Why the share price at Ireland’s biggest gambling company has crashed by over 60%

IF THE HOUSE always wins, then what has gone wrong at Flutter?

‘The House’ doesn’t come much bigger than this. Dublin-based Flutter is the world’s biggest online gambling firm.

It owns major brands, such as Paddy Power, and is the leader in the key US sports betting market.

Explosive growth in that area has contributed to strong revenue increases, with the business recording $16.4 billion (€13.94 billion) in sales in 2025, up from $14 billion (€11.9 billion) just a year earlier.

But even with all that, Flutter’s stock price is tanking.

As of the time of writing, it was hovering around $100 (€85) per share – an enormous drop from the more than $300 (€260) it traded at as recently as August 2025.

So what’s going on? Let’s have a look.

What is Flutter?

Flutter was formed in 2016 following a merger between Irish gambling firm Paddy Power and its British rival, Betfair.

Initially simply called Paddy Power Betfair, the business was sizeable, with combined revenues of about $1.4 billion. But the idea was to go much bigger.

In May 2018, the US Supreme Court struck down a law which banned state-authorized sports gambling. The wealthiest country on the planet was essentially newly open for business. Paddy Power Betfair rushed to take advantage.

Around the same time, the company bought a majority stake in a US business called FanDuel, which ran online sports-based fantasy games for prizes.

Paddy Power Betfair saw FanDuel as a strategic foothold in the US market, given its large existing user base and regulatory clearance.

With US sports betting beginning to be legalised on a state by state basis, FanDuel provided a faster way to scale than building a business from scratch.

Paddy Power Betfair paid $158 million in cash, as well as throwing in some US assets which it owned. At the time, FanDuel had revenue of $124 million and 1.3 million active customers.

In retrospect, it looks to have been one of the best deals of the last decade.

FanDuel has grown rapidly, and its revenue has since soared to $7 billion a year as of 2025.

In 2018, Paddy Power Betfair paid $158 million for a 58% stake in FanDuel. Just over two years later, the firm (renamed Flutter in 2019) paid $4.2 billion to buy an additional 37% share in FanDuel, meaning it owned 95% of the business.

So Flutter paid over 26 times more, for a smaller stake.

Then, in July 2025, Flutter paid $1.8 billion to buy the last 5% in FanDuel which it didn’t own. Valued at under $300 million in 2018, FanDuel’s implied valuation had now reached $31 billion.

Why?

It is because by 2020, FanDuel had become the leading US sports gambling firm. Its revenues and earnings were soaring. Alongside rival DraftKings, the pair hold a virtual duopoly, controlling approximately 80% of the US sports gambling market.

FanDuel sales in 2020 were $900 million – nearly double compared to just one year before. Fuelled by a rise in sports betting during Covid, its revenue surged again to $2 billion in 2021, this time more than doubling the previous year.

Flutter as a whole now had annual revenues of approximately $8 billion, with FanDuel seemingly being its key growth engine.

Peter Jackson, Flutter’s CEO, said last year that the company’s FanDuel acquisition was ‘one of the most transformational events in our group’s history’. It’s hard to disagree.

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Investors had believed that US online betting could become enormous – this prediction seemed to be coming true, and valuations across the sector exploded.

FanDuel doesn’t comprise all of Flutter’s operations – its operations outside the division generated $9.4 billion in sales in 2025. But it is the most important.

Between January 2024 and August 2025, Flutter’s share price doubled from just over $150 to more than $300.

Investors were convinced that the company was turning into the single most dominant player in US online sports betting, which would result in enormous profits. Flutter repeatedly upgraded its guidance as US earnings improved surged, fuelling this narrative.

However, things then turned sour.

What happened?

In November 2025, Flutter revealed a large impairment charge tied to its Indian business, Junglee Games, after India effectively banned real-money gaming. With the country meant to be a major growth market and reduce reliance on the US, this was a significant blow.

At the same time, Flutter said its earnings would be approximately $280 million lower for the year than expected. This caused some investors to start selling off the stock, dropping its price.

This continued in the following months, as weak results from a major gambling rival in the US triggered fears that Flutter would struggle to keep growing.

This seemed to come to pass at the end of February 2026, when Flutter posted a set of disappointing numbers for the fourth quarter of 2025, including lower than expected revenue.

Investors were now worried that FanDuel’s explosive growth phase was ending.

FanDuel revenues rose by 6% in the first three months of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025 – a rate lower than the wider Flutter group.

Flutter predicted that FanDuel’s core profits would rise by 4% in 2026, down from 20% increases in previous years. The business was no longer viewed as Flutter’s reliable growth engine. Just last week Flutter announced an overhaul of the FanDuel US management team, including replacing the division’s CEO.

What has caused the slowdown of FanDuel’s expansion? There are a few possible factors.

One is that it has reached a saturation point in some US states and is struggling to acquire new customers.

Many US states, such as Illinois, have either introduced, or are planning, high taxes on gambling operators.

FanDuel, along with DraftKings, looked to pass the higher charges onto consumers. However, the taxes still ate into company earnings.

Finally, the sports betting sector faces what some analysts consider to be an ‘existential threat’ from prediction markets.

With traditional gambling companies, such as Flutter, the company sets the odds and profits from the margin on bets. Prediction markets are platforms where people trade contracts.

These markets let people buy and sell contracts based on whether they think an event will happen (such as a football team winning a match).

Prediction markets work more like a stock exchange, where users trade with each other. Operators mainly make money from transaction fees between traders.

As users trade directly with each other, they can sometimes offer better odds than traditional bookmakers, which have built-in profit margins.

Prediction markets are now a major player in the US sports betting market, and the fear is that they will take a rapidly-expanding piece of the pie away from the likes of Flutter.

In an effort to not get left behind, Flutter recently launched its own predictions platform – FanDuel Predicts. But it is viewed as somewhat clunky, and analysts are unconvinced.

There is still a good chance that Flutter could make inroads. But the change is the underlying one.

Alongside DraftKings, FanDuel was meant to have virtually uncontested control of the US market for years, supplying growth and huge profits.

That view has now completely shifted, and doesn’t seem to be coming back.

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