Thursday, 30 April 2026

The "stickiness" of betting shop customers

It was only six months ago that Carsten Jung from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) was telling the Treasury Select Committee not to listen to those silly gambling industry lobbyists who were warning about hundreds of betting shops closing if gambling duty was hiked up. I wrote at the time...
 

The IPPR claims that its tax rises would bring in an extra £3.2 billion a year which former Prime Minister Gordon Brown says should be used to “solve” the child poverty “crisis”. The government currently spends the thick end of £400 billion a year on social security and yet relative child poverty persists, so it is far from certain that an extra £3 billion would solve anything, but despite the Treasury’s notorious resistance to hypothecation, anti-gambling campaigners have craftily made the two issues of gambling taxation and child poverty synonymous. Whose side are you on? Hungry children or online casinos? And what kind of monster are you anyway?

Cunning though it may be, this plan does rather depend on the onshore gambling industry not being a smoldering ruin after these duties have been hiked sky high.

 
Reassured by the IPPR and the Social Market Foundation that any claims about shop closures and job losses were "scaremongering" and that betting shop customers were "sticky" (i.e. loyal with inelastic demand), the government did pretty much everything the IPPR wanted in the last budget. And lo and behold...
 
Gambling giant blames UK tax rises as they close hundreds of stores
 
  • Evoke, the owner of William Hill and 888, has confirmed the closure of approximately 270 betting shops across the UK.
  • This decision aims to offset the financial impact of higher gambling taxes and mounting debts faced by the company.
  • Evoke reported pre-tax losses more than doubled to £549.1 million in 2025, largely attributed to increased UK duty costs.
  • The shop closures are expected to result in hundreds of job losses, although the precise number has not yet been confirmed.
    •  
    It would appear that the anti-gambling lobby have outwitted the politicians once again. 
     


    Posted by Christopher Snowdon at 2:18 pm

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