Who owns BetMGM? Ownership structure explained (2026)

BetMGM is one of the three largest online sports betting and iGaming operators in the United States. It runs online casino games, sportsbooks, and poker across roughly 30 North American markets, using the MGM brand and rewards program on one side and Entain's betting technology on the other.

The company is not owned by a single parent or a group of venture funds. It is a joint venture, split down the middle between two public companies that compete in the same industry elsewhere but pool their resources in the US. When people ask who owns BetMGM, the accurate answer is MGM Resorts and Entain, each holding exactly half.

That even split is the whole story of BetMGM's ownership. It shapes how the business is funded, how decisions get made, and why the venture has been the subject of takeover drama, activist pressure, and repeated speculation about whether one parent will eventually buy out the other.

BetMGM was created in July 2018, weeks after the US Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting. MGM Resorts International and GVC Holdings, the company later renamed Entain, announced a 50/50 joint venture to build an online sports betting and gaming platform for the newly opened US market. The venture was originally incorporated as Roar Digital, LLC, and still operates under that legal entity while trading as BetMGM.

The logic of the pairing was straightforward. MGM brought a trusted US casino brand, physical properties, and the MGM Rewards loyalty database. GVC, an established European operator, brought a proven online betting and gaming technology platform along with regulatory and operating experience the US market lacked. Each partner contributed what the other did not have.

BetMGM is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, and led by CEO Adam Greenblatt. It offers online casino games, which it calls iGaming, alongside online sports betting and poker. For 2025, its first profitable year, BetMGM reported net revenue of about $2.8 billion, up 33% from the prior year, with EBITDA of roughly $220 million and net income near $175 million. iGaming, where BetMGM is a market leader, generated about $1.8 billion of that revenue, more than its sports betting arm.

BetMGM has exactly two owners. MGM Resorts International holds 50%, and Entain plc holds the other 50%. There is no third shareholder, no founder equity, and no outside venture capital in the cap table. This makes BetMGM fundamentally different from a startup with a spread of investors or a public company with dispersed shareholders. It is a jointly controlled affiliate of two larger corporations.

Because neither MGM nor Entain owns a majority, neither can dictate BetMGM's strategy on its own. Both parents consolidate BetMGM as an equity-method investment rather than as a subsidiary, meaning neither fully owns or fully controls it for accounting purposes. Major decisions require the agreement of both sides, which is the defining feature of the structure and the source of most of the tension around it.

BetMGM was not founded by entrepreneurs who took venture money and built a company. It was assembled by two established corporations as a contractual partnership. There is no founder equity to trace, no early employee stock, and no founding shareholder who still controls a block.

The people who created BetMGM were the corporate development teams and executives at MGM and GVC who negotiated the venture in 2018. Ownership sits with the two parent companies, and control follows the joint venture agreement they signed, not any individual's stake. The closest thing to a founding executive still in charge is Adam Greenblatt, who came from the GVC and Entain side and has run BetMGM since 2020, but he is a hired CEO rather than an owner.

Because BetMGM has no external investors, its funding history is the record of how much cash MGM and Entain have jointly put in. The two parents split every commitment evenly, matching their 50/50 ownership.

Those figures reflect the committed equity funding rather than the total the venture has spent on marketing and customer acquisition, which ran well ahead of revenue for years. BetMGM absorbed heavy losses as it fought for US market share, which is why 2025, its first year of profit and its first cash return to the parents, marked such a turning point.

MGM Resorts International is a publicly traded US casino and hospitality company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MGM. It owns and operates properties on the Las Vegas Strip and beyond, and it treats BetMGM as its primary digital growth engine in the United States. MGM's own largest shareholder is Barry Diller's People Inc., formerly IAC, which holds roughly 26% of MGM.

Entain plc is a London-listed gambling group, a constituent of the FTSE 100, trading under the ticker ENT. It owns Ladbrokes, Coral, and a wide portfolio of international betting and gaming brands, and it descends from GVC Holdings, which renamed itself Entain in late 2020. Entain is widely held by global institutions. Its largest holders include Capital Research and Management, Dodge & Cox, and the activist fund Eminence Capital, with institutions owning roughly 60% of the stock and no single controlling shareholder.

BetMGM's governance mirrors its ownership. The venture is overseen with equal representation from both parents, and neither MGM nor Entain can push through major strategic moves without the other's consent. MGM has publicly stated that the joint venture agreement gives it a veto over any tie-up between Entain and a rival operator in the North American market, a right that became central during the 2021 takeover battle described below.

This consent-based structure gives BetMGM stability but also creates the risk of deadlock. Both owners have to agree on funding, strategy, and any change to the ownership split, which is why the future of BetMGM is ultimately a question of what MGM and Entain each decide to do with their halves.

Adam Greenblatt has been CEO of BetMGM since 2020. He is a qualified accountant and former mergers and acquisitions banker at Rothschild & Co in London, and he joined the venture from the Entain side of the partnership, where he had worked in corporate development and strategy across Ladbrokes and Coral. He relocated from London to the United States to build BetMGM into a national operator, expanding it across roughly 30 North American markets. Greenblatt runs the business day to day, but he does not own it. Control over BetMGM's direction rests with its two corporate parents.

Because BetMGM is jointly owned, its ultimate decision-makers are the chief executives of MGM and Entain. Bill Hornbuckle is CEO and president of MGM Resorts International and has been vocal about wanting more of BetMGM, saying during the 2021 takeover episode that MGM would seek greater control of the venture. Stella David is CEO of Entain, confirmed permanently in April 2025 after a period of leadership turnover at the parent. Together with their boards, these two executives set the terms on which BetMGM operates.

BetMGM is governed by representatives appointed by its two owners rather than by an independent public-company board. Both MGM and Entain hold equal say, so the venture answers to two masters at once. This is standard for a 50/50 joint venture, but it concentrates real power at the parent level, where each company's own board and shareholders ultimately weigh in on what happens to their stake.

The most consequential episode in BetMGM's ownership history was a takeover fight over its own parent. In January 2021, MGM Resorts made an all-stock offer worth about $11 billion to buy Entain outright, which would have folded BetMGM fully into MGM. Entain rejected the bid as too low. Months later, in September 2021, DraftKings entered with a competing offer for Entain of roughly $20 billion. That put BetMGM in an awkward position, since Entain's US business was tied to MGM through the joint venture. MGM asserted that its agreement gave it a veto over any Entain tie-up in North America, and its CEO said MGM would seek full control of BetMGM if DraftKings prevailed. DraftKings withdrew its bid in October 2021, and the venture continued in place. The events showed how any change of control at either parent immediately puts the other half of BetMGM in play.

BetMGM's Entain parent has been through years of boardroom turmoil that indirectly affects the venture. Activist investors, including Corvex Management, which built a stake of around 4%, and Eminence Capital, pushed for changes to strategy and leadership. Entain's CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen resigned in December 2023 under investor pressure over a falling share price and a string of acquisitions. A period of instability followed, with interim leadership, a permanent CEO who lasted only a few months, and finally the confirmation of Stella David in April 2025. Throughout, analysts and activists have argued that Entain's 50% stake in BetMGM is undervalued inside the group, fueling speculation that Entain could sell it.

The unresolved question of whether BetMGM stays a 50/50 venture is itself a source of uncertainty. MGM has openly expressed a desire for more control, Entain faces pressure to unlock the value of its stake, and in June 2026 Barry Diller's People Inc. offered to take MGM Resorts private for about $18 billion, an outcome that could accelerate any move to consolidate BetMGM. None of this is wrongdoing, but the persistent overhang shapes how the venture is run and valued.

As a gambling operator, BetMGM is licensed and regulated state by state, and it faces the same responsible-gaming, advertising, and tax scrutiny as its rivals. It also faces a newer competitive threat from prediction markets, the exchange-traded event contracts offered by platforms that operate under a different regulatory regime. That pressure has led BetMGM to revisit the timeline for its longer-term profit targets.

BetMGM's 50/50 structure is not a technicality. It determines who funds the business, who profits from it, and who decides its future. Every dollar of capital the venture has raised came equally from MGM and Entain, and every dollar of profit it now returns is split the same way. The $270 million the venture paid back to its parents in 2025, and the parent fees it began paying in 2026, flow half to a US casino company and half to a UK betting group.

The even split is also why BetMGM is perpetually a takeover target from within. Because neither parent controls the venture outright, both have an incentive to want the other's half, and any change of ownership at either company puts BetMGM in play. That dynamic drove the 2021 fight with DraftKings and continues to hang over the venture through Entain's activist pressure and the 2026 bid for MGM. A cleaner ownership structure would remove that overhang, which is exactly why consolidation is discussed so often.

For competitors, BetMGM's ownership is a strength and a constraint at once. The MGM brand and rewards program give it a marketing advantage that rivals like FanDuel and DraftKings cannot easily copy, and Entain's technology gives it a real iGaming product. But needing two parents to agree on everything can slow BetMGM down against more nimble, single-owner operators, including newer entrants such as Betr and daily-fantasy-turned-betting brands like PrizePicks.

For the business itself, the turn to profit changes the stakes. For years, BetMGM's owners were funding losses to buy market share. Now that the venture generates cash, measurable with tools like an EBITDA calculator, the argument shifts from who will keep paying for growth to who deserves the returns. That is a much more contested question, and it is the reason ownership of BetMGM will stay in the headlines even as the business matures.

BetMGM is owned equally by two public companies. MGM Resorts International, the Las Vegas casino operator listed on the NYSE under the ticker MGM, holds 50%, and Entain plc, the London-listed gambling group behind Ladbrokes and Coral, holds the other 50%. It is a joint venture with no third owner and no outside venture investors.

BetMGM is not a separately listed company, so you cannot buy its stock directly. Instead, investors gain exposure through its two parents. MGM Resorts trades on the New York Stock Exchange under MGM, and Entain trades on the London Stock Exchange under ENT. Both companies report BetMGM as a jointly owned affiliate rather than a subsidiary.

BetMGM was not founded by individual entrepreneurs. It was created in 2018 as a 50/50 joint venture between MGM Resorts International and GVC Holdings, the company later renamed Entain, shortly after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for legal sports betting. The venture was originally set up as Roar Digital, LLC.

Adam Greenblatt has been CEO of BetMGM since 2020. He is a former Rothschild banker who joined from the Entain side of the partnership, where he worked on corporate development and strategy across Ladbrokes and Coral. He runs the venture day to day but does not own it, since control rests with the two parent companies.

There are only two, and they are equal. MGM Resorts and Entain each own half of BetMGM. Ownership beyond that traces to each parent's own shareholders. MGM's largest holder is Barry Diller's People Inc. with roughly 26%, while Entain is widely held by institutions such as Capital Research and Management, Dodge & Cox, and the activist fund Eminence Capital.

BetMGM did not raise money from outside investors. Its two parents committed roughly $450 million in combined capital between 2018 and 2020. After years of losses spent building market share, BetMGM turned profitable in 2025, reporting about $2.8 billion in net revenue and $220 million in EBITDA, and returned $270 million in cash to MGM and Entain. It guided to revenue of $3.1 billion to $3.2 billion for 2026.