United Kingdom: all our coverage

The former Française des Jeux began the year aiming for slight revenue growth and now expects a mid-single-digit decline, with its margin target trimmed to around 23%. Fewer big EuroMillions jackpots, high winnings for retail bettors and tax rises did most of the damage.

The Times reports that the Chancellor will lift the main rate of machine duty by five points at next week's Budget, a quarter more than today but well short of the doubling campaigners wanted. Nothing is confirmed, the industry says any rise will cost jobs, and Rank's shares rose after the report.

Speaking to the world's gambling regulators in Peru, the Commission's acting chief executive answered critics of affordability checks and of her own survey data in unusually blunt terms. On the illegal market, the money has arrived but the new court powers have not.

The Department for Communities' fourth annual gambling compendium shows turnover recovering on a revised series, betting office licences falling for a second year and the first count of machines under the new £500 prize limit. Its biggest number, a record £89 million in duty, is a modelled share of a UK tax.

A survey of 5,000 French 15 to 17-year-olds funded by the Autorité Nationale des Jeux finds that teenagers who play both gambling-style video games and real-money games score far worse on problem gambling than those who only gamble. It shows an association and a sequence, not a cause, and its authors say so.

The operator of allbritishcasino.com and six other British-facing sites let customers request only one withdrawal at a time and held back every fifth or tenth withdrawal for some customers for manual review, the regulator found. The Commission is presenting the case as a warning that fairness breaches will be enforced as firmly as money laundering and harm failures.

Paddy Power's owner expects up to 1,400 redundancies from a restructure of its UK and Ireland business, eight days before a Budget that could raise machine duty. The tax set the size and the timing; the shape looks like the cost programme Flutter was already running.

Kambi has signed the UK and Irish bookmaker to its full outsourced sportsbook at a time when partner migrations are shrinking its European business. The value, the term and the launch date are not disclosed, and QuinnBet's last platform move ended in a Gambling Commission finding.

Twelve days before the Budget, Halesowen MP Alex Ballinger and 89 Labour colleagues have asked the Chancellor for a new, higher duty rate on the Category B machines in adult gaming centres, betting shops and casinos. The letter cites a 40% rate without asking for one, and the industry says any rise would close venues and "kill the British seaside".

France's regulated gambling market barely grew in the first half, and only because online sports betting had a World Cup June. The regulator now says the full-year figure depends on whether a record 5.85 million active online accounts keep playing after the tournament, and on a lottery operator whose French revenue is shrinking.

The Economy Ministry has told MPs that raising the levy on AWP slot machines from 24% to 26% risks shrinking play enough to lose money, killing an opposition plan to fund carers from it. The same ministry is reported to be looking for up to €1 billion from gambling in the 2027 Budget.

Sweden's Administrative Court of Appeal has upheld two warnings and SEK44 million in sanction fees against bet365 for letting players choose "no limit" as their mandatory deposit limit for more than three years. The fees are lower than Spelinspektionen first set in 2023, mostly because of a ruling on how the cap is calculated, but the regulator's reading of the law has held.

The public spending watchdog will test whether the licence Allwyn won was designed, awarded and overseen to maximise returns to good causes, and report in spring 2027. The latest quarter's payments to good causes were 22.2% below a year earlier.

Rank's casinos are still growing, and their fastest-growing line is gaming machines, the product a Budget in 13 days may tax at twice the rate. Its bingo clubs stood still for the quarter, it closed three casinos, and its profit guidance now assumes the tax regime stays as it is.

Entain's British online business grew 14% under the new 40% gaming duty, while customer-friendly football results and a Brazilian unit that shrank by more than a third before the ban held the group to 2%. Guidance survives with profit pinned to the bottom of the range, and the chief executive used the update to lobby the government before the Budget.

England's white-ball mentor signed as a Dafabet brand ambassador this week and has told the England and Wales Cricket Board he will not promote betting while on duty, The Guardian reports. The precedent says the deal itself is allowed; the harder questions sit with the advertising rules and with Dafabet's own cricket sponsorships.

Two weeks before the Budget, the Betting and Gaming Council has put a map and a workforce profile on the EY figures it first published in September: up to 16,000 jobs, almost 1,500 betting shops and 34 casinos. The modelling itself is still unpublished, and the official data test it only in part.

Matchbook says it has completed the acquisition of Betdaq and is selling the deal as a deeper pool of liquidity, tied to the rise of prediction markets. Betdaq's own closure notice shows what was actually bought: the brand and the domains, with no customer accounts and no order book. The price was not disclosed.

The Irish Presidency's revised negotiating box for the EU's 2028 to 2034 budget lists five new revenue sources, and a levy on online gambling is not among them. Europe's racing bodies, who had asked Dublin days earlier to keep horserace betting out of any such levy, welcomed the omission but warn the idea still has strong support in the European Parliament.

A senior coroner has told the Gambling Commission that people who self-exclude through GamStop can still play National Lottery draws online. The Commission says it needs up to 12 months of discovery before deciding what, if anything, to change.

Budget 2027 left Ireland's 2% tax on stakes untouched and gave racing €2.9 million more, on condition of welfare and integrity reform. The one new betting measure is a 25% charge on pool betting commissions, written for a market the new regulator is about to open up.

Betfred's group accounts for the 52 weeks to 29 March 2026 show turnover of £995.6m, online at 45% of it, and a machine duty bill larger than its profit after tax. They close three days before remote gaming duty reached 40%, and arrive weeks before a Budget that could double the duty on shop machines.

The Betting and Gaming Council says doubling Machine Games Duty would force some casino operators to consider closing up to a third of their venues, with half the threatened closures in the North of England and Scotland. It publishes no method, and a year ago it put a similar job toll on a far smaller rise.

Genting Berhad wants RM1.25 billion, approximately $306 million, from shareholders to pay down borrowings that have climbed to RM45.25 billion. The Lim family has committed its 45% share; the rest is not yet underwritten, and Maybank Investment Bank says this may not be the last call on investors.