Entain to Cut 400 Customer Care Jobs and Warns Burnham on Machine Games Duty

^{Entain runs about 2,300 Ladbrokes and Coral betting shops in the UK, employing more than 12,000 people. (Photo: Peter Robinson / Wikimedia Commons)}

Entain is cutting around 400 jobs from its customer care operation and has told the prime minister that doubling machine games duty would add roughly £100 million a year to the cost of running its UK betting shops. The Ladbrokes and Coral owner opened a consultation covering up to a fifth of its 2,000 customer care roles on 16 September 2026.

The consultation spans 11 countries, including the UK, Austria, Bulgaria, Brazil, Gibraltar, India, Ireland, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, and Uruguay. The company has not said how many of the losses will fall in the UK, and the process is due to finish by November.

The timing is the point. The cuts were announced while the Treasury is weighing gambling tax changes ahead of the autumn Budget, months after higher UK duties cut into the group's earnings, and Entain has moved from lobbying in general terms to putting a number on what a specific rate rise would cost it. That makes this a test case for how the retail betting sector responds if machine games duty goes up.

What Entain Told the Prime Minister

Chief executive Stella David wrote to prime minister Andy Burnham setting out the company's position on the mooted rise. In the letter, quoted by The Independent, she said doubling the standard rate of machine games duty to 40% would add around £100 million to the annual cost of running the UK retail business.

David pointed to an independent study commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council that estimated such an increase could lead to 1,470 shop closures and 15,900 lost jobs across the sector.

'These are not theoretical efficiencies in a financial model. They are people losing their jobs and communities losing long-established high-street businesses.'

She set out who works in the estate: half of Entain's retail colleagues are women, 52% work part-time or flexible hours, and more than one in five, or 2,570 people, are aged under 25. Entain employs 13,000 people in the UK, including more than 12,000 across its 2,300 Ladbrokes and Coral shops.

David, who argued earlier this year that Entain already pays its fair share, added that the company was not asking to be insulated from taxation, noting that Entain is one of the UK's top 20 taxpayers, but said a further rise would come on top of substantial increases already imposed on the sector.

A Second Round of Cuts This Year

On the redundancies themselves, David said the proposed changes were being made to ensure the business remains competitive, financially resilient, and well positioned for the future as the sector faces an increasingly challenging operating environment. She said the decision had not been taken lightly and that supporting affected colleagues was the immediate priority.

This is the group's second significant reduction of 2026. Two months ago Entain confirmed 500 global cuts across product technology and corporate roles, and the company has previously put the impact of new UK gambling taxes at around £250 million.

Remote gaming duty rose from 21% to 40% in April 2026, and a higher rate of general betting duty is due next year. Chancellor John Healey has not committed to a machine games duty rise, and no rate has been announced.

What It Means for the High Street

Entain is not the only operator shrinking its estate. Evoke, which owns William Hill, has closed 278 shops over the past year, around 200 of them in May alone, as it cut costs to absorb higher taxes.

Players are unlikely to see an immediate change in the shops themselves, since customer care roles sit behind the counter rather than in it. The pressure point for high streets is the Budget: if machine games duty doubles, the closure estimates cited by Entain and the Betting and Gaming Council become the sector's central forecast, and the pace of shop closures set by Evoke this year becomes the benchmark for what follows.