Key Points
- Five positions were scrapped in August 2026 as Catena Media integrated its technology and marketing functions, with regional sites’ responsibilities assumed by other departments.
- Employees have faced at least four rounds of layoffs confirmed to have taken place since 2024, including a reduction of 25% of the total employees in Q2 2025 involving over 50 positions, including a full management level.
- This latest round of layoffs comes even as revenues in Q1 2026 increased by 26% to €12.3m, adjusted EBITDA increasing 191%.
Catena Media Cuts Regional Sites Team in New Layoffs, Five Roles Eliminated
Catena Media has implemented another round of redundancies among its employees, but this time involving the scrapping of the regional sites department and reallocating its functions elsewhere within the firm. NEXT.io got this story out on 6 August 2026, with the loss of five positions confirmed.
The affiliate marketing firm admitted to the cuts, stating that these are part of its “streamlining efforts” and that they fit into its “strategy of focusing on our core products.”
The Timing Is the Story
What makes this round notable is not the number. Five roles is modest by the standards of what Catena has done before. What stands out is when it happened.
The stocks of Catena rose more than 70% in February 2026 following Q4 2025 figures revealing an increase of 53% in annualised revenue to €15.6m, while adjusted EBITDA rose by 211% to €4.7m. As stated by the CEO, “Manuel Stan,” “it has been our best operating result since the organisational reset that we launched midway through 2024.” The story of turnaround was taking shape.
However, in May 2026, when Q1 2026 figures confirmed the success was sustainable: revenue from continuing operations had risen to €12.3m, 26% year-over-year, adjusted EBITDA had risen 191%, and total employee costs had dropped 18% year-over-year. As said by CEO, “Manuel Stan,”: “We’ve been growing again, diversifying our sources of revenue and getting our EBITDA margin above 20%.”
Three months later, another team is gone. Catena’s position is that cost discipline is now built into how it operates, not a reaction to crisis. Whether the people who remain see it that way is a separate question.
A Pattern That Staff Saw Coming
Sources told NEXT.io that Catena conducted at least three rounds of redundancies in 2024 alone. The most significant came in Q2 2025, when the company eliminated more than 50 roles, cut 25% of its global workforce, removed an entire layer of management and suspended interest payments on its hybrid capital security. Expected annualised savings from that exercise were €4.5m to €5m.
What made the cutback all the more surprising was what had happened prior to this. While Catena was holding its quarterly Q3 2024 earnings meeting in November 2024, Stan told investors, “Now we’re confident that the structure is right. We do not see any more staff cuts happening in the coming days.” The company’s revenue declined by 38.8 per cent in Q1 2025 in comparison with the same period last year.
Prior to this, in the Catena 2024 Annual Report, it was already revealed that roughly 50 individuals, about 25% of all employees during that time, were terminated in Q2 2024, covering all levels of the organisation, including senior management where an entire level of management was stripped off. In October 2024, the reduction focused on content and marketing jobs, where 29 positions were cut and €2.2m savings were anticipated annually.
From a peak of more than 450 employees, the headcount had dropped to fewer than 150 by mid-2025. The August 2026 cuts add to a count that has been falling consistently for two years.
Why the Regional Sites Team and Why Now?
Catena’s regional sites function handled jurisdiction-specific affiliate content, building localised traffic strategies for individual markets. Redistributing that work to other teams does not necessarily eliminate the output; it means a smaller number of people absorb it alongside existing responsibilities.
That consolidation logic has defined each previous round of cuts at Catena. Resources have been progressively pulled toward the highest-revenue activities: North American casino affiliate traffic, which accounted for 95% of group revenue in Q1 2026, with casino alone generating €10.9m, up 43% year-on-year and representing 88% of all revenue that quarter. Regional markets sitting outside that core have become harder to justify maintaining dedicated teams for.
Sports remains a separate problem. Catena reported a 34% year-on-year drop in sports revenue in Q1 2026, falling to €1.5m, with NDCs in that segment down 17%. The company has described infrastructure investments in its top sports products as “ongoing,” but the vertical has underperformed consistently.
The Industry Is Not Just a Catena Problem
In October 2024, Better Collective announced that layoffs would occur for over 100 workers citing Google algorithm updates, weakness in Brazil’s market and a 10% cut in the 2024 earnings forecast. The company’s stock price was down by 36.5% around the same period. The challenges facing Catena, search volatility, heavy dependency on a few regulated markets and squeeze on margins in content-rich verticals are industry-wide challenges.
Catena itself has pointed to the December 2025 Google algorithm update as a factor that temporarily pushed some casino rankings down in early 2026, before stabilising. Stan’s response on the Q1 earnings call was measured: “We expect Google’s continued quality-focused refinements to correct this over time.” That confidence may be warranted. It may also reflect the same optimism that preceded previous rounds of cuts.
Expert Analysis
The dissolution of Catena’s regional sites team is a small but telling move. It confirms that the business is now firmly structured around North American casino affiliate traffic, with everything outside that axis treated as non-core. The financial metrics justify the direction: revenue is up, margins have recovered, and the company is profitable again. The unresolved question is structural depth. A content-dependent affiliate business that has shed the majority of its people in under two years carries real concentration risk. If North American casino performance softens, or if another significant algorithm update lands badly, Catena has far less organisational capacity to absorb the impact than it did in 2023. The recovery is real. So is how thin the operation has become.
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