Entain to Cut Up to 400 Customer Care Jobs

Entain will cut as many as 400 customer care jobs in the UK. The Ladbrokes and Coral operator confirmed the plan, calling it a necessary step to stay competitive. About a fifth of the customer care team goes, spread over several regions.

Scale matters. Entain runs 2,300 shops across the UK and employs more than 13,000 people there. Ask which roles sit in Britain and the company won't say. That silence says plenty. When a firm won't split the number, the domestic exposure is usually the bit it would rather keep quiet.

This isn't an isolated move either. bet365 is shedding around 340 jobs for much the same reason. Over at Paddy Power, a review is running that could close up to 100 shops and put 400 jobs at risk. Same playbook, different badge.

Tax is what's driving it. Remote gaming duty climbed from 21% to 40%, and online sports betting tax went from 15% to 25%. Now the government is weighing a machine games duty hike to 40%, something operators have rejected outright.

Squeeze legal operators, the industry bodies warn, and you simply hand share to the black market. Their argument runs like this: higher taxes leave licensed firms less able to compete with unlicensed ones. Nobody, they insist, is asking for exemption from tax. They want the government to weigh the fallout first, before pushing rates higher.

Elsewhere, Entain lost a trademark and copyright case in the UK High Court. Outplayed and OddsMonkey were the other side, and the court rejected Entain's claims.