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UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves is widely expected to announce an increase in the duties that bookies and casinos pay to the Treasury.
The spend on gambling ads, as we are learning, has been astronomical to date.
Bookmakers, online casinos and slot machine companies spent the jaw dropping sum of £2bn on advertising and marketing last year.
And here is the key point, according to Rob Davies and Mark Sweney of The Guardian:
That figure far outstrips the £1.2bn that the Treasury collected last year from online casino companies.
Leading media insights group WARC arrived at the £2bn figure.
And there's more.
That means that the true figure could be close to, or even higher than, the £2.5bn raised last year by the three main duties that the industry pays, which also include taxes levied on slot machines and sports bets.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is under pressure from thinktanks, MPs and former prime minister Gordon Brown to raise these duties at Wednesday’s budget, as she attempts to raise funds to shore up the ailing public finances.
(pictured: UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves)
It's hard to imagine darker days for bookies in Great Britain.
As reported by iGB earlier in the month, the proposed tax hike is likely to put bookmakers on the brink as proposals reach as high as a 50 percent increase.
From Martin Bjoerck of iGB:
Even before the threat of new levies, the retail segment was faltering as the nation’s gambling habits migrated largely online. Quarterly updates from Entain – with over 2,000 stores across its Ladbrokes and Coral brands – have repeatedly described retail as a “stable” but low-growth segment, although the group insists it “treasures” its shops as the backbone of its brand.
Major operators have issued stark warnings against a hike, insisting the impact could wipe out retail betting in the country, with thousands of jobs and hundreds of shops at stake. Aside from Flutter’s recent closures, Evoke, which operates 1,300 William Hill outlets, has also threatened to close as many as 200 shops – 15% of its estate – if taxes rise. As have Entain and Betfred.
Betting & Gaming Council (CEO Gráinne Hurst) offered this doom and gloom prediction:
“Further tax increases on the regulated online sector risk undermining consumer protections by pushing players towards the unsafe, unregulated black market, while reducing Treasury revenues and cutting the vital funding our members provide to British sport … Independent analysis by EY shows such proposals could put over 40,000 jobs at risk, divert £8.4 billion in stakes to the black market, and wipe £3.1 billion from the sector’s contribution to the UK economy.”
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
