UK bookmakers brace for Machine Games Duty rise amid Budget uncertainty

British bookmakers are bracing for another round of tax pressure, with speculation mounting that Machine Games Duty (MGD) could be the next target for the Treasury, according to SBC News.

Nothing has been confirmed. The picture should become clearer only when Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey delivers his Budget outside No 11 Downing Street on 28 October, SBC News reports.

The prospect has already drawn a response from pro-gambling reform campaigners, but the wider industry faces a tougher lobbying job than it did in 2025, when operators successfully carved out an exemption for sports betting from that year's increase in Remote Gaming Duty.

This time the focus falls on fixed odds betting terminals, the slot and virtual roulette machines found in betting shops across the country. The machines have long attracted controversy, having been labelled the "crack cocaine of the high street" during the 2018 debate that led the government to cut stake limits from £200 to £2, a change that took effect in April 2019.

Betfred founder Fred Done opposed that reduction at the time in an open letter, warning it would render 660 of the company's shops loss-making overnight. He described the cap as, in his words, "this is without doubt the biggest threat to the high street betting shop I have faced during my 50 years in business as a bookmaker."

Done has returned to the argument in recent days, writing an op-ed in The Sunday Times and giving an interview to the Financial Times, as reported by SBC News. He pointed to the cumulative pressure on retail operators from rising National Insurance contributions, a higher minimum wage, and April's increase in Remote Gaming Duty.

According to SBC News, Done went further this time, predicting that retail betting in the UK will disappear entirely by 2030. He argued that raising the middle rate of MGD from 20% to 40% would cost Betfred billions of pounds, forcing widespread shop closures and job losses.

Entain and the Betting and Gaming Council have made comparable arguments, SBC News notes, warning of the financial strain a duty increase would place on machine games revenue and, in turn, on operators' broader cost bases.

The commercial logic is straightforward: a duty rise on machine takings hits the bottom line directly, and firms would need to find savings elsewhere to absorb it. The harder task, SBC News argues, is one of public perception.

Betting shop machines carry little public or political goodwill compared with sports betting. Industry lobbying around retail betting, whether during the 2020–2023 review of the Gambling Act 2005 or last year's tax debate, has tended to stress the entertainment value of shops and their role as community hubs and local employers.

That framing has worked reasonably well for football and horseracing bets, activities with an obvious social dimension. It is a much harder case to make for gaming machines, which SBC News describes as a fundamentally more solitary product.

With the Treasury under pressure to raise revenue for infrastructure, social spending and defence, and showing little sympathy for the industry's position on the high street, SBC News concludes that the balance of the argument currently sits against the sector.