bet365 Cuts 340 Jobs as Gambling Tax Rises Bite Industry
bet365 has announced it is cutting around 340 jobs across its operations in Stoke-on-Trent, Gibraltar and Malta, a reduction of roughly 3% of its workforce. The move, confirmed this week, makes the Coates family-owned firm the last of the UK’s five largest gambling companies to announce redundancies since the government’s gambling tax increases took effect.
What’s actually changed
The firm, which is led by the Coates family and is the biggest private employer in Stoke-on-Trent, is set to reduce its workforce by 340 – or 3%, with around 300 of bet365’s estimated 5,500 employees in Stoke-on-Trent set to be impacted, and the other 40 affected roles in its Gibraltar and Malta offices.
A company spokesperson said
bet365 continually reviews and assesses its operations to ensure the business’ long-term future, and is currently facing a highly competitive trading environment, plus increased regulatory and tax-related costs, which is why it is restructuring some of its locations this year.
The cuts follow a significant change to gambling taxation.
Under Chancellor Rachel Reeves, the tax on online casinos and digital slot machines was increased from 21% to 40%, while levies on most online sports betting are set to rise from 15% to 25% starting in 2027.
Remote betting duty will rise from 15% to 25% in April 2027, except for bets on UK horse racing,
which keeps its lower rate.
bet365 joins William Hill owner evoke, Entain, Flutter Entertainment and Betfred in trimming its workforce due to the impacts of the 19% increase in Remote Gaming Duty, and the pending 10% rise in General Betting Duty.
The scale of the wider fallout is significant:
this adds to the 4,500 jobs already lost in the gambling sector since Labour’s Budget last year.
In March, evoke announced its plans to close up to 200 William Hill shops, which is rumoured to impact up to 1,500 employees,
while
Betfred confirmed it would be closing 132 shops, affecting over 600 of its workforce.
There are also reports that a further increase to Machine Games Duty is being considered for the Chancellor’s next Budget, with
industry modelling suggesting this could see more than 2,900 betting shops closing and reduce the sector’s contribution to British racing through levy and media rights by £70 million.
What it means for you
These job losses sit in support, technology and corporate functions rather than customer-facing roles that directly manage your account, but the underlying pressure is worth understanding. Higher duty rates eat into operator margins, and firms across the sector have responded by cutting costs wherever they can, from head-office jobs to high-street shops. For players, the practical questions are whether service standards, complaint-handling capacity or investment in safer-gambling tools come under similar pressure as firms look to protect their bottom line.
The Betting and Gaming Council, which represents licensed operators, argues the tax rises are pushing players towards unregulated sites.
Betting and Gaming Council chief executive Grainne Hurst said the news was “yet more evidence of the real-world consequences of the tax rises imposed on Britain’s betting and gaming industry”.
She added that the government must now rule out any further tax rises on the sector, and should instead pursue an evidence-led approach which protects jobs, investment and the regulated market, rather than handing an advantage to the unsafe, unregulated illegal gambling market.
If you’re a bet365 customer, there’s no indication your account, deposit limits or bonus terms are changing as a direct result of these cuts, but it’s a reminder that the financial health of licensed operators and the funding available for player protection are increasingly bound up with tax policy.
The bigger picture
Not everyone accepts the industry’s framing.
Carsten Jung of the Institute for Public Policy Research has previously argued that because of the nature of the tax rises, employment effects should be limited, and that the BGC’s own estimate of up to 40,000 potential job losses was “overstated” and “seriously flawed”.
That disagreement over the real scale of the damage is likely to keep running as more operators report their own restructuring.
The bet365 cuts land just as the government weighs a further rise to Machine Games Duty in the autumn Budget, and as the statutory levy and safer-gambling reforms from the Gambling Act White Paper continue to bed in. For a sector already absorbing higher duty rates, tighter affordability checks and licence enforcement action against smaller operators, the question this raises for players is whether the money squeezed out through tax increases is being matched by the investment needed to keep consumer protection standards moving forward, or whether cost-cutting elsewhere in the business ends up filling the gap.
Sources
- SBC News – bet365’s 340 job cuts bring IPPR projections to the fore
- Racing Post – Bet365 to cut 340 jobs in latest blow from higher gambling taxes
- IndexBox – Bet365 Job Cuts: 340 Roles Affected in UK, Gibraltar, and Malta
- MSN – Bet365 slashes hundreds of jobs in the UK as bookies reel from Labour’s tax raid
- iGaming Expert – bet365 job cuts underpin challenging economic environment
