BetGoodwin Eyes £80m AIM Float Despite UK Gambling Stock Slump
BetGoodwin is the online arm of Goodwin Racing, a heritage betting group. Word is it's prepping a float on London's junior AIM market at a valuation of roughly £80m. That's the headline number. It also lands at a pretty awkward moment for the sector. The brand went live online in 2022, a quarter of a century after the wider Goodwin business set up its telephone betting operation. Independent UK investment bank Allenby Capital has reportedly been brought in to work on the potential IPO. BetGoodwin declined to comment when approached.
Why awkward? Because the listed gambling cohort has had a rough 2026. Flutter Entertainment, the largest online operator in the world, walked away from its London listing altogether and is now solely listed in New York. The exit capped a multi-year shift toward US markets, and it came after a steep share-price decline. Over the final 12 months of its LSE listing (31 July 2025 to 31 July 2026), Flutter stock fell from £228.60 to £75.88. It hasn't recovered much since: the shares sat at $77.48, or £57.87, on the NYSE at the time of writing.
Entain is still the biggest gambling company on the LSE. It has lost more than 40% of its value so far in 2026, trading at £4.54. September brought a demotion from the FTSE 100 to the FTSE 250 after six years in the top index. Rank Group's share price has slipped 16% this year to around 80p.
Evoke, which owns William Hill and 888, is the lone outlier with a near-90% uplift in 2026. That's down to its acquisition by Bally's Intralot and an eventual delisting, not any turnaround. Evoke hit lows of about 20p this year and now trades near 42p, 10p below the 52p-per-share deal. Since rebranding from 888 Holdings, the stock has more than halved.
Against that backdrop, an £80m AIM float looks bold. For the exchange itself, though, a multi-million-pound British firm choosing London is a positive. Goodwin Racing's liquid cash reserves grew by over 122% to £6.08m in 2024. BetGoodwin currently ranks as the 74th-largest operator in the UK and 66th in Ireland, per the Blask Index.
The tax picture adds another layer of caution. Last year's Autumn Budget set Remote Gaming Duty rising from 21% to 40% in April 2026, and General Betting Duty climbing from 15% to 25% in April 2027. This year's Budget is a week away, and rumours point to a further increase, this time to Machine Games Duty. Any listing would have to price those costs in.
A flotation is not guaranteed. One source indicated the current owners, Chief Executive Julian Head and Chief Operating Officer Ben Head, the father-and-son team behind the business, would look to sell down roughly 20% of their interest. The markets haven't been kind to UK gambling operators, or to listed bookmakers elsewhere, and the tax rises sharpen the challenge.
London has also lost several prominent names in recent years, including Hargreaves Lansdown, TUI, Just Eat, Deliveroo, Darktrace and Ferguson Enterprises, alongside Flutter. That makes a gambling operator choosing the LSE notable in itself. The number to watch is the £80m valuation: if the float proceeds near that mark, it will test whether investors are willing to back a challenger while the incumbents keep sliding.