UK Government – Chancellor of the Exchequer

Rachel Reeves may not have set out to be the champion of unregulated online gambling, but her recent policies make her a standout addition to this year’s Hot 50 for the unregulated operators.

Standing on the shoulders of successive UK governments that have taxed and regulated the land-based gaming industry into near oblivion, Reeves has delivered yet another blow to bricks-and-mortar casinos—further boosting internet-based competitors. 

Throw in the rise in National Insurance, Machine Game Duty on gross revenue, high property rates, unreclaimable VAT for the sector and minimum wage increases. Next layer in the government’s unwillingness to understand that trying to over regulate and tax both land-based and legal internet gambling drives most players to the thousands of untouchable unlicensed offshore operators that are protected by their home countries and can’t be blocked.

Land based casinos can’t afford to compete, can’t earn much due to low stake caps and are now in the advanced stages of drowning. UK casinos are paying through the nose—with many shelling out ten times more in total net taxes than they see in profit according to our research on Companies House— leaving them barely able to keep the lights on, let alone compete with the streamlined online operators that conveniently sidestep the penalties associated with being in the country, paying high wages and taxes.

As each wave of regulation tightens the noose, players fed up with source-of-funds checks and restricted playing limits flock to the digital realm, where choice, convenience, and no questions await. The result? A once vibrant land-based sector sees its margins squeezed beyond sustainability, with closures piling up from Blackpool to Brighton, while internet operators—regulated or otherwise— reap the rewards. If a recent Guardian article is to be believed then the legal online operators will soon be dealt such a blow as to join the land based casinos on the scrap heap of history while the masked bandits party.

In short, Reeves hasn’t just supported a trend; she’s supercharged it. By hastening the decline of the UK’s traditional regulated gaming venues, she’s given a monumental legup to online gambling outfits everywhere and job cuts are now in progress, declining from BACTA’s last published estimate of 34,000 employees nationally.

For so effectively boosting the digital sector by hammering its terrestrial competition, Rachel Reeves earns her place in the Hot 50. Congratulations, Chancellor—your policies have made you an internet gambling superstar – just not quite at the right end of the web.