Bet365 Is Cutting 300 Stoke-on-Trent Jobs. Its Founder Was Paid 104 Million Pounds the Year Before.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
In short. Bet365 confirmed on 8 September 2026 that it is cutting 340 roles, about 3 per cent of its workforce, across Stoke-on-Trent, Gibraltar and Malta [1]. Around 300 of those roles are at the Stoke-on-Trent head office; the other 40 are overseas. The ledger logs a loss of 300, graded ANNOUNCED, region West Midlands, counting only the UK roles. The company blames higher gambling taxes and a tougher trading environment; AI is not mentioned. Founder Denise Coates was paid 104 million pounds in salary for the year to March 2025, on top of a further 353.6 million pounds in dividends [1].
The announcement. Bet365, the Stoke-on-Trent founded gambling group and the city's biggest private employer, told staff on 8 September that it is cutting 340 roles, around 3 per cent of headcount [1]. Some 300 of the affected roles sit at the Stoke-on-Trent head office, out of roughly 5,500 employees there; the remaining 40 are split across the company's Gibraltar and Malta offices. A company spokesperson said the restructuring reflects the 340 figure as its planned scope rather than a fixed number of compulsory departures, and that bet365 intends to keep forced exits to a minimum through voluntary routes [1].
How the ledger logs it
A loss of 300, graded ANNOUNCED, dated 8 September 2026, region West Midlands. This is a UK jobs ledger, and 40 of the 340 roles bet365 is cutting sit in Gibraltar and Malta, outside that scope. Counting all 340 under a UK region would overstate the domestic toll; counting none of it would understate a story the company itself frames as one announcement. The ledger splits the difference the only honest way available: it counts the 300 Stoke-on-Trent roles, and this paragraph carries the other 40 so nobody reading only the scoreboard mistakes 300 for the company's own headline number. Nothing here has reached a filing or an official statistic, so the grade stays ANNOUNCED; if the final headcount reduction differs once bet365 completes the process, the row will be corrected and the correction logged.
What the company says caused it
The company's attribution is recorded as the company's attribution. Bet365 points to "increased regulatory and tax-related costs" and a "highly competitive trading environment" [1]. The tax context is specific and checkable: remote gaming duty, the levy on online casino products, rose from 21 to 40 per cent in April 2026, and a further rise in remote betting duty, from 15 to 25 per cent, is due to follow [1]. That is a near doubling of the tax rate on the product bet365 sells, and it lands on a company whose Stoke-on-Trent site alone employs more people than most towns have on their high street.
What is not cited is worth logging too. Nobody at bet365 is attributing these cuts to artificial intelligence, and neither of the reports drawn on here mentions it. The ledger records ai_cited: no, and the scoreboard's AI-attributed losses figure is unmoved. That is the Blamed on the Machines strand's discipline applied in the direction that gets less attention: when a company does not reach for an AI explanation, this site does not supply one either. A tax rise is not a more flattering reason than automation, and bet365 named it anyway.
The company that is cutting jobs, and the person it paid
Bet365 is privately owned by the Coates family, and Denise Coates, its joint chief executive, was paid a 104 million pound salary for the financial year to March 2025, according to the company's own filed accounts, on top of 353.6 million pounds in dividends paid out over the same period, the bulk of which fell to the family's majority shareholding [1]. Nothing about that figure explains or excuses the tax rise bet365 blames for this round of cuts, and the two facts are not offered here as cause and effect. They are offered side by side because a ledger that logs what a company says about its job losses should also log what is a matter of public record about the company doing the cutting.
What happens next in this ledger
Bet365 has said it wants to reach the 340 figure mostly through voluntary exits rather than compulsory redundancy. As the process closes out, the real headcount reduction, and how much of it fell on Stoke-on-Trent against Gibraltar and Malta, will reach the public record. When it does, the 300 logged here will be corrected if it needs to be, and the correction recorded.
Sources
- IBTimes UK, "Britain's Richest Woman Denise Coates Paid Herself 104 Million Pounds and Is Now Cutting 340 Bet365 Jobs," 9 September 2026 (job numbers, Stoke-on-Trent/Gibraltar/Malta breakdown, company statement, tax context, Coates pay figures). https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bet365-job-cuts-denise-coates-salary-scrutiny-1818781