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LeoVegas AB
LeoVegas runs online casinos and sports betting sites where people gamble with real money.
LeoVegas is an online gambling company. It runs casino and sports betting websites where people sign up, deposit money, and play games like slots, roulette, and blackjack, or bet on real sporting events. The company's pitch is that it built its platform for mobile phones first, at a time when most rivals treated phones as an afterthought, so the games load fast and the apps feel smooth. Customers pay by handing over their deposits and then losing money to the house over time; LeoVegas keeps the difference between what players win and what they lose, plus it holds a slice of the money — the "house edge" — baked into every game.
Gambling online is a regulated business, and that matters enormously. LeoVegas holds licenses in several countries and operates under local gambling rules, which means it must check player ages, limit problem gambling, and pay gambling taxes in each market. It earns money mostly from casino games, with sports betting making up the rest. Customers choose it for the fast mobile experience, a big library of games, and local-language service in markets like Sweden, the UK, and Italy. LeoVegas used to be a public company, but it is no longer listed — its shares stopped trading after MGM Resorts International bought it in 2022 for about $607 million, making LeoVegas a subsidiary of the big Las Vegas casino giant. That deal gave MGM a ready-made online gambling platform and European customer base. So today the profits flow to MGM, not to outside shareholders, and LeoVegas operates as the online arm inside a much larger casino group.
The business is honest about its risks: gambling is politically sensitive, ad rules keep tightening, and regulators can fine or pull licenses if a company slips. Its biggest vulnerability is the old-fashioned one — players can walk to a competitor with a tap, so marketing costs stay high. Its strength is that mobile-first platform and the deep pockets of its parent, which can fund expansion into new regulated markets.
Saved answer · last researched 14 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
LeoVegas holds just over 1% of Italy's online casino market
- 1% LeoVegas
- 99% All other operators
In Italy's online casino market in September 2026, LeoVegas took 1.03% of player spending, placing it behind smaller names like Admiral Bet and Greentube. The company built its name in Sweden, so this slice shows how little of a major European market it controls. For a business that lives on gambling revenue, small local shares mean every country is a fight. Source: AGIMEG, data from 2026
Timeline
Two Friends Bet on Mobile
In 2011, Gustaf Hagman and Robin Ramm-Ericson were at a barbecue when they had a simple idea: spin an iPhone like a roulette wheel and bet on it. They saw that phones were going to become the way people play and watch things, so they built a gambling company around the phone first, not the desktop computer.
LeoVegas Opens Its Doors
The company launched in early 2012 with five games and a big mobile ad campaign at a time when most gambling sites still treated the phone as an afterthought. From day one it watched the data closely to see what worked. That simple bet on mobile turned out to be right, and LeoVegas grew into a leading operator.
The Stock Market Comes Knocking
By 2016 the company was growing so fast that it went public on Nasdaq First North Premier, and investors wanted in so badly that the offering was heavily oversubscribed. The numbers told the story: revenue had more than tripled in a single year, from €37m to €83m.
Buying Royal Panda and Winga
With public money in hand, LeoVegas went shopping. It bought Royal Panda for a reported €60m to expand into regulated markets, and picked up Italy's Winga for €6m to get a foothold in that country.
The Share Price Falls Hard
Then the mood turned. The share peaked in early 2018 and then crashed, ending about 74% lower by April 2019 as growth slowed and problems in the UK market forced the company to push back its financial targets by a year. A stock that once traded at over 50 times earnings fell below 7 times.
A Swedish Licence on Day One
Sweden was about to regulate its gambling market at the start of 2019, and LeoVegas was among the first to get a licence. That meant it could keep operating legally from the very first day, locking in its position in one of its home markets.
Expekt Joins the Family
In 2021 LeoVegas bought Expekt for €5m, adding another brand to its Nordic lineup. The plan was to relaunch it in Sweden ahead of the World Cup.
MGM Buys LeoVegas
The big payoff came in 2022, when MGM Resorts made a public offer for the company and 96% of shareholders said yes, valuing the deal at roughly $604 million. LeoVegas became part of MGM, gaining the American giant's money and global reach while still running itself with a lot of independence.
Buying Push Gaming and Tipico's US Business
Under CEO Gustaf Hagman, the company kept growing inside MGM: it bought gaming supplier Push Gaming and struck a deal for Tipico's US sportsbook operations, which brought technology and trading teams across the US, South America and Europe. The point was to own more of its own tech instead of renting it, giving it a bigger share of the value chain.
A New CEO Takes Over
In 2025 Mattias Wedar became CEO, taking over from co-founder Gustaf Hagman after 14 years. Wedar had been the company's product and tech chief since 2019 and deputy CEO since earlier that year, so he knew the machine well. LeoVegas was now MGM's digital arm and stronger than ever.
Tiger Sportsbook Goes Live
The following year, LeoVegas rolled out its own sportsbook, called Tiger, across its UK brands, including BetMGM, LeoVegas and BetUK, after first launching it in Sweden. It was the result of a two-year push to build sportsbook technology in-house, which gives the company speed to innovate and a base for long-term growth as MGM's digital arm.