Genting Says Doubling Machine Duty Would Make 13 of Its 32 UK Casinos Unviable

Genting, which runs 32 casinos in the UK, puts the cost of a 40% Machine Games Duty at about £16 million a year and more than 850 venue jobs. It is the casino sector's answer to the harm case against machines, a month before the Budget on 28 October.

• Paul Willcock, chief executive of Genting UK, says doubling Machine Games Duty from 20% to 40% would add about £16 million a year to the company's costs
• Genting's own modelling suggests 13 of its 32 UK casinos would become "unprofitable or unsustainable", putting more than 850 venue jobs and around 50 support roles at risk, he wrote in City AM
• Willcock argues the Treasury could collect less in total, because closed casinos would stop paying every tax, not just machine duty
• The warning follows Betfred's forecast of 495 shop closures and a rebuttal from Paddy Power co-founder Stewart Kenny, who calls such warnings "scaremongering"
• The Treasury is reported to be weighing a doubling in the Budget on 28 October

Casinos Put a Number on the Machine Duty Rise

Paul Willcock, chief executive of Genting UK, has set out what a doubling of Machine Games Duty would mean for the company's estate, in an opinion piece for City AM this week. Raising the standard rate from 20% to 40% would add about £16 million a year to Genting's cost base, he wrote, and "our modelling suggests that 13 of our 32 casinos would become unprofitable or unsustainable. More than 850 jobs in those venues would be at risk, together with around 50 roles in the teams that support them." He did not name the venues concerned.

Willcock's central argument is fiscal. "Casinos that remain open would pay more machine duty, but those forced to close would stop paying a range of taxes altogether," he wrote. "Our modelling indicates that the revenue lost through closures would outweigh the additional machine duty collected from the remaining venues." Genting has not published the modelling. The company says it paid more than three-quarters of a billion pounds in taxes, duties and levies between 2016 and 2025, and has invested close to £1 billion in its UK estate.

The piece ties the tax question to investment. Genting is planning a £50 million casino, food and entertainment development in the Grade II-listed London Trocadero, which Willcock says would create 350 to 400 permanent jobs, and has committed "millions" to refurbishing its Portland Street casino in Manchester. "A tax policy that weakens the commercial case for that investment will have consequences far beyond a single line on a casino's accounts," he wrote. He was careful on the black-market argument, saying it would be "wrong to overstate or assume a direct displacement effect", but that the Treasury should assess where demand would go.

InterGame reports that a membership survey by Bacta, the trade association for land-based gaming machines, found every respondent expected the proposed rise to hurt their business, 90% of them "severely".

The Treasury Option Everyone Is Arguing Over

The Treasury is understood to be modelling a proposal from the Social Market Foundation to double Machine Games Duty, which would take the three bands from 5%, 20% and 25% to 10%, 40% and 50%, according to reports in The Times. Chancellor John Healey presents the Budget on 28 October. Betfred's founder Fred Done has said a doubling would close about 495 of his shops, and analysts have told the Racing Post it could cost nearly 3,000 betting shops across the industry. On the other side, Stewart Kenny has called the warnings "familiar scaremongering" and argued that gaming machines should be taxed more heavily than betting on sport and racing.

Casinos Are a Different Case From Betting Shops, and Genting Is Making That Argument Explicitly

Most of the debate so far has been about high-street betting shops, where machines are half the profit of a chain such as Betfred. Willcock's piece argues that a casino is a hospitality venue with gaming at its core, employing croupiers, chefs and security staff, and drawing overseas visitors, around half of Genting's tracked attendance where nationality is recorded. That is a deliberate attempt to separate casinos from the harm case that Kenny and the Social Market Foundation make against machines. It has some force: the number of machines a casino may offer is capped by its licence, play is supervised on the floor, and entry is age-checked at the door. But the tax is levied on machine income wherever it is earned, and the Treasury would have to create a casino-specific rate to treat the sectors differently, which is not among the options reported.

The Revenue Claim Is the One the Treasury Can Test, and Genting Has Not Shown It

The assertion that a higher rate would raise less money is the argument most likely to move a Chancellor looking for revenue, and it is also the one that depends entirely on unpublished modelling. For it to hold, closures would have to remove enough employment taxes, business rates, VAT and duty to outweigh a doubled rate at every venue that stays open. That is possible for marginal casinos but not self-evident across an estate, and the 13 venues at risk have not been identified. The same gap weakened Betfred's figures. Operators that want the Treasury to accept a Laffer-style argument will have to show the venue-level numbers, not only the conclusion.

Genting has given the Treasury a specific cost, a specific count of casinos and a claim that the rise would lose money. The Budget will show which of those numbers the Chancellor believes.