Who Pays When Gambling Taxes Rise?
Higher duties change more than an operator’s tax bill. UK company accounts and Dutch market data reveal how the cost can reach profits, advertising budgets and players — and why the final balance remains difficult to measure.
A gambling company can earn more from its customers and still make less money. Entain’s first-half results offer a useful example: revenue in its UK and Ireland online business increased by 13 percent in 2026, while underlying earnings fell by 8 percent.[4]
That tension sits at the centre of the debate over gambling taxes. Governments raise the rate paid by operators. Operators then decide how to respond. The resulting cost may appear in shareholder returns, a smaller advertising budget or less generous terms for customers.
Public filings now provide some evidence of that adjustment following the UK’s April tax increase. The Netherlands offers a longer record, including evidence on player payouts. Together, they help answer a question that the headline tax rate cannot: who actually pays?
The £100 that matters
UK Remote Gaming Duty increased from 21 to 40 percent on 1 April 2026. It applies to remote gaming, including online casino and bingo. It is not a 40 percent tax on every online bet: a separate 25 percent rate for most remote betting is scheduled for April 2027, with exceptions including UK horseracing.[1]
The distinction between money wagered and taxable gambling profit is equally important. For Remote Gaming Duty, the base is broadly gaming payments less prizes, subject to statutory rules. It is calculated before wages, technology, marketing and other operating expenses; it is not the company’s bottom-line profit.[2]
The tax bill on the same £100
£100 of taxable remote-gaming gross profit, after prizes and before operating costs and other taxes.
£19 more in duty on an unchanged £100 tax base. How operators respond determines who ultimately bears that cost.
Source: HMRC gambling-duty changes and Remote Gaming Duty guidance. Calculation: iGaming Review.
View the figures as a table
| Period | Duty | Remaining before other costs |
|---|---|---|
| Before 1 April 2026 | £21 | £79 |
| From 1 April 2026 | £40 | £60 |
The illustration holds the tax base constant. In practice, it moves. A company that cuts promotions, changes its products or loses customers may end up with a different amount to tax. The rate increase therefore starts a commercial adjustment whose effects cannot be read from the rate alone.
A forecast is not a bill received by players
When assessing the November 2025 Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility assumed operators would seek to pass around 90 percent of the duty increases to customers through higher prices or lower payouts. That was a modelling assumption across the gambling-duty package, not a measurement showing that players have already absorbed 90 percent of the UK casino-tax increase.[3]
“Price” also requires care in gambling. A player may continue staking £1 per spin while facing a higher expected loss. In a purely hypothetical example, a change from 96 percent to 95 percent return to player raises the long-run expected loss on £100 of stakes from £4 to £5: a 25 percent increase. That does not predict the result of any individual session or describe a change established in the UK market.
Less valuable bonuses could also change the customer proposition without altering the displayed stake. Whether customers notice, switch product, stop playing or move elsewhere affects how much an operator can pass on. The OBR’s model allowed for reduced demand, movement to the illicit market and switching between forms of gambling taxed at different rates.[3]
Two companies, different adjustments
Entain reported UK and Ireland online revenue of £637.6 million for January–June 2026, up from £562.6 million a year earlier. Underlying EBITDA fell from £161.6 million to £148 million. Gambling duties are already deducted from this operating earnings measure. It is before interest, corporate income tax, depreciation and amortisation, with company-specific adjustments.
Its online marketing spending nevertheless increased from £107.3 million to £123.3 million. Entain linked higher marketing across the wider UK and Ireland business to the timing of World Cup investment, while attributing most of that business’s gross-margin decline to the April tax change.[4]
Evoke took a different route. Its group marketing bill fell 18.5 percent, from £142.1 million to £115.8 million. Management explicitly connected the reduction to its response to higher duties. It reported £46 million of additional gaming duties, predominantly in the UK, and said commercial and operating measures offset more than half of the increase.[5]
These are different reporting scopes: Entain’s UK and Ireland online operation and evoke’s multinational group. Both half-year periods include three months before the new UK rate. They show different business responses, rather than a controlled comparison of the same tax exposure.
They also explain why an operator’s “mitigation” should not be equated with a cost passed to players. Cutting an advertising budget reduces payments elsewhere in the industry. Improving efficiency can protect earnings without changing customer terms. Lower earnings may leave shareholders bearing part of the adjustment. Accounts can reveal these channels without establishing the final share borne by each group.
What the early UK receipts tell us
HMRC’s September release shows Remote Gaming Duty cash receipts of £965.9 million in April–July 2026, against £592.5 million in the same months of 2025. That is a 63 percent increase, calculated from the unrounded published figures.[6]
Early UK tax receipts are higher
Remote Gaming Duty collected in April–July. The same four-month window in each year.
+63.0% year on year. These are cash collections, not a measure of the cost passed to customers.
Source: HMRC, 30 September 2026, Table 1. Totals and change calculated by iGaming Review.
View the figures as a table
| Period | Receipts | Status |
|---|---|---|
| April–July 2025 | £592.495m | Reported |
| April–July 2026 | £965.914m | Provisional |
Higher receipts establish that the Treasury collected more. They cannot identify whether the money ultimately came from lower operator margins or changes affecting customers. Nor can four months of cash collections establish whether the policy will meet its annual revenue forecast.
The Dutch evidence on payouts
The Dutch gambling-tax rate rose from 30.5 to 34.2 percent in January 2025, then to 37.8 percent in January 2026. For licensed online operators it is charged on gross gaming revenue — stakes less prizes.[9]
A study published by regulator Kansspelautoriteit in August 2025 found that online-slot payout ratios had declined after announcements of higher tax and new player-protection rules, before those measures took effect. It did not identify an equivalent clear change in other games, including sports betting.
Among eight operators that responded about lower payouts, the tax increase and player-protection rules were cited equally often. Some operators also told the regulator they had withdrawn games with high fixed costs, such as live-game tables, to offset the tax burden.[7]
This provides evidence of a route through which players can face a higher cost or reduced choice. It does not isolate how much resulted from taxation, and it cannot establish what happened to UK payouts after April.
A shrinking market is not a single-cause experiment
Dutch licensed online gross gaming revenue fell from approximately €1.47 billion in 2024 to €1.20 billion in 2025, a decline of about 18 percent. Those totals describe the licensed online market, not all gambling or the unlicensed sector.[8]
A smaller Dutch licensed online market
Gross gaming revenue in six-month periods. Tax and player-protection changes overlap.
Sources: Kansspelautoriteit, spring 2025 and spring 2026 market reports. Policy dates: August 2025 tax study and June 2026 monitor. Regulator-published rounded values.
View the figures as a table
| Period | Gross gaming revenue |
|---|---|
| January–June 2024 | €777m |
| July–December 2024 | €697m |
| January–June 2025 | €600m |
| July–December 2025 | €602m |
Tax changed alongside player-protection requirements and advertising restrictions. The earlier comparison period also benefited from Euro 2024. Assigning the entire fall to tax would confuse a sequence of events with proof of causation.
On a measure adjusted for prices and payment effects, Dutch gambling-tax receipts were €2 million higher in 2025 than in 2024, against an intended €108 million increase, in January 2026 prices. That change includes other market developments. A June 2026 government and regulator model estimated that the tax rise itself added €83 million, with substantial uncertainty.[9]
These are different measures: the change in adjusted receipts and an estimated tax effect. Both cover gambling beyond online casino and betting, including lotteries. A higher rate can raise more than would otherwise have been collected even as other developments reduce the taxable market.
Following the cost beyond the tax return
The available evidence supports a mixed answer. Company reports show earnings pressure and changes in marketing expenditure. Dutch regulatory work documents lower slot payouts and changes to game availability. None of these sources supplies a reliable market-wide allocation of the extra UK tax between players, shareholders, employees and suppliers.
Establishing that allocation would require comparable data on payouts, promotions, customer behaviour and costs over time. A company’s total earnings change is not enough: sports results, investment decisions and other regulatory changes also matter.
Policy success has more than one measure, too. Collecting revenue, reducing gambling harm and keeping activity within a licensed market are distinct objectives. A fall in gambling expenditure cannot, by itself, establish either success or failure against all three.
The next results should therefore be read alongside changes in what players receive and what operators buy from the rest of the industry. The tax return tells us who remitted the money. Following those decisions tells us much more about who bore the cost.
Sources and methodology
This analysis uses public tax guidance, official statistics and company filings available on 14 October 2026. Company explanations are attributed to management; illustrations and calculated changes are identified separately. No new interviews were conducted for this article.
- HMRC: Gambling duty changes. Rates, scope and implementation dates.
- HMRC: Remote Gaming Duty, Notice 455a. Taxable-profit definition and calculation rules.
- OBR: Economic and fiscal outlook, November 2025, paragraphs 3.39–3.40. Original policy assumptions, not observed pass-through.
- Entain: 2026 interim results, 13 August 2026, UK & Ireland table and commentary, printed page 14. Half-year figures; management-defined underlying EBITDA.
- evoke: H1 2026 interim results, 12 August 2026, financial review and consolidated income statement. Group figures across several countries.
- HMRC: UK betting and gaming statistics, 30 September 2026, Table 1 and commentary. Period totals calculated by iGaming Review.
- Kansspelautoriteit: Effecten op de kansspelmarkt, 5 August 2025, sections 3.2.1–3.2.3. Observed payouts and operator responses.
- Kansspelautoriteit: Spring 2026 online-market factsheet; Spring 2025 report. Half-year licensed online GGR; annual totals and percentage change calculated by iGaming Review.
- Ministry of Finance and Kansspelautoriteit: Monitor effecten verhoging kansspelbelasting, June 2026, sections 2–3. Adjusted receipts and modelled tax effects; figures in January 2026 prices.