Flutter Plans Up to 1,400 Job Cuts Following UK Gambling Tax Increases

Flutter Entertainment, the owner of Paddy Power, Sky Bet and FanDuel, plans to cut up to 1,400 jobs in its UK and Ireland business, and it is blaming the gambling tax rises in last year’s Autumn Budget. Flutter announced the restructure on October 20, and the plans are still subject to consultation.

The cuts would remove around 15% of the division’s workforce. Flutter employs 28,500 people worldwide, including 9,000 in the UK and Ireland. The company named Leeds and Dublin, along with UK and Ireland staff at its hubs in Porto, Portugal, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The BBC understands staff in London, Sunderland, Malta and Gibraltar could also be affected.

Restructuring will cost Flutter $80m-$90m, money it says was already in the guidance it issued with its second-quarter results and will spend in the fourth quarter. The company left the London Stock Exchange in August, and its shares have fallen 64.5% since the start of the year, City AM reported.

The Tax Bill Behind the Cuts

Former chancellor Rachel Reeves used her November 2025 Budget to nearly double Remote Gaming Duty, the tax on online casino games, from 21% to 40%. That rate has applied since April 2026. Duty on online sports betting, with horse racing excluded, rises from 15% to 25% in April 2027.

Reeves gave her reasoning in the Budget speech: “Remote Gaming is associated with the highest levels of harm.” In-person gambling and racing were left alone.

Flutter puts the cost at $540m of adjusted EBITDA in 2027, before it does anything about it. It expects to offset $201m of that through what it calls first-order mitigation, and this restructure is part of that plan.

Cannot Fully Absorb It

Kevin Harrington, Flutter’s UK and Ireland chief executive, said the higher duties have “fundamentally changed the economic model of the regulated betting and gaming industry in the UK while helping to fuel the unlicensed, unregulated market.”

“As we warned a year ago, we cannot fully absorb a rise of this magnitude without reducing our fixed cost base and therefore must restructure our business so that we can best position ourselves for the future,” he said.

But the government isn’t taking the blame. A government spokesperson told the BBC the job cuts were a “commercial decision for Flutter, not the UK government”, while adding that it understood this would be a difficult time for the workers.

Paddy Power Shops Are a Separate Hit

The 1,400 figure doesn’t include shop staff. In September, Paddy Power put up to 100 betting shops in the UK and Ireland under review, with around 400 jobs at risk, and Flutter says those shops are not part of this week’s announcement.

Rivals are cutting too. William Hill closed 270 shops in April, Betfred announced 132 closures in July that affected 600 workers, bet365 unveiled around 340 redundancies in September and Ladbrokes owner Entain proposed cutting 400 customer service jobs. William Hill’s parent, Evoke, agreed in June to an all-share takeover by Greek lottery group Bally’s Intralot that valued it at about £243.1 million. Shareholders have approved the deal, and the court hearing to sanction it is expected in the final quarter of 2026 or the first quarter of 2027.

Bookmakers Lobby Healey Before the Budget

The Betting and Gaming Council, the industry’s trade body, says more than 600 betting shops have closed and 10,250 jobs across online and retail have been lost or announced for redundancy since the 2025 Budget. Its chief executive, Grainne Hurst, called Flutter’s news “another devastating blow to workers and families across our sector”.

The timing matters. Chancellor John Healey delivers the Budget on October 28, and the industry’s next fight is over Machine Games Duty, the tax on gaming machines such as the slot machines in betting shops. On October 21 the BGC responded to reports that the Treasury is considering raising it from 20% to 25%.

Six bosses, Harrington among them, wrote to Healey last week asking him to rule out further rises and to pause the April 2027 betting duty increase. Their letter cited EY modelling that doubling the duty on Category B machines to 40% could close as many as 1,470 betting shops and 34 casinos and cost up to 15,900 jobs.

Burnham Targets the High Street

Pressure is coming from Downing Street as well. Prime Minister Andy Burnham promised in August to give councils more power to block new betting shops and vape shops, saying the high streets many people grew up with “have been hollowed out”.

His plan scraps the “aim to permit” rule, which limits the ability of local authorities to stop betting shops and 24-hour slot machine venues from opening in their area.