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Since we launched iGamingToday in 2024, we’ve followed the affiliate industry from the sidelines with great interest – not least because we are former affiliates ourselves. It’s also a useful lens on the state of the industry as a whole. We now have Q4 and FY numbers from several listed affiliate giants. Most affiliates are still private and under the radar, but the numbers from the big caps still tell us something important.
For anyone tracking these companies, it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow. Taken together, the listed affiliates report declines in new depositing customers ranging from around 10 percent to more than 60 percent year-on-year – in one case from roughly 1.75 million to 1.2 million customers. At the same time, this is framed as more “sustainable”, “cash-generative” and “disciplined” growth, with a shift toward controlled growth, higher value per player and stronger revenue-share databases rather than pure volume chasing. At the same time, it’s worth noting that most of the listed affiliate groups still generate solid cash flow and deliver positive EBITDA margins – their models are, for now, far from economically dead.
Some of these reports read almost like talking to a politician. The numbers are down, the environment is clearly tougher, but the language is all about robustness, rebasing and quality. It’s understandable that this is hard to say out loud – for management, investors and employees alike – but the graphs are still pointing where they’re pointing.
The M&A narrative points in the same direction. Big, bold acquisitions are barely on the agenda. Several groups are cleaning up old deals, paying down earn-outs, refinancing and talking about selective, “value-accretive” opportunities at some later point. It looks more like consolidation than aggressive expansion. At the same time, anyone watching search and SERPs can see a new generation of affiliates dominating many markets: privately owned, fast, extremely opportunistic – and, by most accounts, very profitable. Where the listed players talk about cost programmes and capital structure, the new players talk about scaling, AI and new domains.
Is the traditional affiliate model on its way out?
It’s a fair question. What listed and non-listed affiliates still share is a heavy dependence on Google. The model assumes that “history repeats itself”: you need to rank at the top to get traffic, you drop in one update, then fight your way back up in the next. The entire strategy is built on this game continuing – and on winning it often enough.
At the same time, Google is changing both product (AI answers, SERP layout) and policy. Three of the four reports we’ve looked at explicitly mention Google core updates, organic visibility or search algorithms as key drivers in the quarter. That makes it relevant to ask whether the era where a handful of flagship money-sites was enough is coming to an end. Is it still viable to “just” have strong flagship sites, or does the model need to be more distributed, more brand-driven and more diversified across channels?
That said, AI Overviews do not currently appear to be a major direct threat to core iGaming commercial queries. In many gambling-related searches, Google’s AI-generated answers are either limited or absent, and high-intent “money terms” still largely resolve to traditional organic results and paid placements. The structural risk for affiliates is therefore less about AI replacing traffic overnight, and more about long-term shifts in visibility, SERP layout and distribution control.
Regulation that can make things even worse
On top of that comes regulatory risk from a new angle. As we wrote last week, the Australian regulator ACMA had 41 gambling-related domains removed from Google for breaching Australian law. That’s not just another fine or warning letter – it’s a regulator going through Google and getting sites de-indexed from search results.
That’s a pretty dramatic shift: from traditional enforcement to a world where a regulator can effectively pull the plug on your traffic.
That said, the ACMA case should for now be seen as an incident rather than an established global template. It does not automatically mean that regulators everywhere will systematically pursue de-indexing strategies.
However, regulators tend to observe and learn from each other. In the UK, authorities have announced the creation of an “illegal gambling taskforce”, with explicit reference to cooperation with major technology platforms. That signals a direction of travel: closer coordination between regulators and Big Tech in tackling unlicensed operators and related marketing activity.
If that model gains traction, affiliates may increasingly face not only compliance scrutiny from regulators, but indirect exposure via platform-level enforcement. The shift would not happen overnight — but the precedent matters.
Several of the big groups also rely on local “heroes” – single domains that do a disproportionate amount of the heavy lifting in specific markets. When those domains are both key P&L drivers and directly exposed to regulator-driven de-indexing, the underlying model risk goes up sharply.
Parts of today’s listed affiliate portfolios were assembled in a very different regulatory climate. Assets acquired or built in grey or lightly enforced markets — particularly in earlier phases of the Scandinavian regulatory transition — may still contribute to traffic and revenue. As enforcement becomes more coordinated and platform-level cooperation increases, the risk-return profile of such legacy exposure inevitably changes.
What was once considered normal operating practice in a fragmented regulatory environment may, under tighter coordination between regulators and platforms, evolve into a structural vulnerability rather than a quiet contributor.
Can they turn it around without M&A?
It’s also fair to ask whether they can really turn this around without large-scale M&A. The world – and the search landscape – has changed brutally fast if we only look from 2024 to 2026. What worked in 2024 doesn’t automatically work now. If you look at some of the sites we know these groups own, you see traffic graphs that point one way – and it’s not up.
At the same time, we have the “new affiliates” whose model is built on acquisitions, volume, AI and speed. That’s quite different from the traditional approach, and most listed groups are simply not set up that way. Job postings and org charts suggest this new generation runs dedicated teams in multiple countries whose main job is to constantly buy new assets into the strategy – essentially an in-house M&A machine, just faster and far less bureaucratic, and often with a more short-term, “churn and replace” mindset than a classic, long-only buy-and-hold strategy.
It’s also hard to ignore another group of affiliates that are quietly thriving: real media brands that have added an affiliate layer on top of existing audiences, rather than building everything around affiliate economics from day one. A good example is Next.io, which launched affiliate products in 2025 and has held up well in a volatile search environment. The acquisition of Gambling Insider – one of the more visible public affiliate transactions in 2025 – underlines how adding affiliation on top of a strong media brand can look more attractive than pure-play SEO assets in the current market.
So what does the future look like?
That’s what will be interesting to watch in 2026. Google volatility is still high, and we’re likely to see more of it, not less. Regulation is tightening in multiple markets. Competition from new affiliates that don’t report quarterly numbers to the stock market is not going away.
2026 will most likely be a defining year for both listed and non-listed affiliates. We’ve mentioned the “new affiliates” throughout this text, but many smaller affiliates are struggling as well. The listed groups are often too large, regulated and visible to simply copy the new playbook – while a lot of smaller players lack the capital, scale and in-house M&A machinery to keep up with the most aggressive newcomers.
It will therefore be very interesting to follow the numbers in the next quarters. Will the declining trend continue or will it turn? If the trend continues, it will become increasingly hard for all parties to avoid addressing it directly.
If we look a bit further into the crystal ball, the most logical move for many listed players may be to choose to compete in a different league than the new, hyper-aggressive affiliates: more regulated, more long-term, more brand- and partner-driven. Some may end up going almost 100 percent regulated in selected markets, accepting lower margins and volume in exchange for higher predictability and better multiples – with regulation protecting the business instead of threatening it.
History may repeat itself. But the rules governing search, regulation and capital allocation are not static — and affiliates who assume they are may find 2026 less forgiving than previous cycles.
