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Flutter expects up to 1 400 UK and Ireland redundancies after the tax rise
Flutter is cutting fixed costs in the UK and Ireland, while FanDuel still holds most of the group’s customer economics.
On 20 October 2026, Flutter announced a restructure of its UK and Ireland business after the gaming tax rises in the 2025 Autumn Budget, and the plan is still subject to consultation. The group expects up to 1 400 redundancies among 9 000 people in the division, including teams in Leeds, Dublin, Porto and Cluj-Napoca, and carrying out the restructure is expected to cost $80–90M in the fourth quarter of 2026.
UK iGaming duty rose 19 percentage points to 40% from April 2026, and sports betting duty, excluding bets on UK horse racing, rises 10 percentage points to 25% from April 2027. Flutter puts the 2027 adjusted EBITDA impact of the iGaming tax changes at $540M, with $201M of first-order mitigation expected.
Kevin Harrington, chief executive of Flutter UK and Ireland, said the rise had changed the economics of the regulated market and was helping the unlicensed one — and that the company could not absorb it without cutting fixed costs.
In the United Kingdom, the projected revenue (CEB) of offshore brands rose from 12.4% in September 2025 to 15.3% in September 2026, while onshore CEB was $832.9M in the later month, against $840.7M a year earlier.
Across September 2025–September 2026, Blask data puts FanDuel at 55.2% of CEB among the Flutter brands it tracks.
Over those same Septembers, offshore Blask Index share in Britain rose from 2.7% to 4.4%.
In the UK, Flutter’s brands booked $178.9M ($134.2–313.1M) of CEB in September 2026, 14.6% of tracked Flutter CEB that month and 1.6% above a year earlier, six months after UK iGaming duty rose to 40%.