Kim’s Distressed-Asset Play Moves Into Europe
There is a familiar type of investor who appears when industries are distressed, out of favour or structurally misunderstood. Soo Kim fits that pattern.
The South Korea-born, Queens-raised hedge fund manager built his reputation through Standard General, an investment firm focused on troubled assets others viewed as too indebted, politically difficult or operationally messy. Critics called him opportunistic; supporters called him disciplined.
Now Kim, who also chairs Bally’s Corporation, is pursuing a more ambitious goal: assembling a transatlantic gambling group through debt, distressed assets and strategic patience. Nowhere is that ambition more visible than in Britain.
Evoke and the LiveScore Question
The proposed acquisition of Evoke plc — owner of William Hill, 888 and Mr Green — by Bally’s Intralot would create one of the UK’s largest online gambling operators. Yet industry chatter suggests Evoke may not be Bally’s only target.
According to a recent edition of Scott Longley’s Earnings+More newsletter, Bally’s Intralot is also exploring a potential bid for LiveScore Group, the media-to-betting operator behind LiveScore Bet and Virgin Bet.
At first glance, the logic may seem contradictory. Why pursue another UK-facing betting brand while trying to absorb William Hill and 888? The answer may lie in Kim’s broader European strategy.
A Group Built From Fragments
Kim does not build businesses in a conventional way. He accumulates pieces.
Under his leadership, Bally’s has become a sprawling gaming conglomerate spanning casinos, lotteries, online gaming and media-adjacent betting assets. It operates nearly 20 casinos, has established Bally’s Interactive, owns a UK casino at Aspers Newcastle, is the largest shareholder in The Star Entertainment Group and is developing casino projects in Chicago, Las Vegas and New York.
Speaking recently to GGB Magazine, Kim described Bally’s ambition in broad terms: “We believe in gaming in all its forms, and maybe our ambition is to become the first truly global gaming company.”
Britain matters because it offers something increasingly rare in gambling: scale, liquidity, regulatory maturity and operational expertise. While many operators now view the UK as overtaxed and overregulated, Kim appears to see consolidation opportunity.
During his keynote at ICE earlier this year, Kim argued that higher taxes and tighter regulation could ultimately reduce competition by squeezing smaller operators out of the market. Bally’s appears to believe tougher rules may hurt weaker companies while strengthening larger operators with the scale to absorb pressure.
Why LiveScore Could Matter
Chad Beynon, head of US research at Macquarie Capital, sees a similar trend across the UK market. “In the UK, we’ve seen outsized benefits, particularly with FLUT [Flutter Entertainment], from their multi-brand strategy,” he said. “Globally, customers have discerning tastes, especially for iGaming, compared to online sports betting.”
He argued Bally’s continued focus on Britain reflects the resilience and strategic value of its UK-facing operations, despite mounting regulatory pressure. “The UK business has been quite resilient and management’s focus and attention towards that market highlights that there could be additional interest and synergies there,” Beynon said.
He also believes Britain’s post-tax hike environment increasingly favours scale. “In the early days post-iGaming tax changes, we’re seeing the stronger companies surviving and some of the smaller companies languishing, without a white knight,” he said. “Being part of a bigger organisation with shared corporate costs would help companies navigate through this tax adjustment.”
Ben Robinson, managing partner at Corfai, said that logic helps explain Bally’s interest in LiveScore. “William Hill is the mass-market sportsbook with a retail backbone,” Robinson said. “LiveScore Bet sits behind a 100 million-user media front end which is the only owned acquisition funnel at that scale in iGaming.”
“The real prize is the media asset,” he added. “Under a 40% RGD the biggest variable in UK unit economics is customer acquisition cost.”
That observation goes to the centre of Bally’s thinking. In an era of rising taxes and escalating acquisition costs, operators with proprietary media funnels possess a structural advantage. LiveScore’s audience could offer Bally’s a cheaper route to customers than traditional affiliate or television marketing models.
Robinson also argued LiveScore’s partnership with X and xAI could become strategically valuable through “real-time trading models, personalisation and betting flow piped straight into X”. In that context, LiveScore is less a sportsbook acquisition than a data and audience acquisition.
The Debt Question
Bally’s appetite for deals has raised questions about how the company can finance them all.
The proposed Evoke transaction alone is substantial: Evoke carries roughly £1.86 billion in debt. Bally’s Intralot already has significant leverage. Add a potential £500 million LiveScore acquisition and the financing burden becomes even larger.
Robinson estimates that a combined Bally’s Intralot and Evoke entity “would carry around £3.3 billion of debt against roughly £730 million of EBITDA”. Adding LiveScore would likely push total refinancing needs towards £4 billion.
“The all-share component of the Evoke approach is the tell that cash is already scarce,” Robinson said.
Evoke confirmed in May that discussions with Bally’s Intralot were continuing and that the deadline for a firm offer had been extended until 8 June. Any proposal would likely consist of “an all-share combination with a partial cash alternative”, suggesting Bally’s is trying to preserve liquidity while relying on future synergies and refinancing capacity.
Beynon argued Bally’s ability to keep pursuing expansion despite elevated leverage reflects management’s flexibility in accessing capital markets. “From a capital allocation standpoint, the company continues to be nimble with the markets with respect to raising capital, primarily through sale-leaseback deals on their retail business, but also recently with their Intralot transaction,” he said.
While acknowledging Bally’s debt levels remain high, Beynon believes management has navigated funding pressures effectively. “Financial leverage for the company remains high, as do their aspirations for further growth, but management has been able to successfully navigate the funding situation during the last few years,” he said.
Scepticism Over Strategy and Execution
Others are considerably more sceptical. “I’m not sure anyone understands – including leadership – the strategy of Bally’s,” said Brendan Bussmann, managing partner at B Global. “You continue to see significant M&A activity that has become a collection of toys but no full alignment.”
He argued Bally’s increasingly resembles a company attempting to build multiple mega-projects simultaneously while lacking the balance sheet strength traditionally associated with such ambitions. “Apparently Mr. Kim has found the proverbial money tree because at some point, the music has to stop,” Bussmann said.
Those concerns are not theoretical. Bally’s temporary Chicago casino has underperformed expectations, while its Las Vegas development remains phased and cautious.
Kim himself acknowledged that caution recently, saying: “We’re not in a position to spend $5 or $6 billion all at once – and, even if we had it, I’m not sure we would.”
That comment may reveal something about Kim’s operating philosophy: assets are built step by step, financed creatively and monetised over long horizons. As he told GGB Magazine recently: “I’ve made a living cleaning up after other people’s mistakes.”
Britain as a Consolidation Market
So why pursue Britain so aggressively while others pull back? Partly because that retreat creates opportunity.
Flutter already has scale. Entain remains distracted by governance and regulatory pressure. Smaller operators are struggling with Britain’s tougher tax and compliance environment.
Bally’s appears to believe there is space for a new scaled challenger built through consolidation. Robinson sees the strategy as fundamentally economic. “The same tax wave pushing mid-tier operators out creates room for one or two scaled consolidators to dominate,” he said. “The operator with the lowest acquisition cost and the largest base to absorb the duty hit wins disproportionately.”
That may explain why Kim remains optimistic while others grow more cautious. It also helps explain Bally’s preference for assets that initially appear messy. William Hill, 888, Gamesys, Intralot, Star Entertainment and potentially LiveScore all come with operational, financial or reputational complications that have deterred cleaner bidders. Kim appears unusually comfortable operating inside complexity.
A Forbes profile portrayed him as a financier attracted to industries where politics, regulation and stigma suppress valuations. Gambling fits naturally into that worldview. It is also noticeable how Kim increasingly speaks less like a hedge fund activist and more like a long-term operator focused on building a globally diversified gaming platform.
What Is the Endgame?
The obvious question is whether there is a coherent endpoint to all this accumulation.
Bussmann doubts it. “Looking at different assets that do not always look like they fit in the tool shed seems to be more of the norm than the outlier,” he said.
Yet there may be more coherence than first appears. A combined Bally’s-Evoke-LiveScore structure would potentially leave Bally’s controlling one of the UK’s largest online gambling operators while also owning a proprietary sports media funnel capable of lowering acquisition costs across multiple brands.
Robinson believes the destination is ultimately strategic rather than operational. “The likely strategic destination is to be the dominant UK online operator with a scaled European platform behind it, then either re-rate as a standalone or sell to a US strategic,” he said.
That would align closely with Kim’s broader history. Standard General has rarely been ideological about ownership duration. Assets are assembled, stabilised, repriced and eventually monetised.
But the risk of failure remains high. Bally’s is managing resort projects, restructuring in Australia, refinancing pressures and aggressive deal-making all at the same time in one of the world’s most heavily regulated markets.
And yet Kim keeps buying. “We believe in gaming in all its forms,” he said recently. That may be a sign that Bally’s’ European ambitions are only beginning.
Bally’s declined to comment for this article.