Flutter Plans Up to 1,400 UK and Ireland Job Cuts After British Tax Rise

Flutter Entertainment plans to cut up to 1,400 jobs as it restructures its UK and Ireland business, the company said in a market statement on Tuesday, October 20. It put the decision down to sharp increases in British gambling taxes.

The cuts will reach its sites in Leeds and Dublin and its hubs in Porto, Portugal, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Flutter said. Staff began receiving notifications the same day. The company employs 9,000 people in the UK and Ireland, and the cuts amount to about 15% of that workforce. Its global headcount is 28,500.

Flutter describes itself as the largest operator in the UK. In our reading, if the market leader cannot carry the new duties without shedding staff, smaller UK-facing operators face the same sums with less room to absorb them.

What the duty rise costs Flutter

Flutter expects the restructuring to cost $80 million to $90 million, mostly in severance, employee benefits and other expenses.

The company estimates the UK tax changes will take $540 million off its adjusted EBITDA in 2027. It has lined up $201 million in initial cost cuts to offset that, this restructuring included. That covers well under half of the hit, and Flutter has not said when the savings land or how it plans to close the rest of the gap.

The higher tax is already in the numbers. Flutter reported in August that adjusted EBITDA fell 45% in the second quarter, and said the UK increase contributed to the decline.

Two duty increases a year apart

The 2025 Autumn Budget raised Remote Gaming Duty, the tax on online casino and gaming, from 21% to 40% from April 2026. General Betting Duty on sports bets other than horse racing goes up by 10 percentage points to 25% in April 2027.

Kevin Harrington, chief executive of Flutter UK and Ireland, called the cuts an unavoidable result of that rise.

"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," he said. His first priority, he added, was "providing the necessary support for all of our impacted colleagues."

Harrington still expects Flutter to come out ahead. "We remain confident that we are well placed to benefit from share gains given our position as the largest scale operator in the UK," he said. The same tax he says is feeding unlicensed sites is one he expects to help Flutter take customers from licensed rivals.

Other operators are cutting too

Entain cut 400 customer care roles in September, saying it needed to stay "competitive, financially resilient and well-positioned" under the higher tax burden. Betfred has threatened to close its entire retail estate of more than 1,200 shops.

Flutter also said in September that it was considering closing up to 100 Paddy Power shops across the UK and Ireland, putting about 400 jobs at risk. It has not said whether those closures are confirmed or whether those jobs sit inside the 1,400 figure.

Flutter expects most of the restructuring to be complete by the end of 2026, months before the betting duty increase takes effect.