{"id":721103,"date":"2026-07-31T15:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T15:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/721103\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T15:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T15:04:10","slug":"betfred-to-shut-132-shops-after-gambling-tax-hikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/721103\/","title":{"rendered":"Betfred to shut 132 shops after gambling tax hikes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jo Whittaker, chief executive of Betfred, said: &#8220;We have tried hard to protect all our sites and the colleagues who work in them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But the combined impact of higher employer national insurance contributions, wage inflation, increases in gambling taxes and wider economic uncertainty has left us with no choice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;These are well-run shops, staffed by dedicated colleagues, and it is incredibly hard to see any of them close, but the current fiscal and regulatory environment has made it impossible to keep trading all our shops.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Our priority now is to support the colleagues affected, and to continue serving customers and communities across the rest of our estate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rival gambling operators Paddy Power and William Hill have also shut dozens of stores over the past year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In January, William Hill and 888 owner Evoke said it moved &#8220;quickly and decisively&#8221; to offset recent budget changes to gambling taxes through shop closures and cost cuts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last October, Paddy Power revealed plans to shut 57 betting shops across the UK and Ireland, in a move which put 250 workers at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jo Whittaker, chief executive of Betfred, said: &#8220;We have tried hard to protect all our sites and the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-721103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}