Flutter Entertainment, the owner of Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Bet, plans to cut up to 1,400 jobs in its UK and Ireland (UKI) business as it responds to the steep rise in British gaming taxes announced in last year’s Autumn Budget.

The company said on 20 October that the redundancies form part of a restructuring of the UKI division and are subject to consultation. Flutter employs around 28,500 people globally, about 9,000 of them in the UK and Ireland, meaning the plan could affect roughly one in six of the division’s staff.

Leeds and Dublin in the firing line

According to Flutter’s announcement, the roles affected are based in Leeds and Dublin, along with UK and Ireland staff working from the group’s hubs in Porto, Portugal, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Leeds is the historic home of Sky Bet, while Dublin hosts Paddy Power and Flutter’s Irish operations.

The company did not give a timeline for the consultation process but said restructuring costs of between $80m and $90m would be booked in the fourth quarter of 2026. Those costs sit within the $500m of restructuring, transaction and integration costs already included in the guidance it raised at its second-quarter results.

The tax bill behind the cuts

Flutter tied the decision directly to the 2025 Budget, which raised the duty on online casino gaming by 19 percentage points to 40% from April 2026. A further 10-point increase, taking the duty on remote sports betting (excluding horseracing) to 25%, follows in April 2027.

The group estimates the iGaming tax changes alone will cost it $540m of adjusted EBITDA in 2027, of which it expects to offset $201m through what it calls first-order mitigation. The UKI restructuring is part of that response. Flutter also argued that cutting fixed costs would protect investment in its customer offer and help it win share in a market it expects to be reshaped by the higher duties.

Kevin Harrington, chief executive of Flutter UK and Ireland, said his “immediate focus is providing the necessary support for all of our impacted colleagues.” He added: “As we warned a year ago, we cannot fully absorb a rise of this magnitude without reducing our fixed cost base.”

The scale of the cuts is notable given Flutter’s position as the largest operator in the UK and Ireland. Its brands span retail, online sports betting and online casino, and the company has spent several years consolidating them onto shared technology platforms, which gives it more room than smaller rivals to remove duplicated roles.

Early test for new leadership

The announcement is one of the first major decisions under Dan Taylor, who took over as group chief executive on 1 October after Peter Jackson stepped down. Taylor previously ran Flutter International.

The cuts drew wide coverage on Tuesday, with the BBC, Reuters and Racing Post all reporting the story, and the trade press framing it as the clearest sign yet of the Budget’s impact on employment in the sector.

Pressure ahead of the next Budget

The timing is pointed. Chancellor John Healey delivers his Autumn Budget on 28 October, and the industry is already lobbying against further rises. The Betting and Gaming Council warned this month that doubling Machine Games Duty could cost 16,000 jobs, while 90 Labour MPs have urged the Chancellor to do exactly that for high-stake Category B machines.

Flutter’s move gives the industry a concrete figure to put in front of the Treasury. Whether it shifts the debate will become clear next week.

Underdog has sued Tennessee in federal court to block the state from shutting down its prediction market product, testing state authority in a circuit that has already ruled against Kalshi on the same question.

Underdog’s exchange and brokerage entities filed the complaint on 13 October in the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville. The defendants are Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and members of the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council. According to court records cited in trade press coverage, the case has been assigned to Chief Judge William L. Campbell Jr.

The cease-and-desist

The lawsuit follows a cease-and-desist letter the Sports Wagering Council sent on 9 October directing Underdog to stop offering sports event contracts in Tennessee. According to the complaint, the letter warned of fines, civil penalties and criminal investigations, and raised the prospect of revoking the fantasy sports licence held by an affiliated Underdog company.

Underdog argues that its exchange is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and that Tennessee’s gambling laws are therefore preempted. “Defendants are violating the Supremacy Clause by intruding upon the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction,” the complaint states. It asks the court for a declaration to that effect and a permanent injunction barring enforcement.

An uphill court

Underdog is bringing the case in unfavourable territory. On 25 September the Sixth Circuit, which covers Tennessee and Ohio, vacated the preliminary injunction Kalshi had won against Tennessee, holding that Kalshi had not shown its sports contracts were swaps and that, even if they were, federal commodities law did not preempt state gambling rules. Kalshi petitioned for rehearing by the full court on 9 October.

That ruling ended an eight-month run in which Kalshi had been protected in Tennessee. The state sent cease-and-desist letters to Kalshi, Polymarket and Crypto.com in January 2026, Kalshi won a preliminary injunction the following month, and Tennessee appealed in May. Underdog was not offering prediction markets when the first round of letters went out.

The picture is mixed elsewhere. A federal judge in Illinois sided with Kalshi earlier this month, while Kalshi was denied an injunction in Connecticut in August and is appealing to the Second Circuit. That split between courts is one reason both sides expect the question to end up before the Supreme Court.

Underdog acknowledges that ruling in its filing and has said it is preserving its arguments for appeal, with the wider question widely expected to reach the US Supreme Court.

Tennessee is one of a growing list of states Underdog has taken to court. Legal Sports Report counts Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Ohio, Washington and Wisconsin as earlier targets. The company entered prediction markets after agreeing in March to acquire Aristotle Exchange’s federally registered exchange and clearinghouse.

A wider fight

The case is the latest in a run of state-versus-exchange disputes this month. Crypto.com and Novig have sued Missouri over its crackdown on sports event contracts, while Ohio and Missouri have both issued orders against multiple platforms.

The CFTC, meanwhile, has proposed treating event contracts as swaps, which would strengthen the exchanges’ preemption argument if adopted. Tennessee’s regulator has long resisted that position. In an April 2025 letter, the Sports Wagering Council urged the CFTC to act, writing: “we ask that you respect the policy decisions made by the Tennessee Legislature.”

For now, Underdog’s real exposure in Tennessee may be less about its exchange than its established fantasy business, which the state has made clear it is prepared to use as leverage.

Crypto.com and prediction market operator Novig have filed separate federal lawsuits against Missouri officials, seeking to block the state from enforcing its gambling laws against their sports event contracts.

Both suits were filed on 16 October, after the 30-day deadline set in cease-and-desist letters from Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway had run out. The letters, sent last month to six platforms, gave each operator 30 days to stop offering sports contracts to Missouri residents or obtain a licence from the Missouri Gaming Commission and pay the state’s 10% sports wagering tax.

The claims

Both companies argue that their sports event contracts are swaps traded on federally regulated exchanges and fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, so state gambling law is pre-empted. Crypto.com’s exchange is seeking a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction against enforcement. Novig is seeking a preliminary injunction, according to reports of the filings.

Crypto.com also argued that the attorney general’s letter was sent to the wrong company, and that the licensing route offered in the letters was not realistic because Missouri has no sports wagering licences left to issue.

Hanaway had anticipated a fight when the letters went out. “Chances are they may sue us once they get this cease-and-desist letter,” she said at the time. Her office has argued that federal law does not pre-empt state law in this area and that sports event contracts do not qualify as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act.

Others hold off

The other four recipients of the Missouri letters, Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood and Underdog, had not filed suit as of the weekend. Underdog is already in court in Tennessee, where it is seeking an injunction to stop the state’s crackdown on its event contracts and a threat to its fantasy sports licence.

Both Crypto.com and Novig have sued other states over similar enforcement action, part of a wave of litigation that has produced conflicting rulings in federal courts. That split is now before the US Supreme Court in the form of New Jersey’s petition over Kalshi, which 39 states have urged the court to hear. The NFL has separately asked the court to let states regulate sports prediction markets.

Federal rules in motion

The Missouri cases also land as the CFTC moves to set its own rules. The commission has proposed defining event contracts as swaps while carving out traditional sportsbooks, an approach state regulators including Nevada’s have attacked as an artificial distinction between products that are economically the same as a sports bet.

Missouri’s legal sports betting market opened in December 2025 after voters approved a constitutional amendment, and the state’s licensed sportsbooks pay tax on revenue that prediction markets do not. Ohio has sent its own cease-and-desist letters to ten prediction markets, and more states are expected to follow.

The federal court in Missouri will first have to decide whether to grant interim relief to the two operators. Whatever it decides is likely to be appealed, adding Missouri to the list of states whose fight with prediction markets is heading for the federal appeals courts.