The iGaming industry has shed thousands of jobs in the opening quarter of 2026, with confirmed redundancies spanning game suppliers, technology platforms, operators and B2B infrastructure providers across multiple regions. The pace of cuts has accelerated through the quarter, and the structural forces behind them show no sign of reversing before year-end.
The Scale of the Cuts
The wave started in January. Playtika, the Israeli mobile gaming group, confirmed approximately 500 redundancies — around 15% of its 3,500-strong global workforce. CEO Elad Zohar said the company would abandon what he described as an “unsustainable growth strategy” and move toward a leaner, AI-driven model focused on fewer, higher-priority projects.
Bragg Gaming followed in the same month, announcing a 12% reduction in global headcount as part of a strategic restructuring. The company projected annual cost savings of approximately €4.5m from the exercise. CEO Matevz Mazij framed the move as preparation for organic growth and market consolidation opportunities, citing the need to “capitalise on a strong foundation.”
Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) cut technology staff in Eastern Europe in January after a major Brazilian operator postponed its planned platform launch. The delay triggered a profit guidance revision of approximately 40% for 2026. GiG identified AI tooling as the mechanism to offset the resulting cost gap, meaning fewer roles would be needed to deliver the same volume of technical output going forward.
February brought further announcements. Rivalry Corp., the Canadian esports-focused sportsbook, suspended player activity entirely and confirmed a significant workforce reduction while its board evaluated strategic alternatives including asset sales and restructuring. In the US, Underdog Fantasy laid off at least 125 employees — more than 20% of its workforce — as part of a deliberate pivot away from state-regulated sports betting and toward federally regulated prediction markets. Approximately two-thirds of its fraud operations team was among those cut. DraftKings confirmed job reductions of its own, though no official headcount figure was released. Analysts at Citizens estimated the cuts at roughly 5% of the company’s approximately 5,500-strong global team, projecting potential annualised savings of around $30m.
In February, bet365 restructured the arrangements of contractor staff within its trading teams, including teams based in Bulgaria, as part of a broader operational reset. The changes applied to contracted rather than permanent employees.
March produced the largest individual announcements. IGT, the gambling technology group that completed its $6.3bn merger with Everi Holdings in late 2025, confirmed plans to eliminate approximately 700 roles — 10% of its global workforce. New CEO Hector Fernandez said the reductions were not performance-related but were necessary to align resources following the merger integration and accelerate the company’s strategic priorities. IGT stated it was “aligning our organisation to accelerate innovation, strengthen execution and position the company for long-term growth.” Aristocrat Interactive confirmed the closure of its Malta office, effective end of June, where approximately 120 employees worked across its white-label iGaming operations. The closure represents Aristocrat’s complete exit from the white-label segment.
Lottomatica dismissed 348 employees at its Serbian subsidiary PWO in Belgrade, terminating all roles on a single working day in late March. The company attributed the decision to the centralisation of key functions following completion of its post-acquisition integration of SKS365, the operator behind the Planetwin365 brand, acquired for €639m in April 2024. The PWO team had been responsible for migrating the group onto Lottomatica’s proprietary platform — a process completed in July 2025, ahead of schedule, delivering €87m in synergies, 34% above the announced target. Italy’s USB union raised concern over the timing: the dismissals came days after Lottomatica reported record adjusted EBITDA of €856m and adjusted net profit of €369m for FY2025. USB called for formal negotiations on the role of artificial intelligence in workforce decisions across the group, citing the company’s LAMP platform, which the 2024 annual report described as strategically integrating AI across all business units including customer support and logistics.
Also in March, Paddy Power’s parent Flutter entered consultation with marketing staff across its UK and Ireland operations over potential redundancies. The company cited both the UK tax backdrop and a broader technology consolidation programme as the reasons. No final headcount has been confirmed, with the process ongoing at the time of writing.
Playtech launched an operational review of Sun Bingo, its UK white-label bingo operation run in partnership with News UK, as part of its FY2025 results announcement. CFO Chris McGinnis confirmed the review on the earnings call, citing the scheduled April 2026 RGD increase as the trigger. Sun Bingo revenue had already fallen 17% in H1 2025 to €33.2 million, following enhanced regulatory requirements introduced in H2 2024. No job loss figures have been announced, and no outcome has been confirmed — but the review places the future of the business, and the employment it sustains, in open question. Playtech’s group B2C revenue fell 20% year-on-year to €78.5 million in 2025.
In the land-based segment, Bombay Group — the operator of the Bombay Club casino hotel in Tallinn — announced cuts of more than half of its 164-person workforce, citing uneconomical daily table games operations. The announcement was the company’s second consecutive round of redundancies, following an earlier reduction in November 2025.
The Structural Drivers
Three pressures are shaping virtually every redundancy announcement: UK tax changes, AI adoption, and stalled or revised market entries.
The UK government’s decision to raise Remote Gaming Duty from 21% to 40%, effective April 2026, has been the single most consequential policy shift for the labour market. The increases, which also introduce a new 25% remote betting duty on sports wagering from April 2027, generated immediate warnings from operators about cost-cutting consequences. Flutter estimated a $320m EBITDA impact in 2026 before mitigation measures. Those warnings are now being translated into action. The Playtech Sun Bingo review is a direct illustration of how the RGD change is forcing operators and their white-label partners to reassess the viability of entire business lines, not just individual headcount.
AI is the second driver — and the Lottomatica situation illustrates the dynamic most directly. Bragg, GiG, Playtika and Underdog all cited AI-enabled efficiency as both the rationale for cutting and the mechanism for maintaining output with fewer people. At Lottomatica, USB’s intervention makes the connection explicit: a system managing support tickets at 150-millisecond response times was operational before the Belgrade team was dismissed. The argument running across announcements is consistent — content production, trading operations, compliance monitoring and customer operations can be delivered at the same or greater scale with a materially smaller team once AI tooling is embedded. Roles being eliminated are unlikely to return.
Market stalls account for the remainder. GiG’s Brazil situation illustrates the exposure clearly: a high-confidence market entry failed to materialise on schedule, leaving the business carrying fixed costs built for a revenue trajectory that had been revised downward. Similar dynamics apply across US-focused operators that built headcount for digital expansion and are now managing a gap between their cost base and actual growth rates. DraftKings’ cuts, for example, came alongside the company absorbing pressure from rising costs and competition from prediction market products.
Who Is Not Cutting
The layoffs are concentrated in companies with structural mismatches between cost bases and current revenue trajectories. They are not universal. Soft2bet reported 85% revenue growth for 2025 and set expansion targets for 2026, and a number of B2B suppliers operating in markets with stable regulatory environments have not announced workforce reductions. The iGaming jobs market is seeing simultaneous cutting in some areas and active hiring in others, particularly in AI, compliance and regulated market operations.
What Comes Next
The UK Remote Gaming Duty increase takes effect in April. The full cost impact will move from projection to reality across the industry simultaneously, and operators that have not yet acted on restructuring will face renewed pressure to do so once their Q2 cost base reflects the new rate. Flutter’s Paddy Power consultation is likely to conclude in the weeks ahead, and Entain — which reported a £905m loss for 2025 partially reflecting a £650m UK tax charge — has indicated it will pursue cost savings to offset the duty exposure. The Playtech Sun Bingo review will also reach a conclusion in the same window, with the RGD increase now live and the commercial case for the business in its current form undermined by the new rate.
Brazil remains a variable. Multiple operators and suppliers have made market entry commitments in a jurisdiction that is still in the early stages of regulatory consolidation. Further delays or slower-than-expected licensing timelines would extend the pressure on companies that have already staffed for anticipated launch volumes.
The industry entered 2026 with strong full-year 2025 revenue figures. The workforce story for 2026 is considerably different — and based on the trajectory of the first quarter, further redundancy announcements before year-end appear probable.
Source: Company statements
