale.
The company had changed "beyond recognition" since its Paddy Power Betfair days, becoming "the world's leading online sports betting and igaming operator".
— Peter Jackson, outgoing CEO, Flutter Entertainment
According to Flutter's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Jackson also leaves the board on 30 September, and his employment formally ends on 31 December under a transition agreement signed on 4 August. The company stated that his departure did not stem from any disagreement over its operations, policies or practices.
Taylor steps up having only recently been made president of Flutter, a role created in May after Amy Howe left the FanDuel CEO position. The group pointed to his work on fixing FanDuel's sportsbook performance, saying the early signals from those initiatives have been encouraging. He currently runs Flutter's international division, which turned over more than $9 billion in 2025.
The 46-year-old is a long-serving insider. He ran Paddy Power Betfair as chief executive from 2018 to 2020, with responsibility for Paddy Power, Betfair and Adjarabet, after three years as managing director for the UK and Ireland and for retail. Before joining the group he was managing director of Teletext Holidays, held a strategy role at DMG Media and was an associate partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants. The international arm he leads produced more than $2.2 billion of adjusted EBITDA last year. When Howe departed in May, FanDuel president Christian Genetski took charge of the US business, with Taylor overseeing commercial delivery across both FanDuel and the international brands.
"He has an outstanding track record of delivering results, building high-performing teams and leading complex international businesses."
— John Bryant, Chair of the Board, Flutter Entertainment
"Our priority will be to keep delivering for our colleagues, customers and shareholders, while building on the momentum we've created across the business."
— Dan Taylor, incoming CEO, Flutter Entertainment
The US is what went wrong
For the quarter ended 30 June, Flutter posted a net loss of $296 million, reversing a $37 million profit in the same period last year — a loss of $1.57 per share, with adjusted EPS of 49 cents against the 54 cents analysts polled by FactSet had penciled in. Revenue itself was not the problem: it rose 3% to $4.33 billion, comfortably above the $4.23 billion consensus.
The bottom line also absorbed one-off tax charges: a $62 million provision for goods and services tax relating to Junglee Games and a $33 million accrual for US sales and use tax. Group adjusted EBITDA fell 45% to $508 million.
The damage sits in the segment breakdown. US sales fell 6% to about $1.7 billion, driven largely by a 15% drop in sportsbook revenue. Flutter noted that results on the field ran in the punters' favour during the period, squeezing sportsbook margins — the kind of variance that flatters one quarter and punishes the next.
Flutter put the cost of those results at six percentage points of US revenue growth. US iGaming, by contrast, grew 14%, and FanDuel still reported the leading US positions with a 39% share of sportsbook gross gaming revenue and 27% in iGaming. Profitability took the heavier hit: US adjusted EBITDA dropped 70% to $119 million as sales and marketing spend jumped 61%, driven by the World Cup and the prediction-market push.
Harder to shrug off is the customer picture. Average monthly players across the group were down 11%, and in the US the company reported continued churn plus an extended stretch of weeks where activity trends ran against it. US growth stayed subdued across the whole first half.
The group figure needs context: Flutter said 17 percentage points of that decline came from ending real-money gaming at Junglee Games in India, while US monthly players actually rose 9% to 3.8 million. The churn reflects market-wide trends that began in the fourth quarter of 2025, when a long run of customer-losing weeks drove players away, and Flutter conceded that operational problems had left FanDuel closing out 2025 with a smaller customer base.
Flutter also acknowledged it has struggled to convert the surge of interest in prediction markets — venues where customers can bet on outcomes well outside conventional sport — into business of its own, a gap rivals have been quicker to exploit.
Its product, FanDuel Predicts, made slower operational progress than planned in the first half, the company said. Flutter plans to shift all sports and novelty contracts on the platform to the Crypto.com exchange while keeping access to CME's financial markets, and it expects around $50 million of revenue this year from acting as a market maker.
Guidance comes down, international holds up
The group cut its annual revenue outlook to a midpoint of $17.91 billion, down from $18.31 billion, citing the second-quarter result, investment spending and changes to the NFL schedule. Full-year earnings guidance was reduced by $210 million to $2.655 billion.
It is the second downgrade in three months. With its first-quarter results in May, Flutter had already trimmed its 2026 targets from $18.4 billion of revenue and $2.97 billion of adjusted EBITDA, blaming unfavourable sports results and launch costs in Arkansas. Management now says it will prioritise player growth over margin in the US, stepping up spending on customer acquisition and retention in the second half.
Outside the US the story reads better: international revenue grew 10% in the quarter, with Flutter singling out strong customer engagement around the FIFA World Cup, particularly through the knockout stage. That is the division Taylor has been running — and the track record he brings into the top job.
Acquisitions of Snai in Italy and Betnacional in Brazil helped; on an organic basis, international growth was 4%. Southern Europe and Africa grew revenue 36%, while Brazil's market slowed after government measures including a centralised self-exclusion register. International adjusted EBITDA fell 19% to $476 million, hit by the UK's increase in online gaming tax and extra World Cup marketing. Flutter also launched a second cost programme targeting $500 million of gross savings by 2029.
The market was unconvinced by the combination. Flutter shares fell 5.5% in premarket trading once the results and the succession plan landed together.
