La Française des Jeux (FDJ) Acquires Kindred Group – Deal Analysis

Deal Overview

La Française des Jeux (FDJ) — France’s state-controlled national lottery operator — completed its acquisition of Kindred Group for approximately €2.45 billion in 2024, marking one of the most significant European iGaming consolidation transactions of the decade. Kindred Group, founded in 1997 as Unibet by Swedish entrepreneur Anders Ström, had grown into a multi-brand online gambling group operating Unibet, 32Red, Maria Casino, Bingo.com, and the Relax Gaming B2B platform across 30+ regulated markets globally, generating €3.1 billion in annual revenue and employing over 5,000 people. The deal represented a fundamental strategic pivot for FDJ — transforming it from a domestically focused lottery and sports betting operator into a pan-European online gambling group.

Why FDJ Acquired Kindred

FDJ was privatised by the French government in 2019, and in the years following its IPO it pursued a diversification strategy to reduce dependence on France’s lottery market. Kindred offered FDJ three things simultaneously: immediate scale in regulated online gambling markets across Europe, a proven multi-brand operating model, and the Relax Gaming B2B platform — a valuable technology and content distribution asset that serves major online casino operators globally. For Kindred’s shareholders, the FDJ offer at approximately SEK 130 per share represented a premium that reflected the strategic value of Kindred’s regulated market portfolio after years of investor pressure to exit unregulated markets.

Kindred’s Regulated Market Journey

Kindred’s trajectory toward this acquisition was shaped by a public commitment made in 2021 to achieve 100% of revenue from locally regulated markets — an ambitious target that involved exiting grey-market jurisdictions and absorbing the associated revenue impact. By the time FDJ made its acquisition approach, Kindred had substantially reduced its exposure to unregulated markets, which made the business more attractive to a buyer like FDJ that could not, as a partly government-owned entity, be associated with grey-market gambling operations.

Key Facts

• Kindred founded: 1997 as Unibet by Anders Ström, Stockholm listed on Nasdaq Stockholm
• Rebranded Kindred Group: December 2016
• Key acquisitions before FDJ deal: 32Red (2017, £175.6M); Relax Gaming majority (2021, up to €320M)
• Kindred revenue at acquisition: €3.1B annually
• Kindred employees: 5,000+
• Relax Gaming: B2B platform retained within FDJ/Kindred group post-acquisition
• Kindred regulated market revenue commitment: 100% target set 2021

Market Signal

The FDJ/Kindred deal illustrates a pattern emerging across European gambling M&A: lottery operators — with stable government-contracted revenue bases, strong balance sheets, and political pressure to diversify — are becoming active acquirers of online gambling operators. The deal also validates the long-term value of regulated-market-only strategies: Kindred’s commitment to exiting grey markets, while painful short-term, made the business more acquirable to a regulated-only buyer like FDJ at a premium valuation.

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