MGM Resorts International is confident in its European and Asian business ventures, citing progress for the BetMGM brand in highly competitive markets like the UK.

Addressing investors in its Q2/H1 earnings call this week, MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle and CFO Jonathan Halkyard explained that MGM Digital‘s rose by 14% year-over-year to $164m (H1 2024: £143m), driven by both US and international growth.

The BetMGM sportsbook is key to this. Launched initially as a US-facing joint venture between MGM and UK multinational Entain, it has since entered the UK, Netherlands and Sweden. A key differentiator between the US and non-US brands of BetMGM is ownership, however, being owned entirely by MGM and run via its LeoVegas Group holding in Europe.

MGM”s ‘breaking even’ on Euro mission

These European launches have gone well, leadership asserts. Though the firm’s Q2 financial report did not map out exactly how much revenue has been made from highly competitive markets like the UK, Hornbuckle and Halkyard are confident in BetMGM’s European prospects.

Halkyard said: “The BetMGM brand extension has driven improved results in existing markets, including the UK, Netherlands and Sweden. Marketing and bonus optimisation combined with opex management have been strong drivers of our cost management efforts.

“The brands we’re investing in are beginning to achieve meaningful scale, and BetMGM brands are achieving all time heights as they grow. Our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA expectations remain consistent with last year at MGM Digital.”

BetMGM launched in the UK in August 2024, and MGM has pumped a lot of money into the brand in areas like marketing, signing deals in top-flight football and professional darts. A preceding launch in the Netherlands in April and a subsequent launch in Sweden in October that same year saw a similar pattern play out. It has since been taken live in Brazil.

“In the absence of the investments we’re making in Brazil, we’re basically beginning to achieve break-even in the rest of the MGM digital portfolio,” Hornbuckle told an analyst on this week’s earnings call.

While noting continuing growth of the ‘core LeoVegas business’, MGM Resort’s CEO stated that “the bulk of the growth is coming from the BetMGM branded businesses internally, which we’ve invested in over the course of the past year and half quite heavily”.

“We are definitely seeing returns from that, and don’t see anything between now and the end of the year that would suggest that those trends would be interrupted and would continue to operate with that level of profitability.”

MGM going global – no surprise?

International operations will likely become ever more crucial to MGM, and perhaps even more significantly to its investors, over the coming years. This is because the company’s heartland – Las Vegas, Nevada – is having some trouble with visitation, something noted by analysts on the group’s recent earnings call.

Local media reports from Nevada show a lot of local concern about Vegas tourism figures. The number of people flying in through Harry Reid International Airport dropped by 6% YoY in June 2025, for example, and total visitor numbers to the city were down to 3,094,800 from 3,490,061 the year prior.

MGM’s figures do not show a huge impact from this, with Las Vegas Strip revenue down 4% from $2.2bn to $2.1bn, attributed to a lower visitor numbers due to a room remodeling and fewer table games held at the MGM Grand Las Vegas.

“History gives us confidence,” Hornbucke said on the call. “I think what we have seen, starting in May, is a nine week decline in bookings, and now over the past month those bookings have increased. Over the past three weeks in a row we’ve seen an increase in bookings, and that gives us confidence.”

Leadership exerts confidence to investors that visitor numbers and subsequent revenues in Las Vegas rebound, particularly when Formula One returns to the city in Q4. Regardless, it makes a lot of sense that international diversification might be high on the company’s agenda right now.

Then there’s the impact of taxation. For one thing, there’s Donald Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which is projected to impact professional gamblers’ pockets in particular but potentially also casual gamblers.

Perhaps more significant is pre-bet taxes, like Illinois’ 25 cent tax on the first 20 million sports bets taken by a sportsbook, rising to 50 cents after the 20 million threshold is cleared. This is putting pressure on operators, but also customers, as some sportsbooks have started charging bet fees or have shortened odds to compensate for the tax burden.

All of these factors could make a greater international presence even more appealing.

Prospects to the South and East

Of course, we cannot take an overview of MGM’s overseas operations without talking about Brazil, which is particularly significant for BetMGM. The sportsbook secured Brazil market launch in February via a partnership with major media outlet Grupo Globo, just a month after the regulated market was launched under the ‘Bets’ regime.

This market has captivated the attention of gaming PLCs far and wide from Europe to America to prominent local Latin American firms – it’s not a huge shock that MGM Resorts is no different, and Hornbuckle acknowledged to analysts that overall ‘investment is concentrated in Brazil’, and taking note that ‘player values are strong down there’.

“We really took flight with respect to our investments in Brazil. In Q2 we got the product in a good shop, we turned on the marketing with a reasonable level of aggression, and we’re very happy about what we’re seeing.”

For all of MGM’s European and Latin American efforts though, there is one market that was on many analysts’ minds – East Asia, specifically Macau, which hosts the MGM Macau resort. This asset has proven to be a solid growth driver according to its Q2 report.

Q2 was a record quarter for MGM Macau, Halkyard remarked. The company is particularly focused on premium player accounts, though visitation and player account numbers are up across the board, driving casino revenue up 10% to $997m ($891m).

“We are seeing more and more customers come for refreshing experiences and the quality of products and services,” said Kenneth Xiaofeng Feng, President of Strategic, CFO and Executive Director of MGM China Holdings.

“If we come to MGM China, we will continue to see a very strong trend in July, our performance is very robust. We see a strong audience in nearly all business segments and a solid market share in the market.”

Sign of the times?

The US betting space quickly became a highly competitive space in the years since the PASPA repeal in 2018, dominated by market leader FanDuel and second place DraftKings, with BetMGM firmly in third place – well ahead of many smaller competitors, but not quite up there with the big two mentioned above.

Though the market continues to grow, the wait for some big states like California and Texas to open their doors to sports betting is growing tiresome and competition is not getting any less fierce.

Meanwhile, with federal tax changes, pre-bet taxes in states like Illinois, and the rise of prediction markets further complicating things for US operators, firms in Europe, Asia and South America should be prepared for the likes of MGM Resorts to keep chasing leads in their backyards.

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