Retail contributed 55% of turnover in the period, down from 61% a year earlier, with online making up the remaining 45%. The shift continues a long-running rebalancing for the family-owned bookmaker, which built its business on the high street.

The group traces its roots to a single shop opened by brothers Fred and Peter Done in Salford in 1967, and it remains privately controlled by the Done family. It grew into one of the largest retail estates in British betting, adding the Tote in 2011, and has since built out its online sportsbook and casino to compete with the listed groups that dominate UK digital betting.

A change of year-end

The headline numbers are not directly comparable with the prior set of accounts. Betfred moved its year-end from September to March, so the comparative period covers 78 weeks to 30 March 2025. On a like-for-like 12-month basis, group turnover rose by £23.3m, according to the filing as reported by the trade press. Management attributed part of the growth to higher marketing spend aimed at increasing market share and attracting new customers.

Gross profit for the year came in at £719.9m. Operating profit was £74.1m after a one-off £4.6m charge for aborted acquisition costs, and EBITDA was £140.6m. Profit after tax was £39.6m, as reported by SBC News.

Exceptional charges totalled £7.1m, including the aborted deal and £801,000 of closure costs for a foreign subsidiary linked to the US business the group wound down in 2023-24. Betfred had earlier sold its Spanish online business, booking a £1.6m profit on the disposal.

Costs and headcount

Employee costs rose by £19.2m on a like-for-like basis, driven largely by minimum wage increases. Employee numbers edged down to 7,795 from 7,872. The group’s tax charge fell to £24.4m from £59.8m in the longer prior period.

Betfred again declined to provide a geographical breakdown of earnings, with directors stating that doing so would be “severely prejudicial to the interests of the group”.

Tax pressure ahead

The accounts close just before the rise in Remote Gaming Duty to 40%, which took effect in April 2026, so the hit to the online business is not yet reflected in the numbers. The remote betting rate of General Betting Duty is due to rise in April 2027.

The bigger risk for Betfred sits in its shops. Founder Fred Done has been one of the most vocal opponents of a proposed doubling of Machine Games Duty, telling the Financial Times that such a rise would lead the business to close 495 shops within a year, costing 2,575 jobs. In August, Betfred said it was consulting on the possible closure of up to 132 UK shops as part of its response to the tax changes already announced.

The Betting and Gaming Council has warned this week that raising MGD to 40% could cost up to 16,000 jobs across the sector. With retail still producing the majority of Betfred’s turnover, the outcome of the Budget will weigh heavily on whether the online shift accelerates by choice or by force.

In a statement published on 13 October, the trade body cited EY modelling showing that the increase would put almost 1,500 betting shops and as many as 34 casinos at risk, while leaving the Treasury up to £124m worse off as venues close and the tax base shrinks.

Betting shops and young workers

The BGC said betting shops support more than 36,000 jobs, with over 80% of them outside London. It said the workforce skews young: 19% of betting shop employees are under 25, against 11% across the wider economy, and 51% are under 35, compared with 35% nationally. Half of the workforce is female.

Of the jobs it says are at risk, 27% are in the North of England, rising to nearly 40% when Scotland is included.

“Britain’s betting shops support more than 36,000 jobs, and more than eight in ten of them are outside London,” said BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst. “Our message to the Chancellor is simple: rule out any increase in Machine Games Duty.”

Casinos warn of closures

The intervention followed a separate BGC statement on 12 October focused on land-based casinos. It said a 40% MGD rate would put up to 3,800 casino jobs at risk and could lead some operators to consider closing as much as a third of their estates. Half of the threatened closures would be in the North of England and Scotland.

The BGC said casinos directly employ more than 10,000 people, receive 14 million visits a year and contribute £515m in taxes. More than £50m of planned investment could be cancelled or scaled back if taxes rise, it added. Hurst described the proposal as “an existential threat to casinos across Britain”.

Where the proposal came from

The idea of doubling the duty on Category B gaming machines was put forward by the Social Market Foundation, which estimated it could raise between £275m and £458m a year in additional revenue. The industry disputes that estimate, arguing that closures would erode the yield.

The warnings land on a sector still absorbing the last round of increases. Remote Gaming Duty rose to 40% in April 2026, and the remote betting rate of General Betting Duty is due to rise in April 2027. Betfred founder Fred Done has said doubling MGD would force the closure of hundreds of the bookmaker’s shops, and a report by consultancy Regulus has argued the hike would put £92m of horseracing income at risk because of the sport’s reliance on betting shop turnover.

The BGC said the regulated industry as a whole supports 109,000 jobs, contributes £6.8bn to the UK economy and pays more than £4bn a year in tax.

What happens next

The Treasury has not confirmed whether MGD is under review, and the BGC’s figures come from modelling the industry commissioned. With the Budget approaching, the sector’s lobbying is now focused squarely on retail, after a year in which online operators bore the brunt of the tax changes. Whether the Chancellor treats machines as the next source of revenue will shape the size of the British high street estate for years to come.

“I believe that by 2030 we will have no betting shops. The high street will be dead,” Done said in comments reported by Racing Post and the trade press on Monday.

The proposal at issue originated with the Social Market Foundation, which argued in June that machine games duty should rise from 20% to 40%. The Treasury is understood to be modelling increases to machine income duty on betting shops and adult gaming centres ahead of the Budget, and the sector is treating the think tank’s figure as the working ceiling rather than an outlier.

Betfred’s modelling of that scenario is blunt. The company operates roughly 1,094 shops in the UK. A doubling of MGD would, on its numbers, force the closure of 495 of them inside a year, taking about 2,575 jobs with them and costing the Exchequer an estimated £67m in foregone receipts. The arithmetic rests on the fact that fixed-odds betting terminals still generate around half of shop profits, even after the £2 stake limit cut machine revenue sharply.

That is on top of closures already booked. Betfred shut 132 outlets earlier this year, a decision the company attributed to the cumulative effect of earlier tax and regulatory changes, with the loss of around 600 jobs, £17.8m in tax contributions and £4.2m in annual funding for horseracing.

A wider retail contraction

Betfred is not alone in shrinking its estate. Evoke closed 200 William Hill shops in April, citing a similar combination of cost inflation and duty pressure. The pattern across the sector is consistent: retail bookmaking has been operating on thin per-shop margins for several years, and the terminals that cover the fixed costs of a site are the specific revenue line the Treasury is now examining.

Done, whose family paid around £400m in tax last year, framed the issue in terms of proportionality. “They keep saying those with the broadest shoulders should be paying more tax. Well, how broad do my shoulders have to be?” he said.

The warning extends to sponsorship. Betfred backs Britain’s five classic horse races, including the Epsom Derby, and Done has said publicly that the company would have to walk away from those commitments if the Budget raises duties further. Racing’s funding model depends heavily on bookmaker levies and commercial deals, which means retail closures and sponsorship withdrawals compound each other for the sport.

Entain has separately estimated that a doubling of MGD would add around £100m to its operating costs, an indication that the impact is not confined to independent or family-owned estates.

Online duty already rising

The retail debate is running alongside an online one. Operators have been absorbing a sharply higher duty burden on remote gambling, and several have begun shifting marketing and product investment towards continental European markets where the effective tax rate is lower. CDC Gaming reported at the weekend that UK-facing online operators are redirecting spend to Europe as the higher rate bites, a reallocation that tends to show up first in affiliate budgets and brand marketing rather than in licence surrenders.

For the Treasury, the calculation is whether higher rates raise more than the closures cost. The industry’s argument is that machine duty is levied on a revenue line that is already structurally declining and that doubling it removes the margin holding marginal shops open, producing a net loss once corporation tax, employer contributions and business rates are netted off. The counter-argument, made by the Social Market Foundation and others, is that gambling remains undertaxed relative to its social costs.

The Budget will settle which reading the Chancellor accepts. Until then, the sector is making its case in the only currency the Treasury scores: shop counts, headcounts and receipts.