What the 2025 Budget Means For Players
As you’ve probably heard, one of the announcements in the UK 2025 autumn Budget on November 26th was an increase in gambling taxes.
Gambling Tax Increases – The Details
Unfortunately for online bingo, slots and casino players, it’s online gaming that is taking the brunt of it. The tax rate is almost doubling, from 21% to 40%, and this will take effect in April 2026. Online betting has it slightly easier, with a tax rate of 25% to take effect in March 2027 (excluding horse racing).
Offline betting and gaming have been spared for now, with no tax increases planned. Bingo halls actually get a helping hand with the abolition of bingo duty (it’s currently 10%)
But what does this mean for players? Here’s some of the ways you might feel the pinch – most likely starting now rather than in 4 months’ time as operators start to prepare.
Bonuses and Promotions
These were under threat anyway because of the new rules on wagering and cross selling that take effect in January 2026, and the increase in tax is another hammer blow. Not only will operators have to pay more tax on bonuses, they will presumably have lower margins out of which to fund the bonuses in the first place.
Return To Player
Return To Player is the overall percentage of spend that a game pays out to players averaged over hundreds of thousands of spins. When you play a game with a high Return To Player, on average your money will last a lot longer than it will when you play a game with a low Return To Player. As the casino will be taking more of your money in the same number of spins, this gives them extra margin to pay the tax out of.
These days an awful lot of online slot games (including most new releases) come with “RTP ranges” which means the operator chooses the Return To Player from a range of options. Book of Dead for example has Return To Player ranging from 87.25% (at Aspire Global casinos) to 96.21% (at bet365) and many big operators already have it set to 94.25%. The operator can also change to a different rate of RTP at any time and although the RTP does have to be visible to players somewhere, it’s usually only if you read through the game help files. Hence our standard disclaimer:
The Return To Player of slot games can change and may not be the same at all casinos. Please check the in-game documentation before playing for the correct RTP figure.
It’s very likely that operators will respond to increased taxation by lowering the RTP on slot games with RTP ranges to somewhere lower in the range, thereby passing part of the cost on to players.
Removing Higher RTP Games
This is an obvious measure for operators to take and we’re not just talking higher RTP slot games here.
Blackjack and roulette have a considerably higher RTP than almost all slot games, and by their very nature the rules would have to be noticeably changed to lower the RTP. Hence the existence of triple zero roulette, which has RTP of 92.31% compared to the 97.3% of (single zero) European roulette. Live game shows aren’t available with RTP ranges and again, their RTP tends to be higher than that of most slot games.
We’ve already noticed some operators getting rid of their live casino.
Removing Expensive Games
Whenever you play a slot or casino game online, the game provider gets a cut (unless it’s the operator’s own games studio, of course). Some games are more expensive for operators than others and this includes the big progressive jackpots like Mega Moolah. We can expect casinos to remove the games that are most expensive for them to run.
Reconfiguring the Lobby to Push Low RTP Games
When looking for something new to play, many players will spot an attractive looking game in the lobby right away and won’t dig any deeper. So another tactic operators could use (and we think some already are!) is not to get rid of the higher RTP games and the more expensive games entirely, but tuck them away so they have no prominence in the lobby and are only findable with the search box.
In this scenario, the lobby will still look great and will be full of new releases and popular games like Book of Dead, Starburst, 9 Masks of Fire and the Big Bass games, but all will be set to have one of the lower RTPs from the range. Yet another reason always to check the RTP before you play!
Reducing Overheads
What about things that operators do for players over and above the games and promotions, that cost money? Here’s some of the ways cuts in those areas could affect you:
- Reducing customer support hours, replacing customer service staff with AI chatbots and/or removing some customer service channels such as telephone support
- Stopping new product development and lobby design updates
- Reducing sports sponsorship and advertising budgets
- In bingo, reducing the number of chat hosts or even dumping the chat entirely
Fewer Places to Play
We’re already seeing operators pausing acquisition of UK players.
Some could leave the UK altogether, with white label casino only sites (Progress Play, Grace Media) looking particularly vulnerable. And multi brand operators like Jumpman could consolidate (just as Dragonfish already have) resulting in there being a much smaller number of sites to choose from.
We also expect new site launches to dry up almost completely until the dust settles.
Black Market Threat
In jurisdictions such as Germany and the Netherlands, increasing taxes and making licence requirements more onerous has been associated with a growth in black market online gambling.
Unlicensed casinos are already targetting unwitting British consumers with tempting looking offers and those offers are going to look even more tempting by comparison as licensed operators cut back. If you play at an unlicensed casino, there will be no player protection measures and you have no comeback against fake games or against the casino simply not paying winnings. Remember always to check whether a casino you are thinking of playing at has a UK licence!
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