Better Collective rebounds in Q4 with record EBITDA
26 FEB 2026
The listed affiliate ended 2025 with a strong Q4, reporting €94 million (£82.0 million/$111.0 million) in revenue, down 2% year-on-year but up 2% in constant currencies, as the business pivots towards AI-driven growth and prediction markets.
For the full year, revenue reached €337 million, a 9% decline compared with 2024 but still within the guidance range of €320–350 million. EBITDA before special items came in at €102 million, down 10% year-on-year, resulting in a 30% margin. Free cash flow totalled €38 million below guidance, mainly due to working-capital timing effects and strategic partnership investments made late in the year.
In Q4, EBITDA before special items rose 10% year-on-year to €37 million, marking the highest quarterly EBITDA in the group’s history and a 39% margin. Value of Deposits reached an all-time high of €820 million, up 6% year-on-year and 13% quarter-on-quarter. New depositing customers totalled 305,000, down 25% against a tough comparative base but up 9% versus Q3.
In a joint statement, Co-CEO Jesper Søgaard and group chair Jens Bager described 2025 as “a defining year” as the company “took decisive steps to reshape the company for the decade ahead” with a sharper strategic focus and “disciplined investments” in technology, data and new business models.
Q4 highlights
The company credited its profitability uplift to the full impact of its €50 million cost-efficiency programme launched in late 2024. Total costs fell 8% year-on-year even as paid media investment increased by €5 million. Key growth drivers including paid media, talent-led media and sports media generated €10 million in additional revenue during the quarter.
Recurring revenue declined 13% year-on-year in Q4, largely due to currency effects, lower sports win margins and the ongoing regulatory transition in Brazil. Although Brazil had a negative impact of around €3 million in Q4, Søgaard and Bager noted “stonger-than-anticipated player retention and wagering” and said the market is positioned to return to growth in 2026 after “a rebasing year”.
In North America, following a shift from upfront payments to revenue-share agreements starting in 2022, the group exceeded its full-year target of €10–15 million in pure revenue share, delivering €17 million in 2025. While Q4 growth appeared muted due to strong win margins and hybrid contracts in the prior year, underlying revenue share income continued to increase with a higher share than in the same period in 2024. The company also pointed to “solid performance and encouraging momentum” following the launch of online sports betting in Missouri on 1 December 2025.
AI and prediction markets
On long-term strategy, Søgaard and Bager said AI “represents one of the most significant structural shifts in the digital landscape in decades”, serving as both “a powerful enabler” and a challenge to digital traffic flows and monetisation models.
On the product side, the group rolled out its AI-powered betting solution Playbook on X in September and invested throughout 2025 in building FanReach, launched in February 2026 in the US. FanReach acts as a core pillar in the AdVantage ecosystem, combining proprietary first-party data with advanced audience segmentation and marking a step beyond traditional performance marketing.
From a portfolio perspective, however, the co-CEO and chair said “the revenue stream most potentially affected by AI-driven changes in search and discovery is future revenue share growth and CPA within the publishing segment”, although the business remains unaffected for now.
As prediction markets gather momentum as a new growth vector, the group sees the trend as “a natural extension” of its core business. It has already formed relationships with early-stage operators and expects the category to scale significantly in 2026.
“Prediction markets introduce a new product format and attract incremental user segments, while overlapping meaningfully with our existing sports and sports betting,” said Søgaard and Bager. “As the ecosystem matures, we expect it to further diversify our revenue streams, strengthen our partner relationships and expand our long-term growth opportunities.”
Future guidance
For 2026, the affiliate forecasts 7–12% organic revenue growth and 8–18% EBITDA growth, with leverage below 3× EBITDA and €40 million in annual share buybacks. Management cited the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a major catalyst for player activity but warned of an approximately €8 million negative impact on EBITDA before special items due to tax increases in the UK and Brazil.
Looking ahead to 2027–2028, the company expects continued organic revenue growth and cash conversion, an EBITDA margin of 35–40% and net debt to EBITDA below 3×.
As Søgaard and co-CEO Christian Kirk Rasmussen concluded in the founder statement: “We enter 2026 with confidence, and the foundation we have built ensures that Better Collective is not just growing but evolving into a more robust, innovative digital sports media and adtech group for the decade ahead.”