Key Points
- Flutter has now confirmed that up to 16% of its 9,000-strong UK and Irish workforce will lose their jobs, that’s around 1,400 people.
- But here’s the kicker, the cuts that have caused this were actually agreed a few months ago, as a cost-saving measure that Flutter had already promised its investors back in August.
- And yet the news dropped just 8 days before the UK Budget which is expected to push machine games duty up to 25%.
Flutter Entertainment has just dropped a bombshell on its UK and Irish staff, up to 1,400 of you could lose your jobs. The company, which owns Paddy’s Power, Sky Bet and Betfair, is blaming UK gambling taxes for the cuts, and to be fair, that is part of the story. But as you dig into the company’s own investor documents, you start to get a rather different sense of what’s going on.
Who Will Be Losing Their Jobs?
According to the announcement from Flutter, the UK and Irish restructure is still very much up in the air and is subject to all sorts of consultations, so we could yet see that number of redundancies go down. But the worst affected places are likely to be Leeds and Dublin, with UK and Ireland teams in Porto and Cluj-Napoca getting the chop too. Flutter’s UK and Ireland restructure announcement of the 28,500 people who work for Flutter worldwide, the 1,400 job cuts represent around 16% of its UK and Irish workforce.
The Tax Rise that was ALWAYS Part of The Plan
Now here’s the bit that makes this all rather more interesting. It was always the case that there would be a tax rise, in fact, we knew from last year’s Budget that the Remote Gaming Duty was going to jump from 21% to 40% on April 1st 2026. When Rachel Reeves confirmed the Budget, HMRC’s policy paper on Gambling Duty Changes made it all rather clear.
Kevin Harrington, the chief of Flutter UK and Ireland, was quick to point out that these tax increases had basically changed the whole economic model of the industry in the UK, and to boot, had somehow helped fuel the unregulated, unlicensed market. He then went on to give the Government a good old-fashioned talking-to: “As we warned a year ago, we can’t fully absorb a rise of this magnitude without cutting back on our fixed costs.” & in other words, “we need to restructure”.
The Fine Print that Nobody Noticed
You can bet your last pound that most people who heard the news stopped at the headline figure, 1,400 jobs on the line, and didn’t really bother with the small print. But if you did bother, you’d have spotted the bit in the investors’ guidance that gives a completely different take on things.
This guidance was actually written last November, after the Budget announcement that all this drama actually started with. At the time, Flutter reckoned that these tax changes would be a bit of a blow, reducing its key profit measure, adjusted EBITDA, by $540m in 2027 before they’d even been able to sort it out. They thought they could knock off some of that by saving $201m, and that would leave them with a net loss of around $339m. Now that’s not a tax bill, that’s a forecast, and a big one.
And it’s not like the restructuring costs were a shock either, we know they’d already set aside $80 to $90m for that back in August when they released their second quarter results. By the way, they bumped up the total guidance for restructuring costs in August, along with other various costs, all part of a $500m package.
Eight Days Until the Next Budget
The news came eight days before John Healey, the Chancellor, unveils his Budget on 28 October, according to the Financial Times, which reported on Tuesday. The Financial Times has also stated that Healey is considering an increase in the machine games duty – tax on gaming machines. Campaigners have called for an increase of the duty from 20% to 40%. A delegation of Labour MPs, headed by Alex Ballinger, wrote to Healey in support of raising the duty for Category B machines.
Recent reporting hints at a less radical approach. Quoting The Times / Racing Post, the Racing Post noted that the machine games duty can be increased to 25%, but the Treasury has not confirmed anything yet. In iGaming Business coverage of the MPs’ letter, Grainne Hurst, CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council, warned that increasing the rate to 40% will result in loss of up to 16,000 jobs. This figure is an estimate by industry representatives, not an official forecast.
Sector Experiencing Cutbacks
Flutter is not the first company to reduce costs in light of the upcoming Budget. As early as April, Evoke stated that about 200 William Hill shops will be closed. In August, Betfred launched consultations regarding the closure of 132 shops. In September, Bet365 informed of the intention to cut about 340 jobs due to tax and regulatory expenses. Flutter itself is reviewing up to 100 Paddy Power shops, and according to the FT, this may result in about 400 job losses.
According to the BGC’s August statistic on betting shop closures, more than 540 shops have been closed and about 4,500 jobs lost since the Budget. By 20 October, the FT reported on a broader BGC estimate of 12,400 jobs either lost or put at risk. These figures represent different numbers since “at risk” refers to jobs that are not necessarily lost.
Not Flutter’s First Cutback
Employees of the Leeds office have experienced such announcements before. In June 2025, Flutter launched consultations on about 220 UK and Ireland jobs, mainly in technology and product teams. Yogonet reports on Flutter’s 220-job consultation.
This cutback was caused by merging several brands on a unified technology platform. This happened even before Reeves announced the tax increase, thus showing that cutting costs was going on long before the Budget.
The New Chief and a Declining Share Price
There has been a change in leadership too. Dan Taylor took over as the new group chief executive on 1 October 2026 following the resignation of Peter Jackson after nearly nine years in office. Taylor is quite conversant with the UK operation since he worked there as managing director of UK and Ireland from 2015 to 2018. He had served as Flutter International chief before being named CEO.
It has been a tough year for investors. NEXT.io reports that the Flutter share price declined by about 69% over the last twelve months. The company is still growing. The second-quarter 2026 results filing revealed that UK and Ireland revenue increased 4% to $971m, iGaming 7% and sports betting 2%.
Flutter is expecting a market share gain “as other operators begin to react to this increase” in tax. This information will be available when third-quarter results file on 4 November.
Experts’ Opinion: True Painful Situation and a Convenient Explanation
We agree that the tax increase is quite real and painful. The forecasted reduction in adjusted EBITDA to $540m for 2027 will leave any operator in difficulty. Our problem is with the way the story is being told. Flutter presents those cuts as a reaction to the tax hike although the company’s documents reveal that they had been planned even before that.
It does not make their explanation untrue but it makes Tuesday’s announcement a fulfilment of the previous plan rather than a reaction. The timing also raises doubts. We do not know what the motivation behind choosing such a date is, and we will not try to find it. However, the news of laying off 1,400 employees acquires extra significance when a budget is just about to be announced and another gambling tax is under consideration by the chancellor.
We also question the statement about the impact of the increase in taxes on the black market situation. According to Harrington, the tax drives unlicensed gambling. However, Tuesday’s filing did not include any data confirming it. The matter of market share is particularly intriguing. In our interpretation, the biggest player sees an opportunity to expand its market share while the competitors cut theirs down, which is also mentioned in the second-quarter filing.
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