Betfred Founder Fred Done Warns Proposed Machine Gaming Duty Doubling Could End UK Retail Betting by 2030
Betfred founder Fred Done warns a proposed MGD rise from 20% to 40% would close 495 of its 1,094 UK shops, cost 2,575 jobs and £67m in tax revenue. He predicts no betting shops left by 2030 and a dead high street. Peers including Entain forecast £100m added costs.
SCCG Take — Successive tax rises are rendering UK retail betting structurally unviable. Operators must accelerate online migration while the Autumn Budget risks driving volume into unlicensed channels.
Fred Done, the 83-year-old founder of Betfred and Britain’s highest-paying taxpayer this year, has warned that further gambling tax increases could trigger widespread betting shop closures, damage horse racing, and speed the high street’s decline. The comments, made in a Financial Times interview and reported by iGaming Business, focus on a potential doubling of Machine Gaming Duty (taxes on gambling machines) from 20% to 40% under consideration by Chancellor John Healey ahead of the Autumn Budget.
Betfred operates approximately 1,094 retail shops. Fixed-odds betting terminals still generate roughly half of those shops’ profits despite the £2 stake cap imposed in 2019. Done stated that without the machines retail betting was “impossible”.
Betfred Closure Projections and Peer Actions
Done forecast that the duty rise would force Betfred to close 495 shops within one year, cutting 2,575 jobs and costing the Exchequer roughly £67 million in tax revenue. The company has already shuttered 132 outlets this year after the prior remote gaming duty increase. Evoke closed 200 William Hill stores in April for identical reasons. Stella David, CEO of Entain, projected an extra £100 million in costs for her business and warned of job losses on the high street.
The High Street Endgame
Done predicted the total disappearance of betting shops by 2030. “I believe that by 2030 we will have no betting shops. The high street will be dead. We’ve already worked it out that with the increases in taxes and salaries and other wages it won’t be worth operating,” he said. He questioned how much broader the tax burden on successful UK owners must grow, noting his family paid £400 million in taxes last year, and rejected Dame Meg Hillier’s description of the warnings as “scaremongering”.
The cumulative weight of higher national insurance, wage inflation, and repeated gambling levies now threatens the licensed retail channel’s survival. Policymakers weighing the Autumn Budget must weigh immediate revenue gains against the long-term contraction of regulated outlets and the likely migration of activity to less visible markets.
Reporting: iGaming Business (iGB)
Generated by SCCG’s automated editorial system from published source reporting. SCCG Management holds editorial responsibility.
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