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HR & Talent Management

EU pay transparency directive: 2026 pay is what gambling reports

Key Takeaways

  • The EU pay transparency directive, Directive (EU) 2023/970, lets workers ask what colleagues of the other sex are paid for the same work and makes larger employers report their gender pay gap to a government body. Employers of 250 or more are to report by 7 June 2027 on pay paid during 2026.1
  • Malta’s pay transparency rules are already in force. Legal Notice 173 of 2026 covers the 302 companies licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority and the 15,039 people working with them at the end of 2025.2, 4
  • Pay under the directive includes bonus and commission, which is where gambling’s gaps are widest. Flutter’s own April 2025 figures show a 16.0 per cent median hourly gap and a 35.3 per cent median bonus gap across its UK head office and online businesses.5
  • An average gap of at least 5 per cent in any category of workers, which the employer cannot justify and does not correct within six months, forces a joint pay assessment with employee representatives.1

Why has gambling read pay transparency as a job advertisement problem?

Because Article 5 is the part that got written about, and it is the part that changes what a recruiter does on a Tuesday morning. Put the pay or the range in the advert, stop asking candidates what they currently earn, keep job titles gender neutral.1 In Malta that has been law since June.

It is also the smallest thing in the directive. Every HR person I have talked to about pay transparency since the summer, in Malta, London and Stockholm, opened on adverts and salary bands rather than on the reporting, which is odd, because the reporting carries a government body, a deadline and a fine.

The reference year has had even less attention. That first report covers pay paid in 2026, so the figures an operator eventually publishes are being set by bonus decisions taken this quarter. Nobody repairs it in the spring.

What does the EU pay transparency directive actually require?

Four things, and only one of them concerns adverts. Article 7 lets any worker ask in writing for their own pay level and the average pay by sex for the category of workers doing the same work or work of equal value, answered within two months at the outside. Article 9 adds the reporting: annually for employers of 250 or more from 7 June 2027, on the same date and every three years after it for 150 to 249, and from 2031 for 100 to 149.1

Article 10 is the provision I would put in front of a board. A gap of 5 per cent or more in any category, unjustified on objective gender-neutral criteria and unremedied six months after filing, makes a joint pay assessment with employee representatives compulsory. There is no discretion in it.1

Then there is the definition. Article 3 counts as pay the ordinary basic wage plus any other consideration, in cash or in kind, including variable components.1 The bonus is in. The commission is in. Share awards are in.

Why does Malta settle for pay transparency for most of the industry?

Because Malta transposed on time, and gambling employs more people there than almost anywhere else in Europe. The Equal Pay (Transparency and Reporting) Regulations 2026, Legal Notice 173 of 2026, took effect on 5 June 2026.2, 3 The Malta Gaming Authority counted 302 licensed companies and 15,039 people working with them at the end of 2025, about 6.3 per cent of the island’s output, so a group with a Malta hub sits inside this regime whether or not its parent is in the European Union.4

Malta also went tighter than the directive where it matters operationally. A written request for pay information has to be answered in 8 days rather than two months, and if it is still unanswered or incomplete 45 days after the first request, that is an offence carrying a fine of 2,500 to 5,000 euro, or 5,000 to 7,000 euro where gender and intersectional discrimination is involved.2, 3

The burden of proof moves as well. An employer that has not met its pay transparency obligations has to prove there was no discrimination, unless the breach was manifestly unintentional and minor.2

How do the gambling markets compare on pay transparency?

They sit at four stages, so a group with hubs in Malta, Amsterdam, Sofia and Copenhagen runs four pay transparency timetables at once.1, 7, 9

MarketStatusKey dateLocal twist worth knowing
MaltaIn force 5 June 2026, L.N. 173 of 2026Report by 7 June 2027 on 2026 payPay information requests answered in 8 days; fines 2,500 to 7,000 euro
PolandPartly in force, recruitment rules from 24 December 2025Remainder in a bill of 29 April 2026, live six months after publicationAdvert and pre-employment duties already running
NetherlandsAmended bill sent to the Council of State on 19 January 2026Intended entry into force 1 January 2027A separate reporting section for agency workers
DenmarkDraft act consulted until 27 March 2026Expected before parliament from October 2026Still unsettled, so plan on the directive’s minimum
Great BritainIn force since 2017, outside the directiveSnapshot 5 April, publish within 12 monthsPublication only, no duty to explain or correct a gap

Does Britain’s gender pay gap reporting tell us what happens next?

No, and I would not treat it as a guide. The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 have made employers of 250 or more publish their hourly and bonus gaps and quartile splits every year since.6 They require publication and nothing more.

So the industry’s numbers are already public, and they are not small. At the 5 April 2025 snapshot, Flutter reports a 16.0 per cent median hourly gap and a 35.3 per cent median bonus gap, with the upper pay quartile 75.2 per cent male. Tombola, in the same group, reports a 27.7 per cent mean hourly against a 45.2 per cent mean bonus, and FanDuel’s upper middle quartile is 88.6 per cent male.5 Rank, a year earlier, reports a 4.3 per cent median hourly alongside a 39.3 per cent mean bonus.8

Read those as pairs. The bonus gap is several times the hourly gap almost every time, and the bonus sits inside the directive’s definition of pay, so the 5 per cent test reaches the part of a gambling pay structure that has always run on discretion: trading, VIP management, commercial and sales, where money is allocated by judgement rather than by a grade.

What would I do with the weeks left in the reference year?

Start with the grouping, because the whole pay transparency regime runs off it. A category of workers is the set of people doing the same work or work of equal value, built from objective, gender-neutral criteria, and if nobody has written those criteria down, every number reported later is arguable.1 Five things, before 31 December.

  1. Write the grouping criteria, covering skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, and agree them with employee representatives in the markets that require it.
  2. Run the 5 per cent test per category rather than per entity, on total pay including bonus and commission, since a company-wide average hides the categories that would trigger an assessment.
  3. For every category above 5 per cent, write the justification now, while the people who made the decisions are still in post and can remember the reasoning.
  4. Price the remedy, because an unjustified gap has to be corrected within six months of filing, so the cost belongs in the 2027 budget being drafted this quarter.
  5. Name the person who answers a pay information request. In Malta the answer is due in 8 days, and the first request will come from somebody who has already decided they are underpaid.

This is a compensation review rather than a compliance project, so I would start from TGB’s Operational Compensation Benchmarking and Reward Review Framework, which already benchmarks pay and exposes equity gaps, and add the statutory pay transparency reporting layer on top.

Boardroom Questions

  • Which of our legal entities cross 250 workers and which cross 150 in each European Union market where we employ people?
  • Who owns our category of workers grouping for pay transparency reporting, and are the criteria behind it written down and dated?
  • On our 2026 pay to date, how many categories show an average gap of 5 per cent or more, and do we hold a written justification for each one?
  • What is our bonus gap by category, as distinct from our hourly gap, and who signs off the discretionary element?
  • If we cannot justify a gap, what would correcting it cost, and whose budget does it come out of?

Sources

1. Directive (EU) 2023/970 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023, Articles 3, 5, 7, 9 and 10. EUR-Lex: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32023L0970

2. Equal Pay (Transparency and Reporting) Regulations, 2026 (Legal Notice 173 of 2026), Malta, as set out in WH Partners, “Malta’s Equal Pay Transparency and Reporting Regulations 2026: what employers need to know”, June 2026: https://whpartners.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Maltas-Equal-Pay-Transparency-and-Reporting-Regulations-2026-1.pdf

3. Chambers and Partners, “Malta’s Equal Pay Transparency and Reporting Regulations 2026: What Employers Need to Know”: https://chambers.com/articles/maltas-equal-pay-transparency-and-reporting-regulations-2026-what-employers-need-to-know

4. Malta Gaming Authority, Annual Report 2025, licensed companies and people employed with MGA-licensed operators at 31 December 2025: https://www.mga.org.mt/app/uploads/MGA_Annual_Report_2025.pdf

5. Flutter Entertainment, UK Gender Pay Gap Report, reporting year 2025, snapshot date 5 April 2025: https://flutter.com/media/zcnexwjs/uk-gpg-report-2025-published-march-27-2026-1.pdf

6. The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017, SI 2017/172: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/172/contents/made

7. Loyens & Loeff, “Dutch implementation proposal of the EU Pay Transparency Directive amended”, and the bill before the Tweede Kamer, wetsvoorstel 36949: https://www.loyensloeff.com/insights/news–events/news/dutch-implementation-proposal-of-the-eu-pay-transparency-directive-amended/

8. The Rank Group Plc gender pay gap report, 2024 to 2025 reporting year, UK Government gender pay gap service: https://gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/employers/10265/reporting-year-2024/gender-pay-gap-report

9. Pinsent Masons, “EU Pay Transparency Directive: implementation across EU member states”, for the Poland, Netherlands and Denmark positions: https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/guides/eu-pay-transparency-directive-eu-member-states