Entain Could Cut 400 Jobs – In March, Its CEO Said That Wasn’t the Plan

Key Points

• Entain has begun a formal consultation that could remove up to 400 of its roughly 2,000 customer care roles across 11 global hubs, with the process expected to conclude by November.
• CEO Stella David wrote directly to Prime Minister Andy Burnham on September 11, warning that doubling Machine Games Duty to 40% would add £100m annually to Entain’s UK retail cost base.
• The cuts follow 500 corporate and technology role reductions confirmed in July, making this the second major restructuring announcement at Entain in under two months.

Stella David, the CEO of Entain, assured Bloomberg in March 2026 that job cuts were never on their agenda. “It’s got nothing to do with job cuts; it’s all about taking market share,” she said. In seven months’ time, however, the owner of Ladbrokes and Coral has embarked on consultations that could lead to the elimination of up to 400 of its roughly 2,000 customer care jobs from 11 locations around the world by November. It is an irony that the company which refused to restructure itself twice in two months is now doing exactly that.

A Consultation That Covers 11 Hubs, Not Just the UK

Confirmed on September 16, the proposed changes would affect locations including the UK, Gibraltar, Austria, Bulgaria, Brazil, India, Ireland, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay. An internal email obtained by NEXT.io, sent under new Chief Operating Officer Hugo Gonzalez, described a review that “highlighted opportunities to reduce complexity, clarify roles and responsibilities, and create a more consistent global organisation.” Sources told NEXT.io that no player safety roles, meaning front-line customer intervention positions, are being affected by the changes. Player protections, at least, are being ringfenced.

The scale matters. An operator with 11 separate customer care hubs across continents, built through years of acquisitions, was always likely to face consolidation pressure. Entain’s own sources acknowledged to NEXT.io that the rationalisation would likely have happened in any case, with UK tax rises making the changes “more drastic than they might otherwise have been.” That is an important distinction, and one that has largely been buried beneath the political framing of the announcement.

The Tax Timeline That Explains the Pressure

In order to understand the changes, the timeline for the UK gambling duty is crucial. The Remote Gaming Duty increased from 21% to 40% on April 1, 2026. Following that, a new 25% General Betting Duty rate on most remote betting will come into effect in April 2027. Entain predicted that those changes would result in annual additional costs of approximately £200m for its online operations in the UK and Ireland, without any mitigation measures.

Numbers in H1 2026 results, released in August, demonstrate the extent of the issue. The Group’s underlying EBITDA was £479m, representing a 2% drop compared to last year, and above the company’s estimate of £455m due to increased customer volumes as a result of the FIFA World Cup. The Online EBITDA decreased by 5% to £395m. Higher tax related to online gambling in the UK was responsible for Entain’s underlying operating profits decreasing by 10%, despite the revenue growth.

Confirmed in July, around 500 roles across corporate functions, finance, people and product and technology were announced as being affected, in a restructuring led by new CFO Michael Snape. At the time, Entain described the programme as an efficiency initiative and said it was not a direct response to UK tax increases. Now, six weeks before the October 28 Budget, 400 more roles are in a consultation process that is explicitly linked to tax. The framing has moved considerably.

What the Letter to Burnham Actually Says?

The same day the consultation was announced, Entain published a letter David sent to Prime Minister Andy Burnham on September 11. The letter argues against a proposed further increase in Machine Games Duty on Category B slot machines, currently taxed at 20%, which the Treasury is reportedly modelling ahead of the Autumn Budget.

The Social Market Foundation proposed in June doubling the MGD standard rate to 40%, estimating it could raise between £275m and £458m in additional annual tax revenue. That is the SMF’s own modelling under a specific set of assumptions. Separately, EY modelling commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council projected that a 40% MGD rate could result in 1,470 betting shop closures and 15,900 job losses. These are two models measuring different outputs under different assumptions, and presenting them as directly contradicting each other misrepresents how tax modelling works. Both could be right or wrong, independently.

David, in his letter, suggested that doubling the MGD rate “would cost us about £100 million a year to run our UK retail operations.” She raised the “Makerfield Test” as the rule set by the government whereby national policies should provide for the benefit of the communities that have traditionally not received much attention from Westminster, pointing out that “many of our more than 2,300 UK retail outlets have been part of their communities for decades.” The demographics are accurate: 50 per cent of retail staff is female; 52 per cent of the workforce works part-time; more than one in five, which is around 2,570, is under 25 years old.

Entain Is Not the Only One Making These Calls

The industry-wide perspective eliminates any inference that the issue is unique to Entain. Bet365 announced 340 layoffs on September 8 “due to increased regulatory and taxation costs,” becoming the fifth significant UK bookmaker to do so in 2026 due to the increased cost. The company that owns William Hill, Evoke, had revealed 270 closures of betting stores after the duty hike in April. The Betting and Gaming Council expects more than 600 betting shops to be shut down, and more than 5,000 people to be laid off since the November 2025 Budget increase. Grainne Hurst, the CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council said, “It is yet more evidence of the real-world impact of loading costs onto the regulated industry.” According to the CEO, the higher costs might lead to passing the market share to the operators which are not licensed. As of September 16, 2026, Entain shares were down by approximately 36% for the year.

Expert Analysis: When the Narrative Keeps Shifting, the Numbers Still Add Up

We have to be honest about what is happening here, and it sits at the intersection of genuine financial pressure and deliberate political timing. That does not mean one cancels out the other.

The customer care rationalisation has a structural logic that exists independently of tax. A company with 11 customer care hubs spread across four continents, accumulated through years of acquisitions, was overdue for consolidation. New COO Hugo Gonzalez, reviewing what Entain’s own internal email described as a function that had grown complex and inconsistent, would reach the same conclusion in a lower-tax environment. Entain has effectively acknowledged this. The tax burden made the cuts larger and faster. That is different from the tax burden causing them.

What we find harder to set aside is the sequencing. In March, cuts were not planned. In July, cuts were happening but framed as an efficiency drive with no direct connection to tax. In September, cuts are being announced on the same morning as a letter to the Prime Minister warning against further taxation, and the link to tax is now explicit. That shift in framing, timed six weeks before a Budget that could determine the future of the UK’s high-street betting estate, is not a coincidence. It is a lobbying strategy, and an effective one. The Makerfield framing, appealing directly to a Prime Minister who built his political identity on communities like those Entain’s shops serve, is precisely targeted.

That does not make the 400 jobs less real. It does not make the £200m cost less genuine. But the government’s analysts, having watched the industry repeatedly price its warnings in jobs and closures, will read the numbers with appropriate caution. The question the October 28 Budget will answer is whether the Chancellor decides the SMF’s tax yield is worth the high street cost the industry insists will follow. Entain has done everything it can to make that cost visible before he decides.