William Hill parent company Evoke reports growth across online and retail units
William Hill’s parent company Evoke has declared an upturn in revenue for the first six months of 2025, although online gaming has been the driving force behind the group’s improved figures.
Evoke manages the William Hill retail and online operations, together with the 888 brands, encompassing betting, casino and poker, as well as Mr Green casino.
The firm has reported revenue growth of around three per cent during the first half of 2025, and five per cent across its titles in the second quarter of this year, with online operations enjoying a six per cent rise in that period.
Improved results for William Hill shops
Evoke completed a £1.95 billion buyout of William Hill in 2021 and the high street retail units have played their part in the success story, returning to growth after the rollout of 5,000 new gaming machines across its 1,400 betting shops, which was completed in March.
Year-on-year comparisons for Q2 have been affected by the success of last season’s Euro 24 tournament, hosted by Germany through June and July.
Football’s European Championship is held every four years and is a traditionally strong driver in the sports betting market.
“Q2 2025 marked our second strongest quarterly revenue performance since the beginning of 2023, a particularly encouraging result given the tough comparator from lapping the Euros,” said Per Widerström, Evoke’s CEO.
“Importantly, this growth was also delivered profitably, in line with our focus on sustainable profitable growth, with H1 Adjusted EBITDA significantly ahead year-over-year, supporting our strong deleveraging trajectory in line with the value creation plan.”
How Evoke is tackling the betting and gaming markets
Evoke anticipate that their implementation of “robust” cost control together with the improved marketing returns will produce adjusted core earnings between £163-167 million in the first-half of the year, which would represent 43% growth at the midpoint.
While encouraged by this strong performance, the betting, casino and gaming group is not changing its expectations for the year, which remains at anticipated growth between 5 per cent and 9 per cent with an adjusted Ebitda margin (ie. before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) in the region of 20 per cent.
Widerström added: “Alongside the improved Q2 performance, we continue to transform the Group’s capabilities for the mid- and long-term.
“We are strengthening our competitive advantages and better aligning our leading brands and products to a clearer customer value proposition.”
“Our disciplined strategy with clear focus on our Core Markets and driving operational excellence is delivering improved profitability and enabling further deleveraging.
“I look forward to sharing more detail on our progress and plans at our Interim Results in August.”
Jim Munro is a betting industry and gambling expert who has been a national newspaper journalist for over 25 years, predominantly at The Sunday Times and The Sun, where he wrote a weekly soccer betting column. Jim also worked on the launch of Virgin Bet with Gamesys and was subsequently head of editorial at LiveScore, the sports media and betting group.
