Gambling.com Group has agreed to buy Odds Holdings, the parent company of OddsJam, for a total potential valuation of $160m – marking the biggest acquisition in its history.

OddsJam provides a suite of tools and services designed to assist in sports betting. Gambling.com Group calls OddsJam the industry’s most advanced technology platform, noting it processes an average of over one million requests per second across nearly 300 sportsbooks.

The transaction is expected to close on 1 January 2025 and Gambling.com will pay $70m in cash and $10m in Gambling.com Group ordinary shares upfront. An additional $80m in payments is to be made if Odds Holdings doubles its adjusted EBITDA by 2026 compared to 2024.

For 2024, Odds Holdings revealed that it expects to generate revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $26m and $12m respectively.

Behind the scenes of the deal

In the wake of the announcement, Matt Restivo, CEO of Odds Holdings, joined Jesse Learmonth on the Betting Startups Podcast to share his perspective on the story.

Restivo detailed how he, alongside OddsJam founders Ankit Goyal and Alex Monahan, began to explore their options for an external partner in Q4 of 2023 after a “banner year” for the company.

“Selling a business is a big decision. For Alex [Monahan] and Ankit [Goyal], this is a brand that they created from the ground up,” said Restivo.

“It has a lot of sentimental value to them, and they want to ensure that the survivability of the company is in good hands beyond if they were to put it under new leadership. We spent many months getting to know the whole team at Gambling.com and then kept growing into the summer.

“Both our side and the Gambling.com side worked tirelessly to get this deal done and when you get into it, but I’m certainly thrilled to get the outcome that we got.”

‘Lots of growth ahead of us’

Odds Holdings’ team, including Restivo, will join Gambling.com Group once the deal is closed, however, Restivo revealed its business as usual for now as OddsJam chases “aggressive targets”.

He also spoke about how leveraging the expertise of Gambling.com will help to accelerate OddsJam reaching its goals.

Restivo said: “We like the way we operate today, we just execute and that shows in the number. We felt the same way about everybody [at Gambling.com]. We feel like that team has a very similar culture and the values they expressed to us.

“We talked about the fact that it’s going to give us a lot of benefits and allow us to scale globally faster than we could have as a 40 or 50-person company. [They have] expertise in areas that we don’t have experience in.

“They have a marketing team, they do content and these are all things that we don’t do.”

Restivo also noted that OddsJam can bring expertise of its own to the partnership, through its experience of producing content on YouTube and across social media. 

The acquisition is expected to immediately enhance Gambling.com Group’s financial results and the company’s CEO, Charles Gillespie, emphasised that the deal will advance its strategic goal of achieving $100m in annual adjusted EBITDA.