bet365 is cutting 340 jobs across its Stoke-on-Trent headquarters and its offices in Malta and Gibraltar, around 3% of a global workforce of roughly 10,000, in a restructure the operator has tied to rising tax and regulatory costs.
About 300 of the roles are in Stoke-on-Trent, where bet365 employs around 5,500 people. The remaining 40 or so sit across the Gibraltar and Malta offices. Affected staff have been informed, and the company has opened a voluntary redundancy programme ahead of any compulsory exits.
bet365 said it had been “facing a highly competitive trading environment, plus increased regulatory and tax-related costs”, and that the changes were intended to “secure the business’s long-term future”. It said it would be “exploring all avenues to reduce the number of redundancies”.
“Our colleagues are our priority. We understand the concerns many will have. Impacted staff have been informed and are being fully supported throughout this process.”
The statement came from a company spokesperson and was not attributed to a named executive. bet365 is privately owned and does not publish quarterly results, so the restructure is one of the few public indicators of how the operator is reading its cost base.
The duty rise behind the cuts
The UK Remote Gaming Duty rose from 21% to 40% of gross gaming revenue in April 2026, following the November 2025 Budget. Remote betting duty, which covers online sports betting, is set to rise from 15% to 25% in April 2027, with bets on UK horse racing carved out of the increase.
bet365 runs one of the largest online sportsbooks in the UK alongside a substantial casino business, so both rates apply to it. The gaming duty increase is already in force and feeding through the current financial year. The betting duty increase is still seven months out, which means the cost pressure the company is restructuring against has not finished landing.
A pattern across the UK market
The bet365 announcement follows a run of similar decisions since the Budget. Betfred is closing 132 shops, affecting around 600 jobs. Flutter Entertainment has put a further 100 Paddy Power shops under review, with about 400 roles at risk.
The Betting and Gaming Council estimates that more than 600 betting shops will have closed by the end of 2026 and that around 5,000 jobs have gone across the sector since the Budget. bet365 is the first of the large UK-facing operators to cut at this scale in head office and technology functions rather than in retail, where most of the closures have been concentrated.
The cuts also arrive during a period of turnover at the regulator, with Ruth Evans confirmed as chair of the UK Gambling Commission, and with the Commission’s affordability and safer gambling requirements adding compliance cost on top of the duty changes.
Why Malta and Gibraltar are in scope
Remote Gaming Duty applies to bets placed by UK customers, so the 40 roles going in Malta and Gibraltar are not a direct consequence of the UK rate. Both offices support bet365’s licensed operations outside Great Britain, including its European and international markets.
Their inclusion points to a wider review of the cost base rather than a UK-only response. bet365 named competitive trading conditions alongside tax and regulation in its statement, and the company has been expanding in regulated markets in North America and Latin America where acquisition costs are high and margins are thinner than in its established European business.
Malta and Gibraltar have both been under pressure from the same direction. Operators have consolidated hub functions in each jurisdiction over the past two years as licensing and tax conditions have shifted across Europe, and bet365’s cut is small in absolute terms but lands in two markets where iGaming employment is a significant share of the local white-collar workforce.
What happens next
The voluntary programme runs first, and bet365 has said it wants to bring the final number below 340. Consultation with affected staff is under way at all three sites.
The larger question is whether Stoke-on-Trent absorbs further reductions when the betting duty increase takes effect in April 2027. bet365 has built its headquarters into the largest private-sector employer in the city, and a second round after the 2027 rate change would hit a local labour market with few comparable alternatives. The company has not indicated whether more cuts are planned.
Source: Yahoo Finance
