Flutter to cut up to 1,400 UK and Ireland jobs over tax rises

Flutter Entertainment plans to cut up to 1,400 jobs in its UK and Ireland business, the company said in a statement to the markets on 20 October. The redundancies would represent about 15% of Flutter's 9,000 employees in the UK and Ireland. The company employs 28,500 people worldwide.

Staff at Flutter's hubs in Porto, Portugal, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania, are among those affected, alongside employees in Leeds and Dublin. The company puts the cost of the restructuring at $80m to $90m, with severance payments, employee benefits and other expenses making up most of that figure. Notifications to employees started on 20 October, and Flutter aims to have the bulk of the restructuring finished by the end of 2026.

Kevin Harrington, who leads Flutter UK and Ireland, described helping affected staff as his first concern. In his view, the UK Budget of the previous year delivered a substantial rise in betting and gaming duties, which he said has reshaped the economics of the country's regulated betting and gaming sector and is also feeding the unlicensed, unregulated market. Harrington added that a rise of this scale cannot be fully absorbed unless the fixed cost base comes down, so the business has to be restructured to secure its future position.

Online gambling taxation was raised substantially under the UK government's 2025 Autumn Budget. Remote Gaming Duty moved from 21% to 40% in April 2026. For sports betting other than horse racing, General Betting Duty is due to go up by 10 percentage points, reaching 25% in April 2027.

Staff reductions have been unveiled by other operators with UK operations too. Entain announced in September that 400 customer care roles would go, pointing to the heavier tax burden. Flutter, in the same month, was weighing whether to shut as many as 100 Paddy Power shops in the UK and Ireland, a move that would put roughly 400 jobs at risk. Betfred has in the past warned it could shut its whole retail estate, which numbers more than 1,200 shops.

Flutter's Q2 results, published in August, showed the UK tax rise had already helped push adjusted EBITDA down by 45% for that quarter. The company had earlier projected that UK gambling tax changes would take $540m off its adjusted EBITDA in 2027. Of that hit, it aims to recover $201m through early cost-cutting steps, the announced restructuring among them.

Harrington said Flutter remained confident it was well placed to gain share given its position as the largest scale operator in the UK.