Two of Britain’s largest gambling operators announced redundancies within a week of each other in September 2026, and both named the rise in Remote Gaming Duty from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026. Neither set of cuts falls only in Britain. bet365’s 340 redundancies run across Stoke-on-Trent, Malta and Gibraltar, and Entain’s customer care restructuring reaches Gibraltar, where it is the largest private-sector employer, so one tax change produces three separate sets of consultation and notification duties, each with its own clock.1, 2, 3
These questions belong on a board agenda before the October 2026 Budget, because the employment law exposure attached to a British redundancy also changed this year, in the direction of costing more.
Key Takeaways
- bet365 announced 340 redundancies on 9 September 2026, about 3% of its workforce, across Stoke-on-Trent, Malta and Gibraltar. Entain announced up to 400 cuts from a 2,000-strong customer care function on 16 September 2026, with a new structure due in December 2026 subject to consultation. Both cited British Remote Gaming Duty rising from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026.1, 2, 4
- One programme inside a gambling group can set four unrelated legal processes running. Great Britain requires 30 or 45 days of collective consultation and a Form HR1 filing, Malta a notification to the Director of Industrial and Employment Relations followed by a 30-day standstill, Gibraltar a Termination of Employment form for each person within 7 days and no collective consultation at all, and the Netherlands a notification to UWV followed by a one-month wait.5, 8, 9, 10
- The maximum British protective award for failing to consult doubled from 90 to 180 days’ gross pay per affected employee on 6 April 2026, under section 189(4) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, five months before either programme was announced.6, 7
What has actually changed for gambling employers in 2026?
Two things, five months apart: the tax rate and the price of getting a redundancy wrong. bet365 confirmed 340 job losses on 9 September, citing a highly competitive trading environment plus increased regulatory and tax-related costs, and said it would run voluntary redundancies first. Entain followed on 16 September with up to 400 cuts from a customer care function of roughly 2,000, about a fifth of it, to reach what it called a simpler, less complex operating model. Entain is Gibraltar’s largest private-sector employer and would not tell Gibraltar’s public broadcaster how many Gibraltar roles were going.1, 2, 3
Remote Gaming Duty rose from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026, and a new 25% remote betting rate within general betting duty starts on 1 April 2027, with remote bets on British horseracing held at 15% because operators already pay 10% towards the Horserace Betting Levy. The House of Commons Library puts the package at 810 million pounds in 2026/27, rising to 1.16 billion pounds by 2030/31. Machine Games Duty is still open, and Entain’s chief executive Stella David wrote to the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, ahead of the October 2026 Budget, with the company putting a doubling of the standard rate to 40% at around 100 million pounds a year of extra retail cost and EY work commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council putting the sector effect at up to 1,470 shop closures and 15,900 jobs.4, 11
Why has the cost of getting a redundancy wrong just doubled?
Because section 189(4) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 now caps a protective award at 180 days’ gross pay per affected employee instead of 90, a change made by the Employment Rights Act 2025 and effective from 6 April 2026. The Act said nothing about a consultation already running on that date, so an exercise opened in the spring and closed later in the year may carry the higher number.6, 7
The change that matters more to a shop estate has not arrived yet. Section 188 now carries two triggers: 20 or more dismissals at one establishment within 90 days, and a separate threshold number that section 195A leaves to regulations, which may not set it below 20. The Department for Business and Trade consultation closed on 21 May 2026 with regulations expected in 2027, and the options ran from a single figure between 250 and 1,000 to a tiered 250, 500 and 750 by employer size. An estate closing shops in ones and twos never reaches 20 at one establishment, which is how a very large retail reduction happens today with no collective consultation at all. A threshold counted across the whole organisation removes that, and the 1,470 shops in the EY work is the shape of programme it would catch.5, 11, 12, 13
Why does a British tax change cut jobs in Malta and Gibraltar?
Because duty is charged where the customer is while staff are employed where the cost base is, and in this industry those are rarely the same country. Remote Gaming Duty follows the British customer whatever the corporate map looks like, so the rise falls on a profit and loss account whose salary lines are in Stoke-on-Trent, Gibraltar, Malta and Sofia. Once the answer is headcount, the country of employment sets the process.
| Market | What triggers collective consultation | Who has to be told | Standstill or minimum period |
| Great Britain | 20 or more dismissals at one establishment within 90 days, plus a forthcoming organisation-wide threshold number under section 195A, which regulations may not set below 20 | Recognised union or elected employee representatives, and the Secretary of State on Form HR1 | At least 30 days before the first dismissal for 20 to 99 dismissals, or 45 days for 100 or more. Protective award up to 180 days’ gross pay per employee since 6 April 2026 |
| Malta | 10 or more where the establishment normally employs 21 to 99, 10% where it employs 100 to 299, or 30 or more where it employs 300 or more, counted within 30 days | Employees’ representatives and the Director of Industrial and Employment Relations, under Legal Notice 428 of 2002 | Consultations begin within 7 working days of notification, and no dismissal takes effect until 30 days after it, which the Director may extend by a further 30 |
| Gibraltar | No collective consultation threshold in the employment legislation | The Department of Employment, on a Termination of Employment form for each individual, within 7 days of the termination date | None. Failure to file a termination form carries a fine of up to 750 pounds, and redundancy pay runs on a statutory scale capped at one year’s pay |
| Netherlands | 20 or more dismissals within 3 months inside a single WMCO region | UWV, the trade unions and the works council, under the Collective Redundancy (Notification) Act | One month from UWV confirming receipt, unless the unions agree in writing to waive it |
The same 400 roles are a 45-day consultation in one country, a 30-day standstill nobody can shorten without the regulator agreeing in another, a filing per person inside a week in a third, and a month’s wait a union can waive in the fourth. A timetable built on the British clock alone will be wrong twice over.
Which of the roles being cut are part of the licence?
Some of them, and the licence takes no view on the commercial reason. LCCP licence condition 15.2.1 makes an appointment to or a departure from a key position a key event reportable to the Gambling Commission within five working days, covering a specified management office under licence condition 1.2 and any position responsible for anti-money laundering or counter-terrorist financing compliance, whether or not the person holds a personal management licence. Customer care is the quieter exposure, since a British licensee has to interact with customers showing indicators of harm and show the interaction reduced them, so the document explaining how the retained capacity was sized is better written before a regulator asks than after.14
Where do the cuts fall, and under whose law?
1. Which legal entity employs each affected person, in which country, and does the plan count heads by entity or only by function?
2. Which of those countries treats this as a collective redundancy, and over what period, given Malta counts within 30 days, Great Britain within 90 and the Netherlands within three months?
3. Where is the longest clock, and has the group timetable been built backwards from that one rather than from the British one?
4. In Gibraltar, where no consultation threshold applies, who is named as responsible for filing a termination form for every individual within 7 days?
What does the licence say about the roles being removed?
5. Which affected roles are a specified management office, hold a personal management licence, or carry anti-money laundering responsibility, and who files the key event within five working days?
6. Which regulators outside Great Britain have to approve or be told about the same change, and is there one list of those deadlines or four held separately?
7. If customer care is being reduced, what is the written basis for the capacity being kept, expressed in the regulator’s terms rather than as cost per contact?
8. Who signs off that the remaining safer gambling and anti-money laundering capacity is sufficient, and is that person independent of whoever set the savings target?
What does the process cost if it goes wrong?
9. With a protective award now reaching 180 days’ gross pay per employee, what is the worst case across every affected employee, and does it appear in the business case beside the savings?
10. Did any consultation start before 6 April 2026 and finish after it, and has anyone taken a documented view on which cap applies?
11. Is voluntary redundancy being used to stay under a threshold, and does the plan still work if take-up comes in lower than assumed?
Is the plan built for this tax change or the next one?
12. The plan answers the 40% Remote Gaming Duty rate, so what does the 25% remote betting rate from 1 April 2027 do to the same numbers?
13. If Machine Games Duty rises in October, how many shops fall below their own closure threshold, and would those closures aggregate into one consultation under the organisation-wide trigger expected in 2027?
14. In every other market where the group employs people, what tax step is already legislated but not yet in force, and has anyone set it against headcount?
Most groups cannot answer that one today. Brazil’s gross gaming revenue tax moves to 14% in 2027 and 15% in 2028 under Complementary Law No 224, and Dutch gambling tax has already gone from 30.5% to 34.2% and then 37.8% on 1 January 2026, which is the pressure behind Holland Casino telling the union De Unie in July 2026 that it needed structural cost measures. Neither step is a surprise, and neither is in most 2027 workforce plans.15, 16, 17
What to build before the October Budget
One sheet per employing entity, held in one place rather than in four country folders, carrying five things:
- Headcount by legal entity and country with affected roles marked, so the number that triggers a duty is the number the law counts.
- Per country, the consultation trigger, the body to notify, the form, the standstill period and the maximum penalty for getting it wrong.
- The licence-critical roles: specified management offices, personal management licence holders, key function holders and anyone carrying anti-money laundering responsibility, with each regulator’s deadline written against them.
- The dated basis for the safer gambling and customer interaction capacity being retained, signed by someone outside the cost programme.
- Every tax step already legislated but not yet in force per market, with the headcount decision each would force, so the next round is planned once instead of announced twice.
Two operators have announced cuts in the same month for the same reason, and the October Budget decides whether a third round follows. The sheet is worth having either way.
Sources
1. iGaming Business, ‘Bet365 confirms plans to cut 340 jobs in response to UK tax headwinds’, 9 September 2026, https://igamingbusiness.com/strategy/bet365-to-cut-340-jobs-tax-headwinds/
2. SBC News, ‘Entain set to cut up to 400 jobs as CEO appeals to PM’, 16 September 2026, https://sbcnews.co.uk/retail/2026/09/16/entain-andy-burnham-tax/
3. GBC, ‘Entain announces further redundancies following UK Gaming Tax rise’, 16 September 2026, https://www.gbc.gi/news/entain-announces-further-redundancies-following-uk-gaming-tax-rise
4. House of Commons Library, ‘Budget 2025: Gambling taxation’, Research Briefing CBP-10440, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10440/CBP-10440.pdf
5. Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, section 188, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/52/section/188
6. Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, section 189(4), as amended with effect from 6 April 2026, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/52/section/189
7. Employment Rights Act 2025, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/contents
8. Department for Industrial and Employment Relations (Malta), ‘Collective Redundancies’, giving effect to Legal Notice 428 of 2002, https://dier.gov.mt/en/services/employment-conditions/termination-of-employment/collective-redundancies/
9. Government of Gibraltar, Department of Employment Information Leaflet 2025, https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/uploads/documents/employment/Department%20of%20Employment%20Information%20Leaflet-2025.pdf
10. UWV, ‘Informing us of a collective redundancy’, Collective Redundancy (Notification) Act, https://www.uwv.nl/en/employers/forms/informing-us-of-a-collective-redundancy
11. iGaming Business, ‘Entain warns prime minister against raising Machine Games Duty’, September 2026, citing EY work commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council, https://igamingbusiness.com/finance/entain-mgd-hike-prime-minister-warning/
12. Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, section 195A, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/52/section/195A
13. Lewis Silkin, ‘Government consults on collective redundancy thresholds’, 27 February 2026, summarising the Department for Business and Trade consultation that closed on 21 May 2026, https://www.lewissilkin.com/insights/2026/02/27/government-consults-on-collective-redundancy-thresholds
14. Gambling Commission, LCCP licence condition 15.2.1, reporting key events, https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/licensees-and-businesses/lccp/condition/15-2-1-reporting-key-events
15. iGaming Business, ‘Brazil president approves gradual tax rise on gambling operators’, 2 January 2026, on Complementary Law No 224, https://igamingbusiness.com/finance/tax/brazil-president-approves-tax-rise-gambling-operators/
16. iGaming Business, ‘Netherlands approves 37.8% gambling tax hike, in phases’, https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/regulation/netherlands-gambling-tax-hike-approved/
17. iGaming Expert, ‘Holland Casino warns Trade Union of Job losses’, 2 July 2026, https://igamingexpert.com/regions/europe/holland-casino-trade-union/