Playtika returns to profit as Disney Solitaire nearly quadruples in size – and yet UA spend will drop by 70%

Disney Solitaire fuelled a big quarter for Playtika, with revenue for the game up 288.6% year-on-year, helping the company swing back to profit after Q1’s loss.

And yet Playtika later confirmed in the earnings call that it would be reducing marketing spend on the title by around 70% in the second half of this year.

This follows recent reports that Playtika was looking to offload Disney Solitaire maker SuperPlay to Tencent. Those reports suggested that Playtika was having trouble keeping up with earnouts agreed with SuperPlay when it was acquired by Playtika for an initial $700m back in 2024 – before Disney Solitaire’s wildly successful launch.

“We’re reducing overall Super Play marketing investment by roughly 70% in the second half [of 2026] versus the first half,” said CFO Tae Lee. “But in terms of the revenue decline that we expect, it’s nowhere close to that.”

Lee added that the reduction in marketing spend is “concentrated in Disney Solitaire, which carries the largest single reduction in user acquisition spend.”

Playtika boss Robert Antokol seemed to pre-empt speculation around why exactly UA spend was dropping so dramatically on the title earlier in the call, insisting that the drop in UA spend has not caused Disney Solitaire to decline dramatically so far.

“We brought our marketing spending down, and the game still grew,” said Antokol . “It only happens when the players you have added continue to stay with you when they keep playing and they keep spending, and this is how we ask you to judge this business,” he said.

In prepared remarks, he also said: “Disney Solitaire grew again this quarter even as we reduced our marketing investment and our margins expanded meaningfully. These results reflect the durability of our model and the discipline of our execution.”

Overall, Playtika reported total Q2 revenue of $731.1m, up 5% on the same period last year, though down slightly on Q1 as the company pulled back marketing spend.

Adjusted EBITDA rose to $206.1m, up 23.4% year-on-year and 64.6% sequentially, taking the adjusted EBITDA margin to 28.2%, up from 16.8% in Q1.

Bingo Blitz revenue fell to $145.1m, down 9.5% year-on-year and 5.6% sequentially, while June’s Journey held broadly steady at $74.7m, up 8.1% year-on-year despite a small sequential dip.

Average daily paying users fell 2.9% year-on-year to 367,000, though average payer conversion improved to 4.6%, up from 4.3% a year earlier.

Playtika reaffirmed full-year 2026 guidance of $2.75bn–$2.85bn in revenue and $750m–$790m in adjusted EBITDA, but flagged that a more cautious view of consumer spending and a further planned step-down in second-half marketing mean results are now likely to land toward the lower end of both ranges.

“Our second quarter reflected the investment cadence we outlined last quarter, marketing stepped down materially, margins expanded, and SuperPlay became a positive Adjusted EBITDA contributor,” added CFO Tae Lee.