Thousands of Flutter and Entain’s UK Employees Under Threat of Redundancies Due to Government Tax Increases

Flutter Entertainment and Entain are two of the biggest publicly traded gambling companies in the world employing a total of 46,617 employees worldwide and over 15,000 in the UK between them but UK employees are under threat due to the increase in the remote gaming duty tax and the potential of further industry regulation.

In April 2026, the government increased remote gaming duty from 21% to 40% much to the dismay of the gambling industry.

The results of such a dramatic tax increase have already been felt in the sector with Entain already stating that they now plan to cut 500 jobs with no indication that it will stop there.

Entain employs over 10,000 people across the UK and is expected to cut more jobs, especially if the government continues to push increasing regulations onto gambling companies.

Entain’s Kevin Harrington (UKI CEO) stated back in April that the tax increase would deal a significant blow to the UK sector, he said:

“Today’s tax increases are a very disappointing outcome and will have a significant adverse impact on our industry.”

Well-known gambling online sites under the umbrella of Entain include Ladbrokes, Coral and FoxyBingo.

US Companies Hold a Strong Position as UK Influence Threatens to Shrink

US headquartered companies dominate the rankings but they predominantly employ workers at traditional land-based casinos found in Las Vegas, Nevada.

MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment and Las Vegas Sands make up the top three publicly traded gambling companies by number of employees.

However, Flutter Entertainment stands out as the largest online gambling company with 27,345 employees. Much of Flutter’s activity is based in the United Kingdom and the company pays hundreds of millions of pounds annually to UK tax authorities.

Flutter Entertainment owns popular UK recognised gambling brands including SkyBet, FanDuel, Paddy Power, BetFair and Pokerstars.

Driven by the rapid growth of the US sports betting market, US gambling companies have been successfully targeting UK-based operators.

In 2020, Caesars agreed a £2.9bn takeover of the London-listed firm William Hill. Due to a UK government crackdown on betting machines, William Hill was forced to shut down hundreds of betting shops in UK high-streets. Following the takeover, Caesars then sold off the majority of the other William Hill betting shops.

The UK betting industry is significantly more seasoned than the American so the Americans look to take advantage of the expertise of the Brits in this area.

Online Gambling Businesses Operate Significantly Leaner

The data from CompaniesMarketCap and reported by Business of iGaming shows us that digital-first businesses which focus on online betting and affiliate marketing are able to generate significant revenues whilst keeping a streamlined workforce.

Slotshawk is a UK-based affiliate website which has been operating since 2020 but has been able to generate significant revenue with its comparatively small employee base.

Speaking to The Canary, SlotsHawk’s Iain Fenton (owner) told us that gambling companies with much of their workforce and revenue being UK-based will likely need to find ways to streamline their businesses significantly in order to compensate for the tax increases, he said:

“I have been working within the UK gambling industry for almost a decade now and I have to say that the industry is currently living through its toughest phase and unfortunately most of that is due to our regulator.

“UK-based operators are being taxed to the limit whilst players are having their privacies invaded from the much-critiqued affordability checks as our writer Jon Bryan recently wrote very elegantly about.

“For operators this is just not sustainable and the operators which are still playing by the rules will lose out to the operators outside of UK regulators.

“For example, the RTP on online slot games are a great predictor as to how healthy a casino operator is. Due to the tax increases, these RTP’s on slot machines are decreasing significantly as operators look to increase their shrinking revenues at the expense of players.

“Once players see this, many of them go to unregulated casinos which offer average RTP levels at the expense of player safety which are significantly less at unregulated casinos.”