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iGaming Quarterly Report: Q1 2026 Affiliate Market Rebalance
The iGaming affiliate market in Q1 2026 moved in different directions. The biggest players of the quarter — Raketech, Gentoo Media, Catena Media, Genius Sports, Better Collective, and Gambling.com Group — each picked their own strategy, making the competition between the leading affiliates more visible and giving us a clearer picture of how they will be operating throughout the year.
Table of Contents
iGaming affiliate market in Q1 2026: profitability over acquisition
The biggest theme across the iGaming affiliate market in Q1 2026 was the adaptation process. In the process of replacing user acquisition and traffic growth with stabilization, the quarter naturally turned profitability into the main goal across the iGaming affiliate sector. After years of focusing on traffic growth, SEO scaling, and market share races, many of the industry’s largest affiliate and betting media companies entered 2026 with margin recovery, AI implementation, and higher-value player acquisition in mind.
The shift was visible in every major company in the market. Some businesses cut costs and reduced headcount. Others leaned more heavily into sports data, media products, or platform infrastructure to diversify away from traditional SEO dependency. Several affiliates also moved away from first-time depositor volume as the main success metric, paying more attention to player value and longer-term monetization instead.
Sports betting continued to grow in some markets, but casinos stayed the safest and most consistent vertical this quarter. Changing margins and unpredictable sports event results made affiliate revenue far less steady for those focused mainly on sports traffic.
iGaming Q1 2026 at a glance
iGaming Q1 2026 did not suddenly reinvent the affiliate market, but it made the future less unpredictable and company strategies easier to read. This quarter also includes names that don’t typically sit at the centre of our affiliate coverage, but their performance was strong enough to catch our attention alongside other market leaders.
BIGGEST WINNER | Catena Media showed the clearest operational recovery. |
BIGGEST GROWTH STORY | Genius Sports with its infrastructure-focused model. |
BIGGEST TURNAROUND | Better Collective returned to profit after a loss in Q1 2025. |
MOST CHALLENGING SEGMENT | SEO-heavy affiliate models stayed under pressure. |
MOST IMPORTANT TREND | AI became a bigger part of day-to-day operations. |
MARKET OUTLOOK | The market is moving into a product-driven model. |
Some with weaker profitability and others with nearly record affiliate revenue, performance started to stabilize, especially for those companies that have already spent the last couple of years trimming costs and reshaping their operations.
Gambling.com Group: Rebuilding around AI efficiency
Q1 2026 showed that Gambling.com Group is not just dealing with a weaker quarter but going through what we call an operational shift. Profitability took a noticeable hit, but affiliate revenue stayed relatively stable ($40.4 million). Adjusted EBITDA dropped 43% year-over-year, and cash flow also declined sharply compared to the same period last year. And yet, the numbers themselves were not the biggest story of the quarter.
The wider context becomes clearer once we factor in Gambling.com Group’s decision to restructure around AI-driven efficiency. For the industry, Gambling.com Group has traditionally been one of the biggest SEO and media-focused companies, so the fact that it’s now leaning into AI-heavy operations says a lot about where things in the market are heading.
The management made it clear that AI is becoming central to how it plans to run the business from now on. The company also revealed plans to cut around 25% of its workforce, aimed at saving about $13 million per year.
The Q1 2026 results also showed that different parts of the company are performing at very different speeds. Marketing services revenue decreased by 5%, while sports data revenue increased by 13%; another split that says a lot about where momentum is. Even with the number of new depositing customers holding steady (140,000), acquisition alone is no longer enough to support profitability.
Open full Gambling.com Group Q1 2026 report
Raketech: Stabilizing after strategic retrenchment
After several difficult quarters, iGaming Q1 2026 suggested Raketech may finally be starting to regain some stability across its core affiliate business.
Revenue from continuing operations fell by 36% year-over-year,mostly reflecting the lingering effects of previous restructuring decisions and weaker performance within the SubAffiliation segment.
The most important development, however, was not the affiliate revenue decline itself, but the relative stabilization of Raketech’s main Affiliation Marketing business. Supported by the launch of Casinofeber Media and further expansion of TVMatchen, the segment has made slight progress, generating €4 million and accounting for roughly 75% of total group revenue. Strategically, Raketech has narrowed its focus to Nordic affiliate assets, sports media products, and the Organic Publisher Network following the 2025 divestment of Casumba Media.
The company’s profitability held steady; adjusted affiliate EBITDA came in at €1.2 million, broadly in line with the prior year. Could this mean the cost controls introduced during restructuring are starting to take hold?
Q1 2026 did not solve all of Raketech’s longer-term growth challenges, but it did indicate that the company may finally be moving from constant restructuring toward a more stable operating position.
Open full Raketech Q1 2026 report
Catena Media: Margins finally showing signs of recovery
Catena Media had one of its strongest quarters in Q1 2026. Much like Raketech, the company is showing signs that its long restructuring phase is finally starting to work.
After years of falling margins and internal changes, iGaming Q1 2026 revenue has grown 25.5% year-over-year, profitability has improved, and adjusted EBITDA also increased to €2.7 million, with margins moving back to healthier levels compared to where they’ve been in previous quarterly reports.
For a long time, Catena was one of the clearest examples of what went wrong with the old operational model: too much expansion, heavy reliance on SEO, and not enough control.
After several difficult years, Q1 of 2026 is not looking like the short-term rebound scenario for Catena Media. What makes it something bigger is that the company’s recovery came from efforts to become more efficient and financially stable, and that distinction will be defining for the affiliate market over the rest of the year.
Open full Catena Media Q1 2026 report
Genius Sports: Growth through infrastructure development
Genius Sports spent Q1 2026 continuing to scale its infrastructure and expanding its technological footprint. Revenue reached $187.9 million, primarily thanks to Betting Technology and Media growth. Continuing the company’s broader growth trajectory, adjusted affiliate EBITDA also increased to $24 million.
Genius Sports doesn’t depend so heavily on search traffic the way most traditional affiliates do. That alone is enough to change how the quarter looks for the company. The acquisition of Legend fits into that same pattern. Putting media and customer acquisition aside, Genius Sports keeps expanding its role across the broader sports betting ecosystem.
Nevertheless, the trade-off is obvious. This kind of model is expensive to scale. Costs don’t really stay flat when you’re paying for data rights and building infrastructure across markets, so even if the story is about expansion and positioning, the pressure on profitability is still there in the background.
Speaking more broadly, Genius Sports sits on a very different track compared to other big affiliates like Catena Media. Catena is still tied to the classic affiliate cycle: SEO traffic, user acquisition, and how efficiently it can convert that into deposits. Genius, on the other hand, isn’t really competing for search traffic at all.
Open full Genius Sports Q1 2026 report
Gentoo Media: Fewer players, higher value
The clearest example that the affiliate market is moving from acquisition volume toward player quality and profitability? Gentoo Media’s Q1 2026.
Because sportsbook performance was low in February, the quarter looked a bit weaker at first, but overall, the business ran more efficiently, with less focus on traffic. Affiliate revenue came in at €24 million, down 5% year-on-year, but the more important signal was in how the business performed underneath that headline; First-time depositors were lower, but total deposit value went up.
The company also continued major restructuring efforts throughout the quarter, including workforce reductions and the closure of its Atlas SEO office in Norwich. Management also placed strong emphasis on AI-driven discovery changes and the growing importance of adapting content and technical strategies for new search environments beyond traditional Google dependency. That naturally forces a different approach; less attention on plain traffic growth, more on conversion and retention quality.
What makes Gentoo Media’s quarterly “transformation” interesting in the context of the wider market is how clearly it sits between two models. On one side, we still have affiliates working on reach and volume. On the other hand, there’s tech, infrastructure, and diversification, which move companies away from SEO. Gentoo Media has placed itself somewhere in the middle; it’s still an affiliate business, but they’re clearly changing the definition of “performance” inside that model.
Open full Gentoo Media Q1 2026 report
Better Collective: Back in profit with improving player value
Leaving the most interesting part for last, Better Collective’s approach to Q1 2026 came from a very different position compared to most of the affiliate market. The affiliate revenue of the company increased by 5% year-over-year reaching €86.3 million, EBITDA grew by 14%, and the company returned to a net profit of €14.4 million after a reported a loss in the same period last year.
On its own, that’s a strong quarter. In the context of everything else we’ve seen across the market, the headline numbers only tell part of the story. The value of deposits increased by 15%, reaching €799 million. This pattern is difficult to ignore; with deposits growing faster than revenue, much like Gentoo Media, Better Collective is showing that player value is becoming increasingly important.
Looking at Q1 2026 affiliate revenues, it’s important to keep in mind that Better Collective doesn’t quite fit into the same category as many traditional affiliates. The company is always investing into paid media, prediction markets, and its growing partnership with X. All this points to something larger and more expanded than the classic SEO or first-time depositor model.
The company’s future trajectory might be one of the more interesting ones to watch throughout the rest of 2026, especially with the FIFA World Cup approaching and prediction markets attracting more and more attention in the United States. By the end of the year, iGaming Q1 for Better Collective will be remembered as a quarter that was important not for its numbers, but its positioning for the affiliate’s next big phase of growth.
Open full Better Collective Q1 2026 report
Q1 2026 affiliate performance: metrics in comparison
| COMPANY | Q1 2026 REVENUE | YOY GROWTH | EBITDA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gambling.com Group | $40.4 million | Flat (0%) | $9 million adjusted |
| Raketech | €5.3 million | -36% | €1.2 million adjusted |
| Catena Media | €12.3 million | +25.5% | €2.7 million adjusted |
| Genius Sports | $187.9 million | +31% | $24 million adjusted |
| Gentoo Media | €24 million | -5% | €10.5 million (44% margin) |
| Better Collective | €86.3 million | +5% | €25.1 million (29% margin) |
Q1 2026 closing analysis: What comes next for the affiliate market?
Though the transition is still in progress, iGaming Q1 2026 gave us two clear takeaways for the affiliate industry:
- Affiliates are starting to work with more acquisition channels.
- AI implementation is becoming much more impactful, changing how teams operate.
Most of the bigger iGaming affiliates enter the rest of year looking much more disciplined. That being said, from here, the online casino affiliate market is likely to split in two. Among the companies covered in this affiliate industry report, some groups will stay in the old-school “defend and optimize” mode, while others will build more expanded and diversified business models: sports data, sports betting affiliate programs, direct audience channels, AI-based content systems, etc.
Which side will record higher revenues in 2026? The only way to find out is to keep monitoring.
The year 2026 is an interestingly defining one for the iGaming affiliate market. If you want the bigger picture in the context of the broader iGaming industry, AffPapa’s Q1 2026 operator report is worth a read.
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