Evoke, the owner of William Hill, 888 and Mr Green, reported a 7% fall in third-quarter revenue on Friday and urged the government not to raise gambling taxes again in next week’s autumn budget.
Group revenue for the three months to 30 September 2026 was £406 million. Excluding the roughly 270 betting shops closed over the past year, and at constant exchange rates, revenue fell 2%. The company said football results that favoured punters early in the season cut one to two percentage points from growth, leaving revenue broadly flat on an underlying basis.
“On an underlying basis the business continues to show resilience and reflects our continued emphasis on profitability and cash generation following the substantial increases in gaming duties, particularly in the UK,” said chief executive Per Widerström.
“The closure of 270 shops over the past year shows the real impact on jobs and livelihoods from higher industry taxation, and we urge the UK government to carefully consider any further increases ahead of its forthcoming autumn budget.”
The taxes on betting shops, however, were not raised. Last year’s budget increased duties on online gaming and betting but left machine games duty and the duty on bets placed in shops unchanged. Evoke has said it is closing shops partly to offset the higher online tax bill.
Takeover on track
Despite the stated focus on profitability and cash generation, the update gave no profit, earnings or cash figures.
Evoke also said its takeover by Bally’s Intralot was on track. Shareholders of both companies have approved the deal and most regulatory approvals have been received, with completion expected late in the fourth quarter of 2026 or early in the first quarter of 2027.
“We remain focused on disciplined execution and operational efficiency as we progress towards completion of the acquisition,” Widerström said.
Shop closures
The closures stem from last November’s budget. Remote gaming duty, which applies to games of chance played online, rose from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026, and a new 25% rate for remote betting takes effect on 1 April 2027, with remote bets on UK horse racing kept at 15%. Evoke estimated the changes would increase its duty costs by about £125 million to £135 million a year once fully in place, and said it expected to offset about half of that through supplier savings, lower marketing spend, store closures and operating cost cuts.
Before that budget, Evoke had warned it might have to close between 120 and 200 William Hill shops, putting up to 1,500 jobs at risk. In March it told staff it would permanently close about 200 UK shops, roughly 15% of its retail estate, with closures starting in May. The number later rose.
Alongside its 2025 results, the company confirmed around 270 closures and said pre-tax losses had more than doubled to £549.1 million, from £220.9 million in 2024. It has not said how many jobs are at risk, although the closures are expected to cost hundreds of jobs.
The cuts reach well beyond Evoke. Last week the bosses of Britain’s six largest gambling companies said more than 600 betting shops had closed and 10,250 online and retail jobs had been lost or put at risk of redundancy since the 2025 vudget. They asked the chancellor to leave machine games duty alone at the 28 October budget and to pause the April 2027 betting duty rise until the effect of existing increases had been assessed.
The road to a sale
Evoke began reviewing its options, including a sale, in December, weeks after the tax rises forced it to withdraw its medium-term outlook. In June it agreed an all-share deal, under which shareholders receive 0.537 new Bally’s Intralot shares for each Evoke share, valuing the company at 52 pence a share, or about £243.1 million.
Debt has shaped the outcome. Evoke’s roughly £2 billion purchase of William Hill’s non-US business from Caesars Entertainment in 2022 left it with debt of about £1.86 billion at the end of last year. Bally’s Intralot has lined up about £889 million of financing from TPG Credit, Oaktree and OHA to fund the deal and refinance Evoke’s debt.
iGB contacted Evoke for a follow-up on the announcement, but the company declined to comment further.