PENN Entertainment returned to profit in the third quarter of 2026, reporting net income of $33.0m against a loss of $864.6m a year earlier, as record third-quarter retail revenue combined with a sharply narrower loss in its online division.

The Pennsylvania-based operator posted total revenue of $1.84bn for the three months to 30 September, up from $1.72bn in the prior-year period, according to its earnings release filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 5 November. Diluted earnings per share came in at $0.24, compared with a loss of $6.03 a year ago.

The comparison flatters the swing. PENN’s third quarter of 2025 carried a goodwill impairment of roughly $825m in its Interactive segment, booked as the company unwound its sportsbook partnership with ESPN. Stripping that out, the underlying improvement is still marked: consolidated adjusted EBITDA rose to $284.0m from $194.9m.

Retail carries the quarter

The bricks-and-mortar estate remains the engine. Retail revenue reached about $1.49bn, which PENN described as a record for a third quarter, while segment adjusted EBITDAR came to $501.8m at a margin of 33.7%. The company said that was the third consecutive quarter of year-on-year margin improvement across its regional casino portfolio.

Chief executive Jay Snowden said the healthy trends in both the retail and online businesses had continued through October.

“These encouraging trends reinforce our strategic focus on U.S. iCasino and Canada as key drivers of profitable growth,” Snowden said in the release.

Interactive loss narrows

The Interactive segment, which now operates under the theScore Bet brand in both the US and Canada following the end of the ESPN Bet arrangement, reported revenue of $348.4m, up from $297.7m. That figure includes a tax gross-up of $191.4m, against $139.5m a year earlier, so the underlying net gaming revenue growth is more modest than the headline suggests.

More important for investors is the bottom line. The segment’s adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $18.3m from $76.6m in the third quarter of 2025. PENN pointed to early performance from its online casino and sports betting operations in Alberta, the Canadian province that opened a regulated market this year, alongside Ontario, where theScore has long been one of the leading brands. Its Ontario business drew a maximum C$200,000 penalty from the provincial regulator in October over cash-out promotions, as previously reported.

Snowden said PENN remains confident of reaching its full-year Interactive adjusted EBITDA target, though the release did not restate a figure. The company did not publish updated numerical guidance in the release itself.

Balance sheet

PENN ended the quarter with total liquidity of $2.0bn, including cash and equivalents of $1.04bn. Traditional net debt stood at $1.76bn, giving net leverage of 2.3 times, down from 4.5 times at the end of 2025. Lease-adjusted net leverage, which captures the company’s substantial rent obligations to its real estate landlords, was 5.6 times.

The operator is midway through a $750m share repurchase programme covering 2026 to 2028, according to its earlier quarterly filings. The third-quarter release did not disclose the amount bought back during the period.

What it means

The quarter marks a clear shift in tone for a company that spent much of 2024 and 2025 under pressure over the cost of its online ambitions. With the ESPN chapter closed, PENN has narrowed its digital focus to US online casino and Canada, where margins are stronger than in highly promotional US sports betting markets.

The results land in a quarter in which US online casino growth has slowed and several sportsbook rivals have cut guidance as they spend on prediction markets. The trade press, including CDC Gaming Reports, framed PENN’s quarter as a comeback. Whether the Interactive segment can move into sustained profitability, rather than simply losing less, is the question investors will press at the fourth-quarter update.

The High Court in London has granted Spribe a fresh interim injunction in its long-running dispute over the Aviator crash game, barring the rival Aviator companies from launching an Aviator-branded game on new platforms in Colombia, Romania and Serbia and expediting the full trial to October 2027.

Mr Justice Tappin handed down the judgment on 6 November in the Intellectual Property List of the Business and Property Courts, according to the published judgment, [2026] EWHC 2840 (BP). The judge found that confusion between the two games was “very likely”.

Who is suing whom

Although much of the coverage has framed the case as a Spribe action, the claimants are the Aviator side: Georgia-registered Aviator LLC and the Malta-based Aviator Studio Ltd and Aviator Studio Holding Ltd. Estonia’s Spribe OÜ, the supplier whose Aviator title is among the most widely distributed casino games in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe, is the defendant and counterclaimant. A second Georgian Aviator LLC and businessman Teimuraz Ugulava have also been joined to the proceedings.

The two sides each claim to own the rights to Aviator. The Georgian courts, up to the Supreme Court, have ruled in favour of Aviator LLC on copyright and found that Spribe’s Georgian trademarks were registered in bad faith. Spribe has had more success elsewhere, securing an interim injunction covering the UK in mid-2025 and an EU-wide provisional injunction from a Maltese court against the Aviator Studio companies on 1 September this year.

What the order covers

Under the new order, which runs until further notice, the Aviator parties may not launch a crash game under the Aviator name, or with a confusingly similar logo, on any new platform targeting Colombia, Romania or Serbia. Platforms already carrying the game on or before 3 July 2026 are exempt, and the Aviator parties may apply to vary the order in respect of Serbia.

The Aviator parties must also give at least two weeks’ notice before launching in any of 28 further territories listed in the order. Separately, they offered an undertaking, accepted by the court, to give 28 days’ notice before any launch in Canada or Italy. Spribe gave a cross-undertaking in damages that extends to third parties, meaning operators affected by the injunction could recover losses if it is later found to have been wrongly granted.

The court also allowed Spribe to amend its counterclaim to add passing off and unfair competition claims covering Canada, Colombia, Ghana, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Romania, Serbia and South Africa, as well as copyright claims.

“This ruling sends an unequivocal message to copycats: you cannot hide behind borders,” Spribe founder David Natroshvili said in a statement reported by iGaming Business. No statement from the Aviator side on the ruling was available.

Trial timetable

Tappin J ordered an expedited main trial for October 2027, which the judgment notes would otherwise not have been heard until early 2028. A separate trial of preliminary issues, on whether the Georgian judgments bind the English court through issue estoppel, is set for around April 2027.

That question has already been to the Court of Appeal. In May, Tappin J ruled that foreign law governed the preclusive effect of the Georgian decisions. The Court of Appeal reversed that ruling on 2 October.

The case matters well beyond the two parties. Aviator-branded crash games are carried by hundreds of operators and aggregators worldwide, and competing rights claims in Georgia, Malta, the UK and Brazil leave distributors exposed to conflicting court orders. Until the English trial concludes, platforms in the covered markets will need to check which version of the game they carry and whether the notice obligations apply.

A new independent body called the Gambling Policy Commission has launched a review of whether Britain needs a new Gambling Act to replace the 2005 legislation, with a call for evidence open until 12 February 2027.

The commission, which launched on 9 November, describes itself as independent of government, political parties, regulators and the industry. It is chaired by Professor Jagjit Chadha OBE of the University of Cambridge, a former director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, with Professor James Reade of the University of Reading serving as chief economist, according to its launch statement.

“The last comprehensive independent review of gambling legislation was undertaken a quarter of a century ago,” Chadha said, referring to the Budd report of 2001 that shaped the 2005 Act.

Funded by Derek Webb

The commission’s website states that its seed funding has been provided philanthropically by Derek Webb, and that it is open to other funders. Webb, the inventor of the casino game Three Card Poker, founded the Campaign for Fairer Gambling and has for more than a decade financed advocacy for tighter regulation, most prominently the campaign that led to the £2 maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals in 2019. The funding arrangement was not mentioned in most of the initial trade coverage.

The commission says it will operate independently of its funders. Its committee is drawn largely from academia and public policy. Members include economists Professor Lindsey Macmillan and Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, health economist Professor Chris Bojke, legal academic Professor Janet O’Sullivan, pollster Peter Kellner CBE, sports journalist Philippe Auclair, Dr James Noyes and Thomas Savill.

Will Hutton, president of the Academy of Social Sciences, called it “a welcome initiative by an impressive group of economists and public policy experts.”

A broad remit

The commission has set out a series of objectives. They include evaluating the 2005 Act and the 2023 white paper that followed the government’s Gambling Act review, assessing recent reforms to gambling taxation, considering the case for a new Act, combating illicit gambling, reviewing the relationship between gambling and sport including horseracing, assessing gambling-related harm and improving how regulation is coordinated across government.

Trade press reports, including those from iGaming Business, said the body expects to publish a final report in 2028 and that its work would also touch on newer products such as prediction markets. Those details do not appear on the commission’s own site.

Evidence submissions can be made as PDF documents through the commission’s portal until 12 February 2027, and the commission intends to publish them.

Context

The launch comes as the industry continues to absorb the measures set out in the 2023 white paper, including statutory levy funding for research, prevention and treatment, online slot stake limits and financial risk checks, as well as the sharp increases in remote gaming duty announced in last year’s Budget. Operators and the racing industry have argued that tax rises and affordability checks are pushing players towards unlicensed sites, while campaigners say the white paper did not go far enough.

Illegal gambling is likely to be a central theme. The Gambling Commission published its first illegal gambling index on the same day the new body launched, while the British Horseracing Authority and the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities have both warned of rapid growth in black market betting traffic.

The Gambling Commission, the statutory regulator, has said it has no affiliation with the new body, according to the trade press. The government has not commented. Any recommendation for fresh primary legislation would require ministers to reopen a framework they reviewed only three years ago, though the commission’s evidence base and its funding source are likely to draw scrutiny from both industry and reform campaigners as the review progresses.