Marketing investment drives Zeal revenue up 32% in H1
The German lottery seller is seeing its investment in marketing pay off already.
Germany.- The Hamburg-based lottery seller Zeal has reported strong financial performance for H1 despite a backdrop of relatively weak jackpot conditions. Thanks to a rise in player numbers, group revenue reached €101.5m, marking a 32 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2024.
Lottery revenue rose 34 per cent to €91m, while Zeal’s igaming division continued to gain traction, with revenue up by 49 per cent year-over-year to €6.7m. The igaming segment now has over 480 titles.
Although the average jackpots for LOTTO 6aus49 and Eurojackpot were lower than those in the prior year, ticket sales rose by 4 per cent to €527.3m. Zeal attributed part of this to its marketing efforts, which drove a 12 per cent rise in the average number of monthly active customers to 1.51 million.
Marketing costs rose by 14 per cent to €29.1m, and the cost to acquire each new customer increased by 41 per cent, hitting €46.93. But the group saw significant benefits from a deliberate increase in expenditures, acquiring 499,000 new customers.
Zeal’s gross margin rose by 3.8 percentage points to 17.3 per cent on the back of a pricing adjustment last year and a shift in its product offerings. EBITDA was up by 76 per cent to €35.4m.
Chief financial officer Andrea Behrendt called the half-year outcome “a true team success,” noting that achieving the results amid subdued jackpots underscored the company’s operational strength.
Outgoing CEO Helmut Becker added: “We once again achieved strong results in the first half of 2025. Zeal’s continued growth path proves that our business model is highly robust and scalable over the long term. “We are in an excellent position to further expand our market leadership in a growing industry.”
Zeal Network recently announced the appointment of the Austrian businessman Dr Stefan Tweraser as its new chief executive officer, effective from September 15. Tweraser joins the company from the new space company Rocket Factory Augsburg AG, where he has served as CEO since October 2021. He will join the company as a Management Board member on August 25.
