Flutter Cuts 2026 Guidance Again as FanDuel EBITDA Falls 94% to $3 Million

Dan Taylor’s first results as CEO showed FanDuel hitting its breakeven target, but a revenue miss, a $160 million profit downgrade and a paused buyback suggest the turnaround has far to run.

Flutter Entertainment (FLUT) cut its full-year profit guidance for the third consecutive quarter on Wednesday as its U.S. arm, FanDuel, earned just $3 million in adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter and the group shelved buybacks to pay down debt.

Group revenue rose 2% to $3.874 billion, short of the $4.02 billion Wall Street consensus compiled by MarketBeat. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, fell 25% to $360 million, and the margin narrowed 330 basis points to 9.3%, according to the Flutter third-quarter 2026 earnings release.

On a GAAP basis, the net loss widened 46% to $1.148 billion, or $4.90 per share, driven mainly by an $873 million non-cash impairment of its Brazilian business. Adjusted EPS was a loss of 18 cents against a consensus profit of 34 cents.

Investors looked past the downgrade. Flutter shares opened 0.9% higher at $84.47 and were up 2.8% at $86.08 by 10:13 a.m. ET, intraday share price data showed, still 64% below their 52-week high.

Flutter Q3 2026 Headline Metrics

Table notes: Dollar figures in millions unless stated. † denotes a non-GAAP measure. Source: Flutter Q3 2026 earnings release.

FanDuel Hits Breakeven Target but Loses Share

The U.S. numbers matched the script management set out in August, when Gambling Insider reported Flutter’s second-quarter guidance cut and Peter Jackson’s departure as CEO.

Flutter then guided U.S. adjusted EBITDA to roughly break even in the third quarter, and Chief Financial Officer Rob Coldrake said promotions would run “closer to 6%” of handle.

Both forecasts held: promotional spend rose 60 basis points to 6.0% of handle, and U.S. adjusted EBITDA fell to $3 million from $119 million in the second quarter.

FanDuel’s sportsbook gross gaming revenue (GGR) share fell to 36% from 39% in the second quarter.

Chief Executive Dan Taylor told analysts that the higher promotional spend announced in August was “beginning to pay off, delivering market share gains in August and September.”

Coldrake told Needham analyst Bernie McTernan that Flutter feels “vindicated in terms of the investment that we laid out at Q2.”

Both can hold: customer-friendly sports results, which cost the U.S. business about $38 million in revenue, cut GGR share even if FanDuel takes more of the market’s bets. The same results drove Flutter’s latest guidance cut.

Flutter Lowers Profit Outlook by $370 Million in Two Quarters

Flutter cut the midpoint of 2026 group adjusted EBITDA guidance by $160 million to $2.495 billion, and revenue by $300 million to $17.61 billion.

Combined with the August downgrade, the profit midpoint has fallen $370 million, or 13%, from $2.865 billion. Flutter blamed the cut on unfavorable sports results in the third quarter and fourth quarter to date, saying cost actions offset the lost Brazil business at the EBITDA level.

Most of the November cut lands on the International segment, where EBITDA guidance fell $115 million to $2.09 billion.

Brazil closed on Sept. 26 after a provisional measure banned fixed-odds betting and online gaming, and the UK remote gaming duty increase to 40% from 21% drove the third-quarter International margin decline of 280 basis points to 18.0%. Flutter has announced about 1,400 departures from its UK and Ireland business in response.

U.S. EBITDA guidance fell $45 million to $715 million. With $241 million of adjusted EBITDA earned in the first three quarters, the new midpoint implies about $474 million in the fourth quarter, down from about $522 million under August’s guidance, by Gambling Insider’s calculation.

Leverage rose to 4.6x from 4.3x at June 30, rather than the year-end decline Coldrake predicted in August.

Asked by Citizens analyst Jordan Bender when buybacks could resume, Coldrake said shareholder returns come back “as and when we get back towards our quoted medium-term leverage ratio.”

Coldrake signaled that U.S. margins will not recover next year. Promotional spend “is expected to remain at similar levels in Q4 and throughout 2027, resulting in a broadly flat net revenue margin year over year,” he said, with 2027 marketing intensity expected “to remain at the elevated levels we’ve observed for 2026.”

By contrast, Coldrake told Davy analyst Paul Ruddy he expects 2027 International adjusted EBITDA growth “at the higher end” of Flutter’s 5% to 10% range.

Prediction Markets Push Up Media Costs

Prediction markets are another drag on profit. Flutter expects an adjusted EBITDA loss there of about $200 million in 2026 and investment at “similar or higher levels” in 2027.

U.S. sales and marketing expense rose 16% to $357 million, reflecting spending on FanDuel Predicts, its launch in Alberta’s newly regulated iGaming market and the FIFA World Cup.

FanDuel Predicts, which went live nationwide in January, had 66,000 average monthly players and $119 million of volume, up 102% quarter over quarter.

Revenue was “not material,” and all its sports contracts have moved to Crypto.com, whose exchange has added combo betting on sports contracts.

Taylor, who succeeded Jackson on Oct. 1, wrote that Flutter sees “a limited impact from prediction markets on the betting activity of our existing customer base” but is “beginning to see an impact on our overall media costs.”

Rival prediction markets are not yet visibly taking FanDuel’s bettors, but they are raising what Flutter pays to acquire them. Flutter said that pressure’s duration “will depend in part on how the regulatory landscape develops,” with state-level court fights over prediction markets still unresolved.

Taylor told Bender that media spending across the betting category “was up more than 60% year on year in September” and more than 50% in October, “primarily driven by investment from some of the predicts operators.”

FanDuel Predicts had “about 140,000 actives on the platform in October,” he said, roughly double the third-quarter average, Taylor told Morgan Stanley analyst Ed Young.

Market making is the nearer-term earner. Coldrake told Truist Securities analyst Barry Jonas that the business remains on track for about $50 million of revenue and “circa $40 million” of EBITDA this year, but told Oppenheimer analyst Jed Kelly: “We’re not upping the guidance for this year on market making.”

Taylor Inherits a Strategy That Must Now Pay Back

Taylor’s first results as CEO delivered the U.S. breakeven Jackson promised, but not the payoff. The 2026 profit outlook is down 13% since May, the buyback is shelved, leverage is moving away from the 2.0x-2.5x target, and FanDuel has given up three points of GGR share while spending more on promotions.

Coldrake has now extended that promotional spending through 2027, and prediction market investment will not fall either. Taylor will set out more of his strategy with fourth-quarter results in February.

If promotions at 6% of handle fail to win back share during the NFL season, he will face the question Jackson faced in August: how much longer Flutter can spend before the investment shows up in profit.

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