Evoke Grows 888’s Brand By Acquiring the Romanian Winner.ro

Evoke (formerly 888 Holdings) announced its recent acquisition of Winner.ro, a Romanian iGaming brand. This purchase had players keeping an eye on the brand to see what changes it would enact in the Romanian market. We discuss this sale and its consequences for the 888 brand in Romania.

Evoke recently purchased the majority shares in New Gambling Solutions (NGS). NGS is a Bucharest-based iGaming brand that operates using its local domain, Winner.ro. The 51% shares Evoke bought in this brand were worth €10 million and opened a few doors for the company.

This brand already had a presence in the Romanian market thanks to its 888.ro company. With this sale, the brand will combine its existing domain and business and the newly acquired Winner company into one product. 

Its name will remain NGS. This is in an effort to “leverage a local hero brand” by combining it with their “highly complementary, world-renowned casino brand.” This purchase is part of Evoke’s multi-brand strategy, which Evoke’s VP Head of Poker and Managing Director ROW, Amit Berkovich, alluded to in a previous interview. 

The new company will likely take over management of the land-based 888 poker room situated in Alba Iulia Square, Bucharest. Further, while it wasn’t part of the announcement, this sale might mean poker becomes one of the products on Winner.ro. 

Poker wasn’t part of this offering before the acquisition. However, Evoke might add its poker software to the domain since it already offers it through its 888poker.ro domain. If the company takes this route, the Winner and 888poker domains might share a player pool.

While iGaming was officially legalised in Romania in 2010, the country only established the National Gambling Office (ONJN) in 2013. Further, poker has international liquidity, with several poker rooms available in the market. Brands like GGPoker, Unibet, PokerStars, iPoker’s NetBet, and Vlad Casino are all available.

Winner used to be the seventh-largest iGaming company, but by combining it with the 888 company, it jumped to the fourth-largest brand. The new company will hold a 7% share of the combined market. This move isn’t really surprising, considering that experts believe the Romanian iGaming market will show a 13% CAGR growth rate from now until 2026.

Currently, 888 Romania Limited holds four domains with the ONJN on a licence that’ll expire in August 2026. Meanwhile, the NGS licence has 14 linked domains and only expires in November 2033. Winner’s CEO, Nicklas Zajdel, will manage the merged NGS brand.

Winner has been a popular Romanian brand since it launched in 2019. With an approximate gross revenue of €19 million in 2024’s first half, we can understand why Evoke chose to purchase the majority shares. The company’s share can further grow to 57%, as it has the option to purchase the rest of the shares on the three-year sale anniversary. With this purchase, Romania became Evoke’s fifth core market after the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Italy.