TLDR
- Betfred owner Fred Done moved his property group to Jersey in March, ahead of the UK’s inheritance tax changes on family businesses
- Done and his brother paid £400 million in tax last year, making them the biggest individual UK taxpayers in 2025
- Sky Bet already moved commercial operations to Malta, reportedly saving around £55 million in UK tax per year
- Remote Gaming Duty on online casino games jumps from 21% to 40% in April 2026, with sports betting duty rising from 15% to 25% in 2027
- Betfred warns that 300 of its 1,273 UK betting shops were already loss-making before the budget changes
Fred Done, the billionaire owner of Betfred, moved his property group to Jersey in March 2026. The move came less than two weeks before UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves removed the inheritance tax exemption for family-owned businesses.
Lawyers told The Telegraph that the restructuring, which places ownership under a trust, could save tens of millions in inheritance tax. The move relates to Done’s property interests rather than Betfred’s gambling operations directly.
Done and his brother Peter paid £400 million in tax last year. Half of that came from gambling duty on their Betfred empire. That made them the largest individual UK taxpayers in 2025.
The move comes as UK gambling operators face a much tougher tax environment. Reeves’ autumn budget raised Remote Gaming Duty on online casino games from 21% to 40%, effective April 2026.
The online sports betting duty will also increase from 15% to 25% starting in April 2027. The Chancellor projects these changes will bring in more than £1 billion per year by 2031.
Sky Bet’s Malta Move Set the Template
Betfred is not the first major UK gambling brand to look offshore. Sky Bet, owned by Flutter Entertainment, created a new entity called SBG Sports Limited in Malta in late 2025.
The company began moving its commercial and marketing functions there. Analysts at Tax Policy Associates estimate this could save Sky Bet about £55 million in UK tax each year.
Flutter said the move was about operational efficiency and that Sky Bet would continue paying UK corporation tax on profits. Critics were not convinced.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on the Treasury Select Committee to investigate. Tax Policy Associates analyst Dan Neidle described the VAT arrangement as “improper,” a label Flutter disputes.
When Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer whether the government would act to stop gambling companies moving profits offshore, Starmer did not respond.
Sky Bet’s marketing spend in 2024 was £135 million. Betfred is a comparably sized operator. At that scale, even small differences in tax treatment can lead to large savings.
The Financial Pressure on UK Operators
Flutter projected a pre-mitigation hit of about £230 million to its earnings in 2026 due to the tax changes. In 2027, that figure rises to £540 million.
Flutter’s UK and Ireland chief executive Kevin Harrington said the UK’s remote gaming duty is now above countries like the Netherlands, where a recent tax increase led to a rise in illegal gambling and a fall in government receipts.
Fred Done has spent the past year arguing that taxing UK operators too heavily will push customers toward unregulated offshore alternatives. He told the BBC in October that there are “plenty of bookmakers offshore who happen to take the bets, who don’t pay anything to this country.”
Betfred chief executive Joanne Whittaker said she was “stupid and naive” to think the company’s high street betting shops would be protected from tax rises. She said there are “people in the Treasury who don’t understand our business.”
Betfred has about 1,273 UK betting shops. Done warned that 300 were already loss-making before the budget. He said a tax rise could make the entire retail operation unviable, potentially resulting in 7,500 job losses.
Britain’s high street betting sector has been shrinking for years, falling from almost 10,000 shops in 2017 to about 6,668 today. Operators have been using online revenues to keep loss-making retail shops open, but the new tax rates on digital operations put that model under pressure.
