Flutter to Cut Up to 1,400 UK and Ireland Jobs, With 240 at Risk in Dublin

^{A Paddy Power bookmaker shop in London. Paddy Power is one of the brands owned by Flutter, which has announced plans to cut up to 1,400 UK and Ireland jobs. (Photo: Alan Stanton / Wikimedia Commons)}

Flutter Entertainment plans to cut up to 1,400 jobs across its UK and Ireland business, blaming the sharp rise in UK gaming taxes announced in the 2025 Autumn Budget. The Paddy Power owner confirmed the restructuring on 20 October 2026 and said the plans remain subject to consultation.

Ireland has seen smaller moves from the group before. An earlier proposal to close a Paddy Power shop in Drogheda put six jobs at risk. This round is on a different scale, and it reaches Flutter's Dublin headquarters.

What Flutter Has Announced

In its press release, Flutter said the decision affects colleagues in Leeds and Dublin, as well as UK and Ireland staff at its hubs in Porto, Portugal, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The group employs 28,500 people worldwide, including 9,000 in the UK and Ireland business.

Flutter put the cost of the restructuring at $80m to $90m. It said the figure was already captured in the guidance issued with its second-quarter update and will be incurred in the fourth quarter of 2026. The company described the move as part of its 'already guided first-order cost mitigation' against the UK tax increase.

Remote gaming duty on online casino games rose 19 percentage points to 40% from April 2026, according to a footnote in the release. Duty on sports betting, excluding horse racing, rises 10 percentage points to 25% from April 2027. Flutter put the 2027 adjusted EBITDA impact of the UK iGaming changes at $540m, with $201m of first-order mitigation expected to offset it.

Dublin Roles and the Company's Response

Kevin Harrington, Chief Executive of Flutter UK & Ireland, said in the statement that Flutter 'cannot fully absorb a rise of this magnitude without reducing our fixed cost base'. He added that his immediate focus was supporting impacted colleagues through what he called a difficult and challenging period. On the tax rise itself, he said:

'The material increase in betting and gaming duties announced in the UK Budget last year has fundamentally changed the economic model of the regulated betting and gaming industry in the UK while helping to fuel the unlicensed, unregulated market.'

RTÉ reported that 240 of the roles are at risk in Dublin, concentrated at the group's Clonskeagh headquarters, which has a workforce of 1,770. It said those staff work across finance, HR, technology, training, and legal functions and will be offered voluntary redundancy. RTÉ also reported that most UK cuts will fall in Leeds.

RTÉ added that Flutter announced last year it would reduce its number of betting shops across the UK and Ireland by 100, resulting in about 200 redundancies in Ireland. Flutter's brands include Paddy Power, Sky Bet, and Betfair, and the group is the latest operator to cut roles as the UK sector adjusts to the tax changes.

The same report noted that Entain, the Ladbrokes owner, outlined plans last month to cut about 20% of customer care roles, two months after saying it would remove 500 roles to offset the impact of higher taxes.

Flutter's release does not break the 1,400 figure down by country, so the Dublin number comes from RTÉ's reporting rather than the company statement. The group has also said before that fears over an Irish gambling tax rise are overblown. Final job numbers will depend on the consultation process that Flutter says is still to come.