Soo Kim is not a conventional dealmaker. The South Korean hedge fund veteran built his reputation at Standard General by acquiring distressed assets others deemed too complicated or indebted. Now he chairs Bally’s Corporation, and he is assembling a transatlantic gambling group through patience, leverage, and strategic opportunism. Britain is where that vision becomes most visible. Most ambitious, too.

A Strategy Built on Accumulation

The proposed acquisition of Evoke plc, which houses William Hill, 888, and Mr Green, would deliver one of the UK’s largest online gambling portfolios to Bally’s Intralot in a single transaction. But Kim’s appetite appears far from sated. Industry sources suggest Bally’s is simultaneously exploring a bid for LiveScore Group, the media-to-betting operator controlling LiveScore Bet and Virgin Bet, alongside the Evoke pursuit.

On the surface, that looks contradictory. Why chase a second UK-facing betting brand while attempting to absorb two already? The answer reveals something more sophisticated. Kim is not chasing revenue or player volumes. He is constructing a consolidated structure designed to thrive in a higher-tax, tighter-regulation environment.

Consolidation as Competitive Advantage

Bally’s operates a sprawling empire spanning land-based casinos, lotteries, online gaming, and media-adjacent betting assets. It runs nearly 20 casinos, owns the UK casino at Aspers Newcastle, holds the largest shareholder stake in The Star Entertainment Group, and is developing casino projects across North America. This is not a company building vertically. It accumulates pieces.

At ICE earlier this year, Kim articulated his thesis plainly. Higher taxes and stricter regulation could reduce competition by pricing smaller operators out of the market. Bally’s believes scale and operational muscle become advantages precisely when conditions tighten. Regulation that crushes competitors becomes regulation that protects entrenched players.

Chad Beynon, head of US research at Macquarie Capital, observes the same dynamic. In the UK’s post-tax-hike environment, stronger companies are surviving while weaker peers languish. “Being part of a bigger organisation with shared corporate costs would help companies navigate through this tax adjustment,” Beynon argues. Multi-brand portfolios have already demonstrated outsized benefits from absorbing regulatory pressure.

The LiveScore Prize

The LiveScore play deserves particular attention. Ben Robinson, managing partner at Corfai, identifies the real prize: not the sportsbook itself, but the media asset. LiveScore commands a 100 million-user audience through its sports content platform, representing the only proprietary customer acquisition funnel at scale in iGaming.

In an era where regulatory taxes have climbed sharply and customer acquisition costs continue rising, proprietary media funnels create structural advantages. Traditional operators rely on expensive affiliate networks or television marketing. LiveScore offers Bally’s a cheaper, owned route to customers. Plus, Robinson notes that LiveScore’s partnerships with X and xAI could unlock “real-time trading models, personalisation, and betting flow piped straight into X,” transforming the acquisition into something closer to a data and audience play than a sportsbook purchase.

The Financing Question

What remains unresolved is how Kim finances this ambition. The Evoke acquisition alone represents substantial debt. Adding LiveScore and managing existing obligations requires either equity capital, divestments, or a willingness to operate with leverage that would make many institutional investors uncomfortable. For a manager accustomed to distressed situations and patient capital, that may not be disqualifying. For other stakeholders, it increasingly is.

Britain’s consolidating gambling landscape rewards scale, proprietary assets, and operational discipline. By that measure, Kim’s strategy is coherent. Whether Bally’s can execute it without straining its financial structure remains the genuine question mark.