Fortune Bells

What is Fortune Bells?

The government said it aims to achieve this by increasing the forfeiture rate when gaming machine entitlements are traded from one in three to one in two. 

The NSW government initiated its first formal review of ClubGRANTS in over a decade after taking office in 2023. Although the final report was submitted in January 2025, it has yet to be released publicly. 

A government spokesperson stated that ministers are still considering the review’s findings, while updated guidance has been issued to clarify funding criteria for statewide services and tax obligations.

About Fortune Bells

“Our hope is that in the next few months there will be a window of opportunity where the market will be hotter and [it’s] a more interest rate friendly environment where we can go raise the money and then just put it in an escrow account,” Scheinthal said at the time.

That window Scheinthal had hoped for seems to be moving further away. Caesars’ proxy filing showed that even during negotiations in the spring, Fertitta refused to go above its $31-per-share offer “due to higher financing costs and increased macroeconomic risks”. From the end of 2025 to late April of this year, higher borrowing costs had resulted in “approximately $40 million per year in additional costs from when the process started”, the filing said.

Diller, for his part, lodged an all-cash, $48.30-per-share offer for MGM days after the Caesars deal broke. People Inc. finished Q2 with $1.1 billion in cash, but between the 74% of shares it would acquire, as well as MGM’s long-term debt of over $6 billion, some level of financing would be required. MGM appointed an independent committee to review the bid but has said nothing since.

How to play Fortune Bells

The move initially appeared to work. Flutter had a market capitalisation of about $36 billion when it began trading in New York in January 2024, rising to roughly $50 billion by June the following year. Flutter’s value later fell sharply as investors lowered their earnings expectations.

In the second quarter of 2026, Flutter’s US revenue fell 6% to $1.683 billion, while sportsbook revenue fell 15%. US adjusted EBITDA fell sharply, and Flutter subsequently reduced its guidance. Despite this, FanDuel retained the number-one US sportsbook position, with Flutter reporting a 39% share of US sportsbook gross gaming revenue.

Ben Robinson, managing partner at Corfai, argues that the American listing achieved what it was supposed to achieve. The problems came afterwards. “The question was which arm of the K-shaped market Flutter would end up on. We have the answer now. Capital is concentrated in a narrow band of technology names and everything else is being marked on earnings.”