Flutter, owner of Paddy Power and PokerStars, warned that a slew of “unfavourable” sports results and a suspension of operations in the Netherlands would hit earnings by about £70m this year.

The group, which owns the Paddy Power and Betfair brands and is one of the world’s largest online gambling companies, said a run of favourites winning Premier League and international football matches and the boxer Tyson Fury’s knockout victory in Las Vegas had hit earnings by about £60m in October.

It also warned that a new licensing regime for online gambling introduced in the Netherlands in October would force it to temporarily pull out of the Dutch market at a cost of £10m this year and £40m next.

The group said it now expected overall earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for 2021 to be between £1.24bn and £1.28bn, as opposed to the £1.27bn to £1.37bn range it previously guided.

Flutter is the second international gambling company to say it would pause operations in the Netherlands following the rule change. 888 said last month that it expected to take a $10m hit to earnings.

Flutter’s share price fell 8 per cent in early morning London trading on Tuesday, extending its decline for the year to more than 16 per cent.

Peter Jackson, Flutter’s chief executive, said he hoped the group, whose PokerStars brand is particularly popular in the Netherlands, would re-enter the market in the second half of next year.

He added that it was “pretty unusual” for the company to have such a run of customer-friendly sports results across its business, which is licensed in more than 20 markets. “There is nothing structural going on and we have a way of assessing the extent to which the results are lucky or not,” Jackson said.

Paul Leyland, an analyst at Regulus Partners, said the loss from sports outcomes was “bad luck” but the temporary withdrawal from the Netherlands “is a reminder of the risks run in grey markets — the cash flow is nice but capitalising the value is dangerous”.

Grey markets are those that do not yet have gambling legislation in place but where betting is not explicitly illegal.

Flutter said that despite the headwinds, it had increased its number of average monthly players to 7.3m in the three months to the end of September, up 13 per cent compared with the same period in 2020. Revenues, at constant currency, rose 12 per cent to £1.4bn.

The group warned that it faced challenging comparisons to last year when a wealth of sports events that had been held up by the first UK and European lockdowns took place.

Its revenues in the UK, for example, fell 5 per cent compared with the previous year, to £491m.

Much of the group’s growth strategy is pinned on its FanDuel brand in the US, which was also hit by a run of favourites winning NFL matches in the early part of the season resulting in an impact on earnings of about £15m.

Jackson said Flutter was spending “a lot more than last year” on marketing its US brands this NFL season amid fierce competition for customers and companies offering huge amounts of money in free bets.

“It’s not sustainable for people to be giving away as much money as they have,” Jackson said, echoing earlier comments from FanDuel’s new chief executive that ultimately only a few companies would survive.

The US market has become the hot ticket for gambling companies looking for rapid growth after states began to legalise sports betting in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that permitted gambling outside of Nevada in 2018.

Jackson denied speculation that FanDuel was looking to buy the sports media company The Athletic but did not rule out further acquisitions.