Flutter plans up to 1,400 UK and Ireland job cuts

Flutter Entertainment, the company behind Paddy Power, Sky Bet and Betfair, is restructuring its UK & Ireland business and expects the plan to cut up to 1,400 jobs. It announced the move on 20 October 2026 and linked it directly to the increase in UK gambling duties announced in the government's 2025 Autumn Budget. The job cuts are subject to consultation, so 1,400 is a ceiling, not a final number.

Who is affected

Flutter names four locations: Leeds in England and Dublin in Ireland, plus UK & Ireland staff who work at its hubs in Porto, Portugal and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The people affected in Porto and Cluj-Napoca work for the UK & Ireland business.

Flutter employs 28,500 people worldwide, 9,000 of them in the UK & Ireland business. If the full 1,400 roles go, that would be about 15.6% of the division's 9,000 staff, by our calculation.

What it costs, and why now

Flutter puts the cost of the restructure at $80m to $90m, to be booked in the fourth quarter of 2026. That money is not new: it was already part of the higher guidance Flutter gave at its second-quarter update, when it raised its expected restructuring, transaction and integration costs to $500m.

The tax rise is the reason given. Remote Gaming Duty on online casino games rose from 21% to 40% of profits on 1 April 2026, and a new 25% rate of General Betting Duty applies to remote betting from 1 April 2027, with remote bets on UK horseracing staying at 15%, according to HMRC. Flutter puts the 2027 adjusted EBITDA impact of the UK iGaming tax changes at $540m, and says it expects to offset $201m of that through what it calls "first order mitigation", meaning direct cost cuts such as this restructure.

Kevin Harrington, chief executive of Flutter UK & Ireland, said the duty increase "has fundamentally changed the economic model of the regulated betting and gaming industry in the UK while helping to fuel the unlicensed, unregulated market."

What Flutter expects next

The company says it still expects the tax rise to have "a very significant impact on the overall market". It says the restructure preserves investment in its customer proposition and underpins its confidence that, as the largest operator in the UK, it can gain market share.

That is Flutter's forecast, not an outcome.

Why it matters

The UK tax rise has now moved from budgets and earnings calls to jobs. Remote Gaming Duty now takes 40% of operators' profits from UK online casino play, up from 21%, and Flutter says it cannot fully absorb a rise of that size without cutting its fixed cost base.

For the wider picture, see Entain's Q3 trading update, the UK Gambling Commission's latest industry statistics, our look at what British online casinos earn and the UKGC deposit-limit rules from 30 September.

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