Five companies run gambling affiliate marketing in 2026: Better Collective, Catena Media, Gambling.com Group, Raketech, and Income Access. Better Collective leads on scale with $386.7 million in 2024 revenue, Gambling.com Group grew fastest at 30 percent year over year to $165.4 million in 2025, and Income Access is the only one of the five that sells affiliate software rather than owning media traffic. A sixth public affiliate, Gentoo Media, posted the highest EBITDA margin of the group in early 2026.
Which affiliate network leads gambling PR budgets in 2026?
Better Collective (Nasdaq Copenhagen: BETCO) is the largest gambling affiliate by revenue. The Danish digital sports media group owns HLTV, VegasInsider, and Action Network, and reported $386.7 million in revenue for 2024. In its second quarter of 2024, Better Collective posted revenue of €99 million ($110 million), a 27 percent increase year over year, with recurring revenue up 26 percent to €62 million ($69 million) and EBITDA of €29 million ($32 million). The company added 501,000 new depositing customers that quarter, helped by the men's European soccer championship.
Better Collective operates as a media owner, not a technology vendor. Its brands publish odds, picks, and sportsbook reviews that convert readers into tracked referrals, which is the structural difference that separates it and the next three companies below from Income Access.
Catena Media (Nasdaq Stockholm: CTM) posted a return to double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2026 after two years of North America weakness. Revenue from continuing operations rose 26 percent to €12.3 million in Q1 2026, and adjusted EBITDA rose 191 percent to €2.7 million. For full-year 2025, Catena Media reported €46.6 million in revenue, down 6 percent, while adjusted EBITDA rose 84 percent to €9.9 million as margin improved to 21 percent.
North America generated 95 percent of Catena Media's Q1 2026 revenue, up from 88 percent a year earlier. Manuel Stan, a former Kindred Group executive, took over as CEO in 2025 and has pushed the company toward subaffiliation through its MRKTPLAYS platform, which expanded into MRKTPLAYS+ in January 2026.
Gambling.com Group (Nasdaq: GAMB) grew revenue 30 percent year over year to $165.4 million in 2025, the fastest rate of the five companies. Data services now account for 26 percent of the company's revenue, a diversification move away from pure referral traffic.
That growth came at a cost. In the first quarter of 2026, Gambling.com Group's adjusted EBITDA dropped 43 percent as the company absorbed higher costs tied to restructuring and AI investment, a pattern that shows revenue growth and profitability moving in opposite directions during a platform transition.
What happened to Raketech's revenue in 2025?
Raketech (Nasdaq Stockholm: RAKE) reported second-quarter 2025 revenue of €7.8 million, less than half of the prior-year quarter. Two segments drove the drop: underperforming Casumba assets and a decline in the Paid Publisher side of its SubAffiliation business. Stripped of those two segments, Raketech's core Affiliation Marketing arm grew 5 percent quarter over quarter.
Raketech sold its remaining US tipster and subscription assets for €1.25 million in 2025, a retreat from the tipster-subscription model that the company had built its US entry around, in favor of narrower, higher-margin affiliate marketing.
Income Access is the affiliate technology platform inside Paysafe, not a media publisher. Paysafe (LSE: PAYS) acquired the Montreal-founded company in 2016 for CAD$40 million (about US$30 million). More than 25,000 affiliates run their tracking and payouts through the platform, and clients include Tipico U.S., High 5 Casino, and ZenSports.
The distinction matters for PR teams pitching gambling operators. Better Collective, Catena Media, Gambling.com Group, and Raketech compete for the same advertising and content-partnership budgets that a sportsbook's PR agency also chases. Income Access competes for a technology-vendor budget line instead, which sits with the operator's marketing-operations team rather than its communications team.
How do the five gambling affiliate networks compare?
| Company | Listing | Latest revenue | Model | Headquarters |
|---|
| Better Collective | Nasdaq Copenhagen: BETCO | $386.7M (FY2024) | Media owner | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Gambling.com Group | Nasdaq: GAMB | $165.4M (FY2025) | Media owner + data services | Dublin, Ireland |
| Catena Media | Nasdaq Stockholm: CTM | €46.6M (FY2025) | Media owner | Malta |
| Raketech | Nasdaq Stockholm: RAKE | €7.8M (Q2 2025) | Media owner | Malta |
| Income Access | Owned by Paysafe (LSE: PAYS) | Not separately disclosed | Affiliate technology vendor | Montreal, Canada |
How much marketing spend actually reaches affiliate channels?
Digital performance marketing, the budget line that funds affiliate payouts, drew $980 million of the $3.9 billion U.S. gambling operators spent on marketing in 2025, according to 5WPR's Gaming Trust Index, published April 2026 by CEO Matt Caiola. That is the second-largest channel behind television advertising's $1.42 billion, and more than ten times what operators spent on earned media and PR combined.
The same research found that AI engines synthesizing information about gambling brands draw mostly from third-party content, including review sites, financial news, and regulatory coverage, because operators have not built comparable owned-media footprints. Better Collective, Catena Media, Gambling.com Group, and Raketech are exactly the kind of third-party sites that fill that gap, which means a sportsbook's affiliate spend and its AI citation exposure are now the same conversation rather than two separate budget lines.
