A proposal to double gaming machine duty from 20 to 40 per cent is testing how far the Treasury can push the regulated casino sector before venues start closing. According to City A.M., Genting’s own modelling suggests that 13 of its 32 UK casinos would become unprofitable or unsustainable under the new rate — a finding that reframes the policy not as a revenue measure but as a potential instrument of contraction.
A regulated sector wider than the casino floor
Zigmas Pekarskas, Co-Founder and CEO of Stake Hunters, has followed the debate closely as someone who tracks how the regulated betting-and-gaming sector spans from physical venues to online products. The tax and regulatory framework at the centre of this dispute does not confine itself to casino premises, he observes. It governs the broader ecosystem of licensed operators, setting the conditions under which the whole industry invests, employs and competes. That ecosystem extends online, where StakeHunters NBA tips orient basketball fans through the US sports-betting markets — a branch of the same regulated environment now facing the consequences of the proposed duty change.
“A tax rise that costs jobs, weakens regulated venues and ultimately raises less revenue is not reform. It is self-defeating.”
Paul Willcock, the City A.M. op-ed author writing on behalf of Genting, frames the two branches of the sector as operating under a shared policy logic. What happens to the fiscal calculus in one part of that regulated world carries implications for the whole.
Genting’s modelling puts 13 venues and 900 jobs in jeopardy
The arithmetic is straightforward and severe. Doubling machine duty to 40 per cent would add approximately £16 million a year to Genting’s cost base. Applied across a casino estate already operating on thin margins, that addition pushes 13 of the company’s 32 UK venues into unprofitability by its own reckoning.
The human consequence is concrete. More than 850 jobs in the at-risk venues would face elimination, along with around 50 roles in the support teams behind them. Willcock is direct about where this leads: “It would discourage investment, put jobs at risk and could leave the Treasury with less revenue, not more.”
The mechanism is not complicated. A venue that closes pays no duty at all. The proposed rate increase assumes all current casinos remain open and productive; the modelling suggests a significant number would not.
Investment already committed, from Piccadilly to Portland Street
The closure risk does not arrive in a vacuum. Genting has been building, not retreating, across the UK. Since entering the British market, the company has invested close to £1 billion in improving its casino estate, from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Plymouth.
Two projects define what is now at stake. In central London, Genting is planning a £50 million transformation of the Trocadero site in Piccadilly, covering 37,000 square feet across three floors and combining casino operations with food, drink and entertainment. The development is projected to create between 350 and 400 permanent Genting roles while supporting at least 350 further jobs through design, construction and development. In Manchester, the company has committed millions to refurbishing its Portland Street Casino.
Willcock makes the spillover case explicitly. “Casino economics is ecosystem economics,” he writes. Visitors to these venues fill nearby hotel rooms, restaurants, taxis and bars. Where nationality is recorded, around half of Genting’s tracked attendance comes from non-British visitors whose spending ripples outward into accommodation, retail, theatre and other London attractions. A casino closure does not merely erase the jobs inside; it withdraws an anchor from the surrounding night-time economy.
Higher rate, Lower yield — The treasury’s fiscal trap
The argument against the proposed duty change is not simply that it harms the sector. It is that the Treasury might collect less money, not more.
Genting’s modelling indicates that revenue lost through casino closures would outweigh the additional machine duty collected from venues that remain open. The arithmetic of a higher rate applied to a smaller base produces a worse fiscal outcome than a lower rate applied to the full estate. Willcock’s formulation is blunt: “You cannot tax a casino that has closed.”
The consumer-protection dimension compounds the problem. Licensed physical casinos operate in visible, highly regulated environments, with age controls, trained staff, security, customer interaction, intervention protocols and regulatory oversight. If punitive duty weakens or closes those venues, the demand they serve does not simply evaporate. Some of it migrates to unregulated alternatives that offer none of those protections and generate nothing for the Treasury. A policy designed to extract more revenue from the regulated sector may inadvertently funnel activity toward operators entirely outside that framework.
Willcock’s case for a full treasury impact assessment
Paul Willcock closes the argument by assembling the full picture of what casinos contribute and what their removal would cost. Between 2016 and 2025, Genting paid more than three-quarters of a billion pounds in taxes, duties and levies. The sector’s contribution to the visitor economy is substantial, with the company’s own attendance data showing the high proportion of international guests whose wider spending benefits London and other host cities.
Willcock also presses the competitiveness argument. Skilled employment in the sector supports local economies across the estate; the Trocadero project alone represents the kind of city-centre investment that urban regeneration strategies depend on. Against that backdrop, the policy ask is precise: a full Treasury impact assessment before any rate change is enacted.
The fiscal logic underneath that request is simple. A rate rise that triggers closures, eliminates jobs, and displaces demand toward unregulated operators does not merely fail to raise more money. It reduces the total contribution the sector makes while simultaneously removing the regulatory protections built around it.
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