Flutter Entertainment, the world's largest online sports betting and iGaming company and the parent of FanDuel, is changing chief executives. Peter Jackson will step down on September 30, 2026, and Dan Taylor will take over as group CEO on October 1, the company announced alongside its second-quarter results. Jackson, who has led Flutter for nearly nine years, will stay on as an adviser through the end of the year to help with the handover. The details here come from Flutter's announcement and reporting by Sports Betting Dime and others.
Taylor is not an outside hire, and for FanDuel customers that continuity matters. He currently runs Flutter's International division, a business that produced more than $9 billion in revenue and $2.2 billion in adjusted earnings last year, and since May he has also been Flutter's president, a role that put FanDuel under his oversight. The company says he has been central to FanDuel's recent sportsbook improvement plan. A Flutter veteran of more than a decade who once ran Paddy Power Betfair, Taylor is inheriting a company he already helps steer, not learning it from scratch.
A season of leadership change
This is the second big leadership move at the top of the FanDuel structure in a matter of months. In the spring, FanDuel CEO Amy Howe, who had led the US business since 2021, departed and was succeeded by then-president Christian Genetski. With Taylor now moving up to run the whole group, the people at the very top of both Flutter and its American crown jewel have turned over in a single year. Jackson, for his part, framed the exit on his own terms, saying it "has been such a privilege to lead Flutter's transformation."
The quarter behind the timing
The transition was announced the same morning as a bruising set of numbers, and the two are worth reading together. Flutter swung to a net loss of $296 million for the quarter, or $1.57 per share, down from a $37 million profit a year earlier. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the measure the company leans on to show operating performance, fell 45 percent to $508 million. Group revenue still rose 3 percent, to $4.33 billion, so this was not a collapse in demand.
Two things drove the gap, and only one of them is about the business. Flutter attributed the net loss largely to below-the-line items: historical tax provisions and higher interest and amortization tied to its acquisitions, not day-to-day operations. The operating softness, the EBITDA drop, is more familiar to anyone who follows sportsbooks: in the US, sportsbook customers simply won more. Despite heavy engagement around the NBA Finals and the World Cup, bettors profited about 6 percent more than in the same quarter a year ago, which is great for customers and painful for the house. US revenue fell 6 percent to $1.68 billion, with sportsbook down 15 percent even as iGaming grew 14 percent.
The forecast comes down
Flutter also trimmed its full-year outlook. It cut group revenue guidance by $395 million, to about $17.91 billion at the midpoint, and adjusted EBITDA guidance by $210 million, to roughly $2.655 billion. It still expects US revenue to grow about 6 percent for the year, to $7.4 billion, though US adjusted earnings are now guided lower. Investors reacted the way they usually do to a loss and a guidance cut, and the shares fell.
Our take
A disclosure up front: FanDuel is one of the operators we partner with, and Flutter is its parent, so we hold this to the same standard as any company we cover. The honest read is that the scary-sounding headline number and the leadership change are largely separate stories that happened to land on the same day. The $296 million loss is mostly accounting, tax accruals and the cost of past acquisitions, not evidence that FanDuel is bleeding customers. Revenue still grew.
The part that is real, and mildly reassuring for bettors, is why operating profit dropped: people won. A quarter where sportsbook customers beat the house by more than usual is exactly what a fair-odds market is supposed to produce sometimes, and it is the flip side of the quarters when the favorites all cover and the books clean up. On the leadership, handing the group to the executive who already oversees FanDuel points to continuity rather than a change of direction for US customers, and it fits a broader FanDuel reshaping we have tracked through its rounds of layoffs and the closure of a retail sportsbook. We will see what Taylor prioritizes once he is in the chair.