Key Points
- NEXT.io reckons Sky Bet is pulling out of Malta and moving what’s left to Gibraltar.
- Flutter is confirming up to 1400 redundancies in the UK & Ireland, with a whopping $80 90m dollars in restructuring costs to boot.
- The Budget in October could bring a hike in Machine Games Duty and some reports suggest a 25% increase.
Sky Bet had just moved its commercial operations to Malta in November 2022 and looks like it won’t be hanging around for a second birthday. According to a NEXT.io scoop, Flutter is calling it a day for the Malta operation and shifting the remaining roles to Gibraltar. Only a handful of jobs around 50 are apparently staying put in Malta and Flutter hasn’t yet confirmed those details.
Flutter has put the bigger job losses out there in public though. On October 20th they announced up to 1400 redundancies across the UK & Ireland, with consultation to follow. They named Leeds, Dublin, Porto and Cluj-Napoca as the places that will be affected, but conveniently left out Malta and Gibraltar. The restructuring is going to cost a pretty penny $80 to $90m and Fluffter expects to write off the whole tab in the final quarter. Out of their 28,500 staff worldwide, around 9000 are based in this particular division, which means the maximum cut is like almost 16% of the whole lot. According to Reuters, that is.
Sky Bet’s Hasty Malta Retreat Just a Year On
So what’s so important about this sudden departure from Malta? Well, let’s flash back to back in November 2022 when Sky Bet made the move to SBG Sports Limited in Malta. Staff were told the reason was to “need to operate more efficiently” and cut costs, but as it turned out, they may have been getting a bit too cute with their tax bill. An ITV News probe found that staff were never warned it was going to save them money on taxes. Tax expert Dan Neidle pointed out that the move was likely to save up to £31m a year in corporation tax and another £24m on VAT for marketing. He even called it “reckless” to move like that. The head of the Treasury committee Meg Hillier stepped in and said it was “rather hypocritical” of them to do it. The company had claimed to have paid over £700m to HMRC the year before, and said they were still employing well over 5,000 UK staff.
But let’s be real those estimates were just that, and nobody has ever shown how much was actually saved. Now, the Maltese branch of SBG Sports Limited is being wound up, according to NEXT.io, and Fluffter will somehow still have 500 staff on the island. Meanwhile, their Gibraltar office has already got Sky Gaming, which moved its HQ there last year.
Where 1,400 Jobs Might Be Lost?
Without giving figures broken down by office, the firm did not share the UK number, which is an estimate at this point. The Mail has learned that 550 redundancies may be in the UK, and 240 in Ireland. Also, the Guardian thinks that there will be lots of job losses in Leeds – the city where Sky Bet operated as the headquarters. In 2025, ITV learned that Flutter employs almost 2,000 workers in Leeds and around 600 in Sunderland. The BBC believes that the plan might affect people working in London and Sunderland, Malta, and Gibraltar.
Tax and Re-listing in One Year
Flutter’s last year started with the announcement made in November 2025 in Malta. As per the gambling duty update, the online casino duty increased from 21% to 40% as of 1 April 2026. Then from 1 April 2027, there will be a rate of 25%, while most of the remote bets will be charged at 15%. It excludes UK horse race remote bets and the 15% rate on bets placed in shops, as well as on self-service terminals. On the other hand, Flutter decided to withdraw its listing from the London Stock Exchange, keeping the New York listing alone as of 3 August.
Flutter Blames Taxes, But Everyone Thinks Otherwise
Kevin Harrington, CEO of Flutter UK & Ireland, blamed taxes for the redundancy. “We cannot fully absorb a rise of this magnitude without reducing our fixed cost base,” he stated. In his opinion, the increase in duty is also “fueling the unlicensed, unregulated market”. The hit for the company as per Flutter from the 2027 UK iGaming tax update comes to $540 million in adjusted EBITDA. To compare to that, they expect about $201 million of first-order mitigation from the company’s side. With that math, the remainder left to save on is $339m.
However, critics are far less convinced that taxes are the only reason for that cut. Founder of Paddy Power Stewart Kenny said that the industry is “scaremongering” about job loss to pay less tax. One of the unnamed insiders told the Guardian that “government policy changes ran alongside existing integration”.
Future of the Staff
At the moment, 1,400 is merely the ceiling, and not the final amount of roles to go away because of the consultation process. As Flutter says, its plan will bring about “material second order mitigation benefits” as the company continues to develop its customer offer. Meanwhile, Harrington has stated that “Flutter is well placed to benefit from share gains” being the biggest operator in the UK. Apart from the 20 October announcement, Flutter refused to make any comments on the Malta report.
Tax Increase Is Likely to Come on Budget Day
On Wednesday 28 October, Chancellor John Healey will make his first Budget, so there are only six days left for the sector. According to The Times, the duty to be introduced is going to be increased to 25% from the current 20%. At the beginning of June, the Social Market Foundation recommended increasing Category B duty to 40%. Category B includes the machines of higher stakes in bookmakers and casinos. This could help to raise somewhere between £275m and £458m. Until Healey makes his speech, all these figures are forecasts, not policies. According to The Mail, quoting the Betting and Gaming Council, the total number of jobs which are lost or at risk comes close to 12,400. Chief Executive Grainne Hurst called this news “another devastating blow to workers and families across our sector”.
Analysis by the Experts: Have Flutter Bet On the Wrong Island?
In our opinion, Flutter should have given some better answers to the report from Malta than it did. Neidle was warning about “a lot of expense in moving people to Malta, and then they’re stuck.” Assuming that the report is correct, staff of Sky Bet in Malta now face relocation to Gibraltar or dismissal. It would be impossible for us to state that the tax plan failed, as there is no information on the savings. However, in our opinion, an organisation, which has justified its position on efficiency, owes its staff these numbers.
Our second analysis is sure to upset the betting industry. We agree with Flutter that a $540m tax hit is something serious, and it is never easy to take. But a company that talks about British jobs while shifting the roles between Malta and Gibraltar has an easy answer for ministers.
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