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Global sports-betting, gaming, and interactive entertainment group Entain plc (Entain), successfully a placing and retail offer of new ordinary shares on 14 June 2023, representing 7% of the company’s issued share capital. The transaction raised gross proceeds of £600m, which will be used to partially fund the £750m acquisition of STS Holding S.A. (the leading sports-betting operator in Poland), and to provide capital for further acquisitions. This development continues a period of growth for Entain, which has seen the company pursue an aggressive strategy to expand its global operations. In addition to  SuperSoft, Croatia's largest bookmaker, for £500m last year, Entain closed a £400m of BetCity in the Netherlands and a £128m of Israeli sports data provider, 365scores, in April.

Commenting on the proposed takeover, Entain CEO Jette Nygaard-Anderson ‘Expansion across Central and Eastern Europe remains a core component of our growth plans, and STS will be an integral part of our platform in that region’. However, following the announcement, Entain's shares slid by 10.5%, to trade at 1,206 pence per share, its lowest point since 29 March and the largest daily drop in the past four months.

The acquisition announcement comes shortly after Entain disclosed that it expects a significant fine from the UK tax authority for past corporate misconduct, including instances of bribery, at its former Turkish online betting business, Sportingbet. Entain revealed the investigation in 2019, two years after it sold off Sportingbet ahead of its £4bn acquisition of Ladbrokes, one of the biggest bookmakers in the UK. Following this, the company received takeover offers from both and in 2021. Certain shareholders had anticipated that MGM would resuscitate its offer after the UK government released its long-awaited review of gambling regulations—a comprehensive overhaul of the industry's guidelines that has been postponed for nearly twenty years. However, to date the remains ongoing, while MGM have stated that they are heading in a new direction.

Our recently published  , notes that companies like Entain are increasingly conducting a retail offer alongside larger placings, allowing them to engage with individual investors and tap into a broader investor base. Retail offers conducted together with a placing accounted for 38% of all secondary offers in 2023, representing an increase of 58% when compared to 2022, which saw 24% of all placings include a supplementary retail offer, and a return to the volume seen in 2021, where this figure was approximately 38%.

Entain’s retail offer was conducted through the online platform PrimaryBid. Recognised as a prominent fintech platform, PrimaryBid serves as an intermediary, facilitating direct connections between publicly listed companies and individual investors during capital raisings. Market Tracker data identifies PrimaryBid as the preferred platform for executing retail offers, accounting for 60% of retail offers in 2023, to date, while 30% of the retail offers in 2023 were carried out via competitor product REX, and 10% utilised the BookBuild platform for execution. PrimaryBid’s monopoly is perhaps unsurprising, as it was previously endorsed by the London Stock Exchange (LSE), who made an investment in the platform through its participation in a fundraising conducted in 2020. Charlie Walker, Head of Equity and Fixed Income Primary Markets at the LSE stated that ‘the platform has become an important part of the UK’s capital raising ecosystem’.