\n<\/p>\n
The debt-laden company behind William Hill is considering closing up to 200 betting shops if Rachel Reeves\u2019s autumn budget raises taxes on the gambling sector.<\/p>\n
Evoke, formerly known as 888, which acquired William Hill in a \u00a32bn takeover in 2022, is drawing up plans for different scenarios before expected gambling tax increases in the chancellor\u2019s budget on 26 November.<\/p>\n
Evoke is considering shutting a number of outlets, in news first reported by the Sunday Times, which said closures could range from 120 shops to closer to 200.<\/p>\n
This would amount to between 9% and 15% of William Hill\u2019s chain of 1,300 betting shops, with up to 1,500 jobs potentially affected. Between five and 10 people typically work in a betting shop. Evoke, which also owns the 888 and Mr Green brands, has 10,000 staff in total.<\/p>\n
The FTSE 250 company is struggling under a debt pile of \u00a31.8bn after its largely debt-funded acquisition of William Hill, and made a pre-tax loss of nearly \u00a378m in the first half of the year.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Evoke said: \u201cWe are mindful of potential tax increases in the forthcoming budget which would impact investment in the UK and drive more customers to the black market.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of our ongoing planning, we are assessing the potential impact of different overall tax scenarios on our UK operations. This includes the difficult but necessary consideration for shop closures.\u201d The company stressed that no decision had been taken yet.<\/p>\n
It is the second big gambling company to warn of the impact of tax rises within a week. Stella David, the chief executive of Entain, the FTSE 100 owner of Ladbrokes and Coral, also said higher gambling taxes could lead to shop closures and investment being diverted to other countries.<\/p>\n
The government has been consulting on gambling taxation, and wants to simplify the various rates of duty applied to gambling products \u2013 a move the sector fears would raise its overall tax bill.<\/p>\n
A Treasury spokesperson said: \u201cWe are consulting on bringing online betting in line with other forms of online gambling to cut down bureaucracy. It is not about increasing or decreasing tax rates, and we welcome all views.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The former chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown waded into the debate in August, noting that excluding the lottery, the betting and gaming industry was worth \u00a311.5bn last year but incurred only \u00a32.5bn in tax. \u201cAs much as \u00a33bn extra can be raised from taxing it properly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Institute for Public Policy Research has calculated that changes to gambling taxes could generate \u00a33.2bn and lift 500,000 children out of poverty.<\/p>\n Gambling lobbyists staged a summer charm offensive to push back against tax rises, including meeting with Treasury insiders and hosting a darts evening with Labour special advisers and MPs\u2019 staff, the Guardian revealed in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The debt-laden company behind William Hill is considering closing up to 200 betting shops if Rachel Reeves\u2019s autumn budget raises taxes on the gambling sector. Evoke, formerly known as 888, which acquired William Hill in a \u00a32bn takeover in 2022, is drawing up plans for different scenarios before expected gambling tax increases in the chancellor\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[6303,3222,2070,4804,2656,6084,2878,6552,3756],"class_list":{"0":"post-27593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-gambling","9":"tag-hill","10":"tag-owner","11":"tag-raises","12":"tag-reeves","13":"tag-shops","14":"tag-shut","15":"tag-taxes","16":"tag-william"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}