Flutter Entertainment will make mass redundancies in its UK & Ireland operations as tax burdens continue to weigh heavily on the biggest gambling business on these shores.
The company will cut up to 1,400 jobs across a number of locations including Leeds and Dublin, as well as UK & Ireland staff at Flutter hubs including Porto, Portugal and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. It currently employs around 9,000 UK & Ireland staff.
Betfair Romania Development confirmed on LinkedIn that around 300 UK&I workers in Cluj-Napoca are set to be affected.
This has been attributed to “the significant increase in UK gaming taxation announced in last year’s Autumn Budget by the UK Government”.
Remote Gaming Duty (RGD) rose from 21% to 40% in April 2026, and General Betting Duty (GBD) will rise from 15% to 25% in April 2027.
The industry is also awaiting a likely rise in Machine Games Duty (MGD) to 40%, which would add further pressure on Flutter’s UK operations.
The UK Government has been urged to press on and double MGD on Category B gaming machines by 90 Labour Party MPs, who signed a letter written on Friday by Alex Ballinger MP lobbying for this increase.
Flutter cuts swiftly follow Taylor appointment
The news also comes just weeks after Dan Taylor, former Chief Executive Officer of Flutter International, replaced Peter Jackson as CEO of the group.
Taylor oversaw Flutter UK&I, and Flutter UK&I CEO Kevin Harrington reported directly to him. Taylor also served as CEO of Paddy Power Betfair between 2018 and 2020.
It provided some of the few bright sparks in recent quarterly results, but the full impact of tax rises was likely to cause some downsizing within the subsidiary.
On the job cuts, Harrington said: “My immediate focus is providing the necessary support for all of our impacted colleagues and guiding our teams through what we know is going to be a difficult and challenging period for all concerned.
“The material increase in betting and gaming duties announced in the UK Budget last year has 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.”
“We remain confident that we are well placed to benefit from share gains given our position as the largest scale operator in the UK.”
In the UK & Ireland, Flutter has three core brands: Paddy Power, Betfair, and Sky Betting & Gaming. Earlier this year, the business announced it had placed 100 of its Paddy Power shops “under review” due to tax increases, “economic uncertainty” and “fierce competition”.
But the business had been showing signs it could mitigate the impact of these factors, and UK & Ireland revenue rose 4% YoY to $971m in Q2 2026.
Before departing, Jackson also reiterated that the company had market shares of around 39% and 22% in sports betting and iGaming, respectively, and that the tax rises gave Flutter “a really good chance to substantially increase this”.
Harrington’s comments that the business is “well placed to benefit” suggest this is still the case.
However, this development again shows that the UK’s tier-1 operators are sending mixed messages to investors, the public and government.
In fairness to Flutter, leadership said it expected the tax rise to cost the business $540m in 2027. It announced plans to partially offset this through first-order mitigation of $201m.
This announcement is expected to support second-order mitigation as the business looks to increase market share over the long term.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our Telegram channel!
