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%-40% in April 2026, and General Betting Duty (GBD) will increase from 15%-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
This news also arrives just weeks after Dan Taylor, former Chief Executive Officer of Flutter International, replaced Peter Jackson as CEO of the entire group.
Flutter UK&I was overseen by Taylor, as Flutter UK&I CEO, Kevin Harrington, reported directly to him. Taylor was also CEO of Paddy Power Betfair between 2018-2020.
It had provided some of the few bright sparks in recent quarterly results, but the full impact of tax rises were always likely to cause some kind of 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.”
Kevin Harrington, Flutter UK&I CEO
In the UK & Ireland, Flutter has three core brands in Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Betting & Gaming. It was announced earlier this year that the business 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 of being able to mitigate the impact of these factors, and UK & Ireland revenue in Q2 2026 went up 4% YoY to $971m.
Before departing, Jackson also reiterated that the company had a market share 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 regarding the business being “well placed to benefit” would suggest that this is still the case.
However, this development shows again that the UK’s tier-1 operators are giving mixed messages to investors, the public and government.
In fairness to Flutter, leadership did state that it expected the tax rise to cost the business to the tune of $540m in 2027. It announced plans to partially offset this through first order mitigation of $201m.
Second order mitigation is expected to be supported by this announcement as the business looks to increase market share over the long-term.
“The associated costs to implement this restructuring of $80m-$90m were captured within the updated guidance issued within Flutter’s Q2 earnings update and will be incurred in Q4 2026,” the statement read.