Entain drops out of the FTSE 100 as analysts keep pointing to digital upside

Entain has been demoted from the FTSE 100 to the FTSE 250 after a quarterly update from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), with the move taking effect on 21 September. For high-risk payments people, the more relevant part is not the index housekeeping: the company is still pushing a regulated-markets, digital turnaround while dealing with a messy legacy profile.

1. Entain joined the FTSE 100 on 22 June 2020, but it will now leave the index and remain in the FTSE 250. Its market cap currently sits at £3.39 billion, after a share price fall of up to 37% since September 2025.
2. The stock has had a rough five-year run. From its all-time high in September 2021, the shares have slipped 73% to 530p. The company first started trading on LSEG’s main market in February 2016 under the GVC Holdings name, after delisting from the Alternative Investment Market.
3. Entain’s strategic reset has been built around rebranding from GVC Holdings and committing to have 100% of revenues come from regulated markets. That matters for PSPs and acquiring partners because regulated-market exposure tends to define both bankability and the operational controls a merchant needs to keep in place.
4. The turnaround has not been clean. Entain cycled through four CEOs in short succession, and in November 2023 it agreed to pay a financial penalty totalling £585 million, plus a £20 million charitable donation and £10 million in Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and HMRC costs, tied to a bribery case initiated by the CPS into its historic operations in Turkey.
5. Recent trading has at least given management something to point at. In Q1 2025, Entain reported double-digit digital growth, helped by strong UK, Brazil and US online performance. That was Stella David’s first quarter in the full-time group CEO role, and in H1 this year Australia, New Zealand, Spain and the UK were all described as core growth drivers.

On paper, this is still a company with the kind of theoretical upside analysts like to talk about. The thing is, the payment stack around a group like Entain is rarely judged on upside alone: market access, regulatory exposure, legacy tech and acquisition clean-up all sit in the same risk file.