Zeal Bets £38.6m on SevenCanyon to Crack the UK’s £1.3bn Prize Draw Market

Key Points

• Zeal Network is acquiring the remaining 96.5% of SevenCanyon for up to £38.6m, financed by a €40m Deutsche Bank term loan.
• SevenCanyon posted EBITDA above £10m for the financial year ending March 2026, and the deal is expected to add high single-digit millions of euros to Zeal’s EBITDA in the first full year post-completion.
• The acquisition puts Zeal inside a UK market worth an estimated £1.3bn annually, just months after Jumbo Interactive and Winvia Entertainment made their own plays for the same space.

Germany’s Lottery Leader Moves on Britain’s Prize Draw Boom

Zeal Network has agreed to buy out the remaining 96.5% of shares in UK prize draw operator SevenCanyon, making the German online lottery company the latest major name to plant a flag in a British market that has spent the last year attracting serious institutional money.

The Hamburg-based company had already acquired a 3.5% stake in SevenCanyon. Through the acquisition of shares signed on 9th July 2026, they will now take complete control of a company operating three prize draws in the UK. These are 7days Performance, Redline Competitions and UK Carp Competitions. The platforms feature prizes other than cash; for example, houses, cars and lifestyle-related items. They operate outside the purview of the UK Gambling Commission.

The deal is structured as an initial cash payment of approximately £33.8m, subject to post-completion adjustments, with a potential earn-out of up to £4.8m payable over six months should certain financial targets be hit. Total consideration could therefore reach £38.6m. Zeal is financing the acquisition through a €40m, seven-year term loan arranged by Deutsche Bank.

What Zeal Is Actually Buying?

SevenCanyon is not a project. For the financial year ending March 2026, the business generated EBITDA of more than £10m, and Companies House filings for the year to March 2025 show revenue rose 33.7% year-on-year, from £73.5m to £98.3m. That kind of trajectory, in a sector that does not require a gambling licence, is precisely what drew Zeal’s attention.

Zeal CEO Dr Stefan Tweraser was direct about what the deal represents: “SevenCanyon is one of the most successful prize draw operators in the UK; we have known them for years. With the acquisition, we hit the ground running in a highly attractive and growing market. We also accelerate the implementation of our strategy to selectively diversify our business model through new products and new markets.”

CFO Andrea Behrendt, who also confirmed Zeal had already established a new UK holding company ahead of completion, framed the financing side similarly: “SevenCanyon is a highly profitable company with a proven business model. The purchase price will mainly be financed through a new loan agreement. This preserves our financial flexibility to continue our growth-oriented and shareholder-friendly capital allocation in the future.”

Zeal has kept its 2026 EBITDA guidance of €70m to €75m, assuming a normal jackpot environment in Germany, while acknowledging the transaction will carry one-off costs in the mid-single-digit millions of euros. For the first full financial year after completion, the company expects SevenCanyon to contribute positively to EBITDA in the high single-digit millions of euros.

Tweraser on the UK: A Market Worth £1.3bn and Growing

During a corporate update on the deal, Tweraser described the UK prize draw sector as both sizable and highly fragmented, noting it is worth approximately £1.3bn annually and currently has more than 400 operators. “The UK is a prime market for us to enter as a professional player,” he said. “We think SevenCanyon as a group of three brands is definitely among the top five players in this market. SevenCanyon is already a scaled, profitable and cash-generating business. We don’t carry a build risk; we are acquiring a proven and profitable business.”

His comments on regulation carried weight too. Tweraser expects formalisation to accelerate: “We expect that the UK market will move towards a more formalised, rule-based setup. Rising standards favour operators with strong compliance capability and market expertise.” That is not a neutral observation from a company that built its reputation inside Germany’s regulated lottery framework.

The Regulatory Backdrop Tweraser Is Betting On

The UK prize draw sector sits outside the Gambling Act 2005 because operators offer a free-to-enter route, which prevents them from being classified as gambling products. Regulation has been voluntary rather than statutory, though that is beginning to shift.

In November 2025, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport launched a voluntary code of conduct signed by more than 20 leading operators including Omaze, Best of the Best and Raffle House. The code brought in a £250 monthly cap on credit card entries for prize draws and a full ban on credit card entries for instant-win competitions. It also introduced requirements around player spending limits, self-exclusion facilities and harm monitoring. By the time the code took formal effect in May 2026, signatories had grown to more than 100.

Government figures cited in the DCMS consultation put the market’s active adult participation at approximately 7.4 million people per year. Jefferies analyst Henrik Paganetty reiterated a Buy rating on Zeal following the announcement and maintained a price target of €75, highlighting the expected tightening of UK prize draw regulation as a structural tailwind that should benefit operators with established compliance track records.

SevenCanyon’s founders are expected to remain with the business for six months after the deal closes. Zeal has already appointed its own successor to lead the company: Alex Green, currently vice president of games within the Zeal group.

A Crowded Field: Who Else Has Moved Into the UK

Zeal is not alone in reading the UK prize draw market as a serious growth opportunity. The past nine months have seen a sequence of significant deals that signal just how much institutional capital is now chasing this space.

In October 2025, Australian digital lottery specialist Jumbo Interactive completed two acquisitions in quick succession: first UK operator Dream Car Giveaways at an enterprise value of £53.9m on 14 October, then US prize draw operator Dream Giveaway for US$55.4m on 30 October, marking Jumbo’s entry into the American market. That dual-market expansion in a matter of weeks illustrated the appetite from established lottery operators to consolidate prize draw assets at scale.

Also in October 2025, Winvia Entertainment, majority-owned by Playtech founder Teddy Sagi, announced its intention to float on AIM, raising approximately £40m gross to fund acquisitions in the UK prize draw sector. Winvia, which operates Best of the Best and Click Competitions in the UK prize draw space alongside a regulated Romanian gaming business, was ranked the second largest UK prize draw operator by market share in a London Economics report commissioned by DCMS in June 2025.

Zeal’s entry through SevenCanyon now places Germany’s leading online lottery broker directly alongside those names inside a market that, until recently, attracted little attention from operators of this scale.

Expert Analysis

Zeal’s acquisition of SevenCanyon reads like a patient play executed at exactly the right moment. The company had been flagging prize draw expansion publicly since at least its FY25 earnings call in March 2026, when Tweraser described a “strong war chest” for diversification. Buying SevenCanyon rather than building from scratch removes the market entry risk entirely; Zeal inherits a revenue base above £98m, an EBITDA above £10m, and three brands with established customer acquisition pipelines.

The timing against the regulatory backdrop is also deliberate. Operators with compliance infrastructure stand to benefit most as the DCMS voluntary code evolves and the market consolidates around credible names. With more than 400 operators still competing in a £1.3bn sector, the conditions for further consolidation are in place, and Zeal has structured the Deutsche Bank financing to retain capacity for additional moves. Whether it makes more acquisitions in the UK or extends the prize draw model into other markets will define whether this is the start of a new chapter or simply an isolated expansion.