Rank's Answer to a 40% Online Tax Is to Send Its Venue Customers Online

Richard Harris says the group's best growth lever is converting venue players to digital, that the new MyMecca app has lifted sign-ups, and that a UK market "unlikely to provide tax tailwinds" rewards small targeted projects over big ones. On the day Entain cut 400 jobs, that is a different way of reading the same Budget.

• Rank Group chief executive Richard Harris told NEXT.io the "biggest opportunity" for the Grosvenor and Mecca owner is converting existing venue customers to play online as well, with omni-channel relationships "an important part of our strategy"
• The MyMecca app, offering personalised rewards and online membership, "has led to a strong increase in digital sign-ups", he said; no figure was given, and further cross-channel developments are planned for FY27
• Harris said Rank is "very familiar with dealing with a macro environment that is unlikely to provide tax tailwinds in the UK", applies "clear hurdle rates" to investment, and has found that "highly targeted and specific projects have yielded better returns" than bigger-ticket ones
• Remote gaming duty rose from 21% to 40% in April, and Rank reported 21% underlying profit growth in August on like-for-like net gaming revenue of £834.1 million, up 6%
• The interview was published on the day Entain put 400 customer care jobs into consultation and lobbied against a doubling of machine games duty, a tax Rank's casinos also pay

A Venue Operator Treats Its Estate as a Funnel

Rank Group is looking to its venues as part of the answer to a UK online tax regime that has changed the economics of digital gambling, chief executive Richard Harris told NEXT.io in an interview published on Wednesday. Harris, who took the role on a full-time basis in July, said the group sees "potential in bringing its retail and digital businesses closer together, particularly by converting more venue customers to online", as the outlet reports.

"The majority of customers play in one primary channel, but there is a valuable cohort that move between channels," Harris said. "Building omni-channel relationships are therefore an important part of our strategy." The early example he offered is the MyMecca app, designed to give bingo customers a broader digital relationship with the brand, including personalised rewards and online membership. "We have just launched the MyMecca app, which has led to a strong increase in digital sign-ups," he said. No figure for sign-ups or conversion was disclosed, and Rank has further developments planned for FY27 to make the transition between channels more seamless, according to the report.

Harris framed the objective as consistency rather than sameness: "Customers tend to be on different missions when playing in different channels," he said, and the aim is for the experience to remain "consistent and relevant from our customer's point of view" as they move between them. On investment, he said the group has "experience in navigating choppy waters", that its investment programme is "consistently disciplined with clear hurdle rates and expectations on returns", and that "highly targeted and specific projects have yielded better returns than, perhaps, broader, bigger ticket projects". Casino stays central: "We are experts in casino-led gaming," he said, and the Grosvenor brand "brings casino authenticity to our online offering".

The Numbers Behind the Confidence

The interview follows full-year results in August in which Rank reported underlying like-for-like net gaming revenue of £834.1 million, up 6% from £788.4 million, and underlying profit growth of 21%, a result that set it apart from UK peers reporting shop closures and downgrades. Remote gaming duty rose from 21% to 40% on 1 April, and general betting duty rises to 25% on most remote betting from April 2027. The next test is the 28 October Budget, at which the Chancellor is reported to be considering a doubling of machine games duty, a levy paid on the gaming machines in Rank's casinos and bingo halls as well as in betting shops and adult gaming centres.

Two Operators, One Tax, Two Stories on the Same Day

Entain's response to the same fiscal environment was announced within hours of Harris's interview: a consultation on 400 jobs and a letter to the Prime Minister. Rank's is a conversion funnel and a membership app. The difference is not temperament but structure. Rank's revenue is venue-led, its customers walk through a door it owns, and a 40% online duty makes each of them more valuable as a digital customer acquired for nothing than as one bought through marketing. Entain's UK business is online-led with a retail estate it is shrinking, so the same duty falls on its core rather than on an adjacent channel. Both are rational. Only one of them looks like a strategy rather than a defence, and that is because Rank's estate is the asset the tax did not touch.

A Strong Increase Is Not a Number, and the Next Results Will Need One

Rank has not said how many venue customers have converted, what share of Mecca's digital sign-ups are new to online, or what an omni-channel customer is worth relative to a single-channel one. Those are the figures on which the strategy stands or falls, because the risk of converting venue players is that they simply move spend from a channel taxed at one rate to a channel taxed at 40%. Harris's emphasis on hurdle rates and small projects suggests the group knows the arithmetic is unforgiving. The FY27 half-year is where "strong increase" will have to become a percentage.

Casinos Pay Machine Games Duty Too

Harris's interview is about online, but the Budget question that matters most to Rank is the one Entain spent the day lobbying on. Grosvenor's casino floors run gaming machines on which machine games duty is charged, and a doubling of the standard rate would land on the venue estate that the omni-channel strategy depends on to generate the customers it wants to convert. Rank has absorbed one tax rise well; the interview reads as a company preparing to absorb another by making each venue visit worth more. That is the right preparation. It does not make the second rise smaller.

Rank has chosen to answer a 40% online tax by getting more out of the customers it already has. On current evidence that is working; the Budget will decide how hard it has to work.