Karel Komárek: From a Valve Loan to the UK National Lottery

Karel Komárek runs a business empire worth more than $10 billion, and it did not start in a boardroom. It started with a loan from his father to sell pipe valves in a small Czech town. From there he moved into mining equipment, then oil and gas, then a bankrupt national lottery, and eventually the UK National Lottery itself, the same licence Camelot had held for 30 years. Here is how a valve wholesaler became the chairman of one of the biggest lottery and gaming companies in the world.

How did Karel Komárek get his start?

With a loan from his father and a very unglamorous product. Komárek was born in 1969 in Hodonín, a small town in what was then Czechoslovakia, and was in his twenties when communist rule ended in 1989. In 1992 he borrowed 300,000 Czech crowns from his father and launched M.O.S. Hodonín, a small wholesaler of industrial valves and pipe fittings. There was nothing about lotteries or gaming in that first business. It was pipes, fittings and hardware, sold into a Czech economy that had just opened up and needed exactly that kind of supplier.

How did a valve company turn into an oil and gas business?

By moving into mining equipment first, then into energy directly. In 1996, M.O.S. Hodonín became Moravia Systems and started supplying technology to the mining industry, a stepping stone before Komárek moved into oil and gas outright. That energy business grew into KKCG, the investment group Komárek still owns and controls today, headquartered in Prague. One detail ties the whole story back to where it started: MND, the oil and gas producer that became KKCG's energy arm, is based in the same town where Komárek took out that first loan, Hodonín.

How did he end up owning a national lottery?

He bought it out of bankruptcy. Sazka, the company that had run the Czech Republic's national lottery for decades, spent heavily building a large multi-purpose arena in Prague and collapsed into bankruptcy in 2011 with debts of around 15 billion crowns. KKCG stepped into the wreckage, first as a part owner alongside another investment group, then took full ownership of Sazka by 2012. A valve and energy investor now controlled a national lottery.

How did Sazka Group grow into Allwyn?

By buying up lotteries across Europe, then changing its name for a bigger fight. In 2016, Komárek combined his lottery holdings with those of fellow Czech investor Jiří Šmejc's EMMA Capital to form Sazka Group, pulling together stakes in the Greek lottery operator OPAP, the Italian lottery joint venture Lottoitalia, and Austria's Casinos Austria and Österreichische Lotterien, alongside the Czech Sazka business itself. By 2018, Sazka Group was the largest lottery group in Europe. In 2019, Komárek bought out EMMA Capital's 25% stake for 630 million euros, becoming Sazka Group's sole owner. Two years later, in December 2021, Sazka Group changed its name to Allwyn, a rebrand built around one goal: winning the UK's National Lottery.

How did Allwyn win the UK National Lottery?

By beating three other bidders, including the incumbent, in a formal competition run by the UK Gambling Commission, the same regulator that licenses every operator in the market (see what a UK gambling licence costs). Camelot had operated the National Lottery since it launched in 1994. When its licence came up for renewal, the Gambling Commission ran a competition for a fourth licence with four finalists: Allwyn, Camelot, Italy's Sisal, and The New Lottery Company, owned by media entrepreneur Richard Desmond. Only Allwyn and Camelot passed every mandatory requirement and cleared the required score on their business plans. In March 2022, the Gambling Commission named Allwyn the preferred applicant. Camelot sued, arguing the decision was wrong and seeking roughly 500 million pounds in damages, then dropped its legal challenge in September 2022 once the licence award was confirmed. Allwyn bought Camelot outright from its owner, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, in a deal reported at around 100 million pounds, and formally took over the National Lottery on February 1, 2024, ending Camelot's 30-year run as operator. A separate challenge from The New Lottery Company, seeking as much as 1.3 billion pounds in damages, dragged on until the Court of Appeal upheld Allwyn's licence in July 2026, finally closing the competition more than four years after it was first decided.

What changed for UK lottery players once Allwyn took over?

Less than the headlines once suggested, but the money reaching good causes has grown. The minimum age to buy a Lotto ticket, scratchcard or play online had already risen from 16 to 18 back in 2021, under Camelot, not Allwyn. What Allwyn changed was scale: it pledged to raise 38 billion pounds for good causes over its 10-year licence, more than double the 17.9 billion pounds Camelot generated in its final decade. In 2025, the National Lottery generated more than 1.7 billion pounds for good causes, up from a run rate of about 30 million pounds a week when Allwyn took over. In July 2026, Allwyn added the US game Powerball to UK shelves under a new licence variation, its first new global draw game since taking over, and it began piloting a 10 pound scratchcard the same month. A cut in the Lotto ticket price from 2 pounds back to 1 pound, once one of Allwyn's headline campaign promises, is reportedly still under review rather than delivered.

What is the Allwyn-OPAP merger, and why does it matter?

It is how Komárek finally took his company public, on his second attempt. Allwyn first tried to list in 2022 through a merger with a US special purpose acquisition company, Cohn Robbins Holdings Corp, in a deal that valued Allwyn at $9.3 billion and aimed for a New York Stock Exchange listing. Both sides scrapped that plan in September 2022 as markets turned volatile. The route that worked ran through Athens instead. In October 2025, Allwyn agreed to merge with Greek lottery and betting operator OPAP in an all-share deal valuing the combined company at about 16 billion euros. The merger completed on March 24, 2026: KKCG holds roughly 78.5% of the combined group's economic interest and 85% of its voting rights, with OPAP's public shareholders holding the rest, creating the world's second-largest listed lottery and gaming operator. Komárek chairs the combined company, listed on the Athens Stock Exchange, while Allwyn's existing management team continues to run day-to-day operations.

What else does Karel Komárek own?

A lot more than lotteries. KKCG is built around four pillars: lottery and gaming (Allwyn), energy (the oil and gas producer MND, active across the Czech Republic, Austria, Ukraine and Germany), information technology (the Aricoma and Qinshift software groups), and real estate, including the Bořislavka Centrum development in Prague. Outside KKCG, Komárek has also moved into competitive sailing: he co-founded and finances an America's Cup challenger, American Racing Challenger Team USA, and holds a stake in the Ferretti Group, the Italian luxury yacht builder.

How much is Karel Komárek worth today?

Forbes puts his real-time net worth at about $10.1 billion as of September 2026, ranking him among the world's few hundred wealthiest people. Almost all of that fortune traces back to a single decision in 1992: borrowing 300,000 crowns from his father instead of looking for a salaried job in a country that had just left communism behind.

The bottom line

Karel Komárek built a business empire across energy, technology and real estate before he ever touched a lottery ticket, then turned a bankrupt Czech gambling operator into the company that beat Camelot for the UK's National Lottery and merged with a Greek public company to get listed on his own terms. None of it required an inheritance. It required a loan from his father, a series of unglamorous pivots, and enough patience to win a regulatory competition that took years to settle.

Winning a national lottery licence is one route into gambling at that scale, but it is not the only one, and it is not one most operators need. See what a UK gambling licence costs if regulation is the part you are trying to plan for, or what it takes to launch your own casino or sportsbook brand without needing to outlast a government tender first.