Key Points
- GiG is close to acquiring Evoke’s 80% stake in 888Africa for between €20m and €30m, structured as 20% direct equity and the remaining 60% via a convertible loan.
- Evoke is under acute financial pressure, having flagged two “material uncertainties” over its ability to continue as a going concern if its £243m Bally’s Intralot acquisition fails.
- Juroszek Family, who owns about 24.69% of GiG by disposing of STS Holdings to Entain for £750m in 2023, will have to supply the money because GiG is not able to fund this transaction on its own.
GiG and 888Africa: A Seller Starving for Cash, a Loss-making Buyer, and an Unworkable Deal on Paper
A B2B platform supplier that cannot fund its own acquisition. A seller desperate to close before its own takeover completes. A management team whose share options become near-worthless if nobody moves quickly enough. The reported GiG–888Africa deal carries the hallmarks of a transaction driven far more by circumstances than strategy, and that is precisely what makes it worth watching.
NEXT.io reported on 13 August 2026 that Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) is close to striking a deal to acquire Evoke’s 80% shareholding in 888Africa, the African sports betting joint venture launched in 2022. Multiple sources confirmed the William Hill owner has been actively seeking buyers for its stake, with a price in the €20m to €30m range. The deal structure being negotiated would see GiG take 20% as direct ownership and receive Evoke’s remaining 60% through a convertible loan, giving it effective control without paying the full price upfront. Completion is expected in late September or early October. Both GiG and Evoke declined to comment.
Why Evoke Cannot Wait?
The day before this deal broke, Evoke published its H1 2026 results and disclosed two “material uncertainties” about its ability to continue as a going concern. The first is its capacity to refinance roughly £1.8bn in borrowings, including £769m due in July 2028, should the Bally’s Intralot £243m acquisition fail to complete. The second, more striking, is that Evoke’s own directors have limited visibility over Bally’s Intralot’s “ability and intentions to operate the group under its ownership” even if the deal does go through.
Evoke CEO Per Widerström, speaking to the H1 results, said: “Until completion, our priorities remain unchanged. We continue to focus on serving our customers, supporting our colleagues, maintaining disciplined execution and delivering strong cash generation.” That language signals a company executing an orderly wind-down of non-core positions while the clock ticks. 888Africa, held at an 80% stake with the remaining 20% sitting with the venture’s senior management, qualifies as exactly that: a non-core asset that can be converted into cash before Bally’s changes who controls the chequebook.
The management team holding that 20% has its own reason to want this resolved urgently. Their share options become close to worthless once the Bally’s transaction closes, giving them every incentive to push a deal over the line now rather than wait.
What 888Africa Actually Is?
888 Africa was founded in March 2022 as part of a joint venture between 888 Holdings and five industry professionals to operate brands of 888 in regulated African markets. Christopher Coyne, who served as CMO at The Stars Group, became CEO of the venture. Addressing the press during the announcement of the venture’s launch, Coyne stated: “We are very pleased to launch 888Africa together with 888. With our experienced professional team and substantial knowledge of the African markets, it is our goal to develop the business to market-leading positions in selected regulated markets throughout the continent.”
888Africa has acquired BetLion in August 2023, a Kenya-based operator with licences for operations in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The acquisition has brought into the business substantial technology expertise and local talent. Today, 888 Africa operates in seven markets and has made its primary commercial breakthrough in Mozambique, having achieved official partnership with Benfica. The business is currently operating in Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, DRC and Malawi.
888Africa has only recently reached EBITDA profitability, according to sources cited in the NEXT.io report. That narrow positive trajectory is central to GiG’s stated rationale: absorbing an EBITDA-positive business improves GiG’s own balance sheet, brings a significant new B2B customer onto its platform, and opens a foothold in African iGaming at a moment when operators across the industry are accelerating their presence on the continent.
The Problem: GiG Cannot Fund This Itself
This is when things get more complicated with respect to the deal. The firm registered a net loss after taxes of €5.2m in Q1 2026, with an EBITDA of €0.2m at 2%, compared to 4% last year. In terms of revenues, there was no change at €9.0m in the quarter. Cash in hand at the end of March stood at €5.4m. For the year as a whole, guidance of €44-48m of revenues and €10-13m of adjusted EBITDA speaks of a firm that has yet to recover its operations.
In January 2026, GiG cut tech staff and issued a full-year profit warning, with 170 employees affected by redundancies in 2026 alone as the company scrapped its design, in-house CRM and managed services functions. Its market capitalisation sits at just under €30m. Put plainly: a company with €5.4m in cash and a €30m market cap cannot independently finance a deal priced at up to €30m.
The money, according to sources familiar with the situation, is expected to come from the Juroszek family. The Polish investors sold their 70% stake in STS Holdings to the Entain CEE joint venture for £750m in June 2023, then deployed capital from those proceeds into GiG stock, building their holding to approximately 24.69% of the total business. Family member Tomasz Juroszek sits on GiG’s board of directors. Their financial capacity to back this deal is not in doubt. Their willingness to fund a B2C acquisition for a B2B platform supplier, however, is the real question underpinning everything.
The Strategic Contradiction
The history of GiG makes it difficult for one to view this deal as clear progress. As far back as February 2020, the company had made an agreement to sell its B2C brands including Rizk, Guts, Kaboo, and Thrills to Betsson Group in a deal valued at about €50m including platform fees. This move was a planned strategy where the company became solely a B2B platform provider and ceased to compete with the clients it was serving.
Re-entering B2C through an African operator that reached profitability only recently, in markets GiG has no existing operational experience in, inverts that positioning at a moment when the company can least absorb a misstep. GiG CEO Richard Carter acknowledged the Africa opportunity himself in his Q2 2025 review, stating: “We see increasing potential not just in the APAC region but in the broader emerging markets, including Latam, Eastern Europe and Africa, where iGaming regulation is evolving and creating substantial expansion opportunities for GiG. In these markets we intend to enter into larger, more strategic agreements with our partners, delivering a higher return on investment.”
That framing positioned Africa as a B2B opportunity. Buying 888Africa converts it into a B2C one, which is a materially different commitment in terms of operational responsibility, regulatory exposure and capital requirements.
Sources also told NEXT.io the deal could be a precursor to taking GiG private, given internal frustration with the constraints of operating as a listed company at a sub-€30m market cap. With the Juroszek family’s existing stake and financial resources, a buyout of GiG’s remaining shares would be achievable without a demanding premium.
Expert Analysis
Two things are simultaneously true about this deal. 888Africa’s EBITDA turn and established African footprint represent genuine value for any buyer patient enough to develop the business. And GiG, as currently configured, is not obviously the right buyer for it. The company exited B2C in 2020 for legitimate structural reasons that have not changed. Its balance sheet has not improved since. What has changed is the availability of a distressed seller willing to accept a structure that minimises GiG’s upfront cash exposure, and shareholders with the capital to fill the gap the company itself cannot. If the Juroszek family view 888Africa as a platform to eventually take GiG private, the deal’s economics make more sense on their terms than on GiG’s own. Whether that distinction matters to the African markets where 888Africa competes is a different question entirely, and one that will take longer than a September completion to answer.
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