HM Treasury has rejected Betfred’s account of why it is closing 132 betting shops, telling UK media that duty rates for high street betting premises have not changed and that the government is not responsible for the closures.
Betfred confirmed on 31 July that it will shut 132 of its more than 1,200 shops, around 10% of the largest retail betting estate in the UK, cutting more than 600 jobs. The closures are subject to consultation and begin in September, leaving the company with roughly 1,100 outlets.
Chief executive Jo Whitaker attributed the decision to the increase in gambling taxes, wage inflation, National Insurance contributions and general economic uncertainty. The Treasury disputed the first of those.
“It is wrong to suggest it is the fault of government for these closures. Gambling duty rates for high street shops have not changed,” a Treasury spokesperson told The Times.
What the April changes actually cover
On the narrow point, the Treasury is accurate. Remote Gaming Duty (RGD) rose from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026, and applies only to remote operators. Revenue from online sports betting was excluded, which leaves the increase falling on online casino revenue.
General Betting Duty (GBD), paid on off-course betting, betting exchanges and spread betting, rises from 15% to 25% in April 2027. Retail betting is exempt from that increase as well.
Both exemptions were written into the package by Rachel Reeves, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, after lobbying from the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) and the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), with The Sun running a parallel campaign on retail betting. The tax burden was moved onto online gaming and away from shops and racing.
The industry’s counterargument is about company balance sheets rather than shop-level duty. Omnichannel operators that run both a retail estate and an online casino, including Betfred, Evoke’s William Hill, Flutter’s Paddy Power and Entain’s Ladbrokes Coral, are absorbing the RGD rise rather than passing it to customers, and are cutting costs elsewhere to fund it. Shops with the thinnest margins are the first line of savings. Bally’s Intralot has already flagged the UK tax change against its earnings guidance.
BGC says the warnings have landed
The BGC, which represents most of the UK’s licensed betting and gaming operators, tied the closures directly to last year’s Budget.
“At last year’s budget, the BGC warned that further substantial tax increases would undermine jobs, investment and growth across Britain’s regulated betting and gaming industry,” the trade body said, calling the closures “the latest example of those warnings becoming reality”.
“Further pressure on these highly regulated businesses will mean more closures, fewer jobs, reduced investment and less money flowing into racing. These are the real-world consequences of the previous Chancellor’s decision to impose excessive tax rises on Britain’s regulated betting and gaming industry.”
Betfred founder and owner Fred Done widened the complaint to regulation, including the Gambling Commission’s financial risk assessments, in comments to in-house channel BetfredTV reported by the Racing Post.
“Over-taxing, over-regulating makes it so difficult. We’re not just competing with (bookmakers) in this country now but across the world. If you make it difficult for people to bet and make them have to show documents, most people are not going to want to do that.”
Retail still carries the business
Betfred’s own numbers show how much sits in the estate it is cutting. Group revenue for the 78 weeks ending 30 March 2025 was £1.45 billion, with gross profit of £1 billion. Retail accounted for nearly £900 million of that revenue, against £563.6 million from online. Revenue for the preceding 53 weeks was £908 million.
Gambling Commission data has shown retail betting gross gambling yield to be broadly flat rather than collapsing, with quarterly declines typically around 2%. UK market data continues to show remote casino as the growth engine, which is the segment the April rise targets.
The estate was already shrinking
Shop closures predate the tax debate. The maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals was cut from £100 to £2 in 2019 and William Hill closed around 700 shops that year. Betfred itself closed 51 shops between 2021 and 2022.
The current round is broader. Flutter’s Paddy Power is closing 57 shops across the UK and Ireland with around 250 jobs affected, Evoke has said it moved quickly on cost reduction and William Hill closures after the Budget, and Entain has announced its own cuts. Local authorities are separately pressing for more power to refuse betting shop and gaming hall planning applications. The pattern lines up with the wider round of job cuts across the sector this year.
Neither side has moved. The Treasury’s position is that it changed online duty and left shops alone, and operators say the online increase is paid for out of group budgets that include the shops. The consultation on the 132 sites runs from September, and the GBD rise to 25% lands in April 2027, which is when the industry will find out whether the retail exemption holds a second time.
Source: HM Treasury
