SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Australian betting group PointsBet has done a 360, appearing to now view the takeover offer made by MIXI Australia over that made by challenger brand Betr.
The firm is encouraging its stakeholders to approve a 100% sale of the company’s shares to MIXI, clearly now viewing the tech firm’s bid as its best option.
MIXI Australia, the local division of Japanese tech firm and smartphone developer MIXI, put in a bid of AU$353m (€200.8m) for PointsBet back in February 2025, subsequently approving the offer.
A counterbid was proposed by BlueBet, which trades as Betr after a 2024 merger. BlueBet has been on a challenger crusade in Australia, looking to disrupt a market dominated by legacy brands like Tabcorp and big budget multinationals like Entain’s Ladbrokes and Neds and Flutter Entertainment‘s Sportsbet. M&A has played a big part in this mission.
Betr subsequently made a bid of $360m last month which was reconsidered by PointsBet as a ‘superior proposal’. Although it continued to recommend that stakeholders move forward with approving the MIXI deal, PointsBet did propose that it conduct ‘mutual due diligence’ with Betr over a potential acquisition.
Three weeks later, the firm is now firmly back on track to go ahead with the MIXI proposal. A PointsBet statement describes MIXI’s new offer as an ‘improved proposal’, marking a 13.2% increase on the $1.06 per share offer made in February to an offer of $1.20 per share, representing total value of $402m.
This development firmly tilts the bidding war between MIXI and Betr back in the former’s favour, after it briefly looked like PointsBet was leaning towards Betr as it previously made a larger cash offer.
MIXI already has a foothold in Australia’s high-value, but also highly competitive betting market as the owner of the betM app. Acquiring PointsBet, which declared revenue growth of 6% to $124.4m in its last trading report, would significantly expand its presence there.
However, Australia is a tough market to crack, for the competitive reasons discussed above, which have seen even major multinationals like William Hill bail out of the market after just a few years, but also due to changing regulatory and political attitudes towards the sector in recent years.
