I checked the score obviously...

One of the most addictive betting products. But niche/for rich people, so doesn't get much attention (including from me, admittedly).

Basically there isn't much money in bingo any more and there's tons in online casino.

Could work.

They say it mitigates by about £6m. I think the £40m figure includes that.

I think that's why Entain, Rank and Flutter shares are all up.

But if Entain, for instance, also comes out with a profit guidance cut, you'd expect to see a correction in the share price tomorrow.

Hadn't spotted this earlier but the Gambling Commission will get an extra £26m over the next three years to take aim at the black market.

That's a decent whack for a regulator with a budget of about £60m a year.

Yep.

There's also some fuzzy logic in saying that you're targeting the most addictive products but then leaving machine gaming duty unchanced, when that's the tax levied on adult gaming centres (AGCs), whose slot machines are linked to very high rates of harm.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

But how will firms actually respond? Will they cut shops/jobs? Will they give punters much worse odds and cut bonuses?

Bear in mind that firms are always looking to shunt punters online where fixed costs are lower. Will be handy to blame voluntary reduction in high street presesnce on Chancellor.

On the other hand, OBR reckons it raises £1.1bn by 29/30, part of so-called "smorgasbord" of tax rises that raise much-needed funds for public services without raising headline tax rates.

And there will be some who see a smaller gambling industry (inevitably meaning fewer jobs) as no bad thing.

The industry has warned of an exodus to the black market and the Office for Budget Responsibility appears to agree, factoring some migration to ililicit sites into its assessment of how much the duty increase will raise.

Meanwhile, shares in Evoke (owner of William Hill/888) are down c.10%. Smaller, heavily indebted, more weighted towards online casino, where the bulk of the duty rise hits.

40% remote gaming duty is punchy, even risky. See Alun Bowden in my recent piece on tax.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

This is correct. A pale shadow of the rest. But still with a peppering of genius here and there.

Depends how it all shakes out. There is a possibility, depending on the quantum of duty rised and how they're applied, that racing could suffer.

There's a wider philosophical question about whether racing should be propped up by remote casino losses.