Gurhan Kiziloz’s Nexus International hits $1.2b revenue in 2025, challenging Flutter’s dominance

Flutter may dominate the gaming industry by scale, but Nexus International is challenging its supremacy with a debt-free model built for long-term control rather than quarterly performance.

In the global gaming industry, size has always been the primary metric of power. For years, the undisputed heavyweight has been Flutter Entertainment (NYSE: FLUT), the $30 billion conglomerate behind FanDuel, Paddy Power, and Betfair. With trailing revenues of $15.4 billion and a dominant position in the US, Flutter appears untouchable.

But a closer look at the 2025 financial disclosures reveals a crack in the armor, and a challenger that is exploiting it with ruthless efficiency.

Gurhan Kiziloz’s Nexus International has just confirmed $1.2 billion in annual revenue. On the surface, Nexus International is less than 10% the size of Flutter. But in the metrics that matter for the next decade of business, liquidity, sovereignty, and infrastructure control, Kiziloz isn’t just competing with the giants. He is exposing them.

Flutter Entertainment is a machine, but it is a machine built on leverage. As of late 2025, Flutter carried approximately $12 billion in long-term debt, a staggering figure that grew by nearly 75% year-over-year as it borrowed to fund expansion. Its operating margins, squeezed by regulatory taxes and massive marketing spend, have hovered in the single digits (3-6%).

In stark contrast, Nexus International has zero debt.

This sovereign liquidity has also allowed Kiziloz to open a second front in the technology war, completely distinct from his gaming interests. He has poured substantial capital into BlockDAG, a Layer-1 protocol designed to solve the scalability bottlenecks that still handicap networks like Ethereum and Solana. By utilizing Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) architecture to enable parallel transaction processing, the project aims to deliver a speed and security standard that the current market leaders cannot match. 

Kiziloz has built a $1.7 billion net worth and a $1.2 billion revenue engine without taking a single dollar from a bank or a venture capitalist. While Flutter pays hundreds of millions in interest expenses annually to service its debt, Nexus reinvests its cash flow directly into infrastructure.

“Fintech is for bureaucrats,” Kiziloz told Gulf News recently. “We’re at war.” This isn’t just rhetoric; it’s financial physics. In a high-interest-rate environment, the company with zero debt is infinitely more maneuverable than the company owing $12 billion.

The structural difference extends to leadership. Flutter is run by Peter Jackson, a highly capable executive who was paid $22 million in total compensation in 2024. But Jackson is an employee. He answers to a board, to shareholders, and to the quarterly expectations of Wall Street. He cannot burn profit to build a 10-year moat without risking his stock price.

Gurhan Kiziloz answers to no one.

Owning 100% of Nexus International, Kiziloz can execute strategies that public CEOs cannot touch. In 2025, Nexus reported a 7% profit dip. For a public company like Flutter, this would trigger a sell-off. For Kiziloz, it was a deliberate tactical move, the “Amazon Doctrine”, burning margin to fund the massive BlockDAG blockchain infrastructure.

While Flutter’s leadership is focused on hitting Q3 earnings per share (EPS), Kiziloz is focused on owning the settlement layer of the entire industry by 2030.

Make no mistake: Flutter is still the Goliath. Its sheer scale, specifically with FanDuel in the US, is massive. But history is littered with Goliaths who were bled dry by leaner, faster, debt-free insurgents.

Nexus International’s $1.2 billion revenue is not just a number for 2025; it is a proof-of-concept for a new model of industrialist tech. It proves you don’t need $12 billion in debt to scale. It proves you don’t need a board of directors to govern. And it proves that while the incumbents are busy managing their stock price, the sovereign operators are busy building the future.

Flutter should be worried. Not because Nexus is bigger, but because Nexus is playing a completely different game, and it has the cash to play it forever.