While the UK is still reeling from last month’s news that gambling duties in the country are set to rise significantly from April 2026, lobbyists and legislators in other European nations seem to wish to replicate the move.
I was surprised to read that the chief executive of a gambling operator had called for similar tax rises in Sweden this week, until I found that it was Hasse Lord Skarplöth, the chief executive of the country’s horse-racing monopoly, ATG, and that he was also calling for a lowering of the horse-race betting tax.
Skarplöth’s argument is that the level of taxation should be relative to harm – the implication being that betting on horse racing is less harmful than gambling on online casinos. He is also motivated by a desire to protect the gambling revenue that is contributed to the sport itself.
It encapsulates the thinking that seems to have catalysed the UK’s chancellor, Rachel Reeves, into action at the end of November. Online casinos are fair game. They are perceived to be the most harmful form of gambling, they are not a form of gambling that the public is likely to stand up and defend, and they generate a lot of income.
It is no coincidence that while remote gambling duty will rise from 21% to 40% from 1 April 2026, the venue-based bingo duty will be abolished altogether and casino gaming duty will be frozen for the 2026/27 financial year, then increase only in line with inflation after that.
The general betting duty will not increase until April 2027 either, when it will rise from 15% to 25%, except for betting shops and online bets on horse racing, which will stay at the old rate.
There is a stark difference between the ‘bread and circuses’ attitude afforded to land-based gambling and the increasingly punitive attitude to online casino gaming. And it is a useful lever for lobbyists to pull in a bid to relieve their own corner of the gambling industry of some of the burden.
Those working closely with the online gambling sector, however, see quite clearly what the impact of significant tax rises will be. First, it is the omnipresent issue of channelisation. Higher taxes make operators less competitive with the black market and make it far harder for them to funnel players to their platforms.
“Raising the tax on online casino in a market with one of Europe’s largest black markets is not precision, it’s self-harm,” the secretary general of Sweden’s trade association for online gambling, Gustaf Hoffstedt, said in response to Skarplöth’s proposal this week. “Higher taxes don’t reduce risk; they push players offshore, weaken consumer protection, and shrink the regulated ecosystem.”
Speaking to Tottenham Report last week, the head of commercial at affiliate tracking platform RavenTrack, Julian Pitts, said, “These black-market operators are not remotely concerned about player protection. In fact, they’re incredibly aggressive in their outreach and often purposely target vulnerable players. They don’t have license codes of practice to adhere to.”
Pitts said he expects to see small-to-medium operators closing their businesses in the UK, and any others that were considering launching in the country are unlikely to still regard it as a viable option. “Even the large enterprises have no choice but to pass at least some of the costs onto consumers [and] that means the industry’s lucrativeness will dip even further,” he said.
“Lower payouts, fewer jackpots, and higher per-bet fees will mean players stop playing, or even worse – they just head to the black market via VPN. This isn’t just an industry insider fear: The budget office and Treasury said the same thing about the rise in black market activity.”
It was slightly incongruous that all this came the week after the UK’s Safer Gambling week, in which operators showcase and share their numerous harm-prevention initiatives and demonstrate how they are meeting the requirements of the Gambling Commission’s mandated harm-prevention measures. It made me wonder whether online casinos can ever do enough to convince the public, legislators, and lobbyists that they are, at least, no more harmful than other forms of gambling.
Meanwhile, in Finland, where the monopoly framework that can be traced back to the 1940s is being phased out in favour of a liberalised market, some legislators are also calling for taxation in line with the UK’s new regime.
The Administration Committee, which is currently busy tidying up the nascent legislation, has put forward a general gambling tax rate of 25.5%, just above the UK’s general betting duty. It will be interesting to see where this ends up when the country is more familiar with running a competitive gambling market and if channelisation doesn’t quickly adjust as hoped.
Given the move away from a monopoly is at least in part motivated by a desire to curb the black market, perhaps lessons will be learnt from any overt changes to gambling behaviour in the UK over the coming months.
