Ladbrokes and Coral owner Entain (ENT.L) is consulting on cutting approximately 400 customer-service roles, primarily based in the United Kingdom.
The redundancies come from a pool of around 2,000 customer-service positions, representing a significant reduction in the company’s frontline workforce.
Entain had already eliminated 500 jobs earlier this year before announcing this latest round of cuts, compounding pressure on its workforce.
The move arrives as Prime Minister Andy Burnham is reportedly weighing a tax raid on slot machines, targeting betting shops and arcades that serve adult customers.
Entain chief executive Stella David has written directly to Mr Burnham, warning that further tax rises would put hundreds of betting shops and thousands of jobs at serious risk.
In an open letter published last week, Ms David said: “You have spoken about the Makerfield Test – the principle that national policy should deliver for places and people that have too often been overlooked by Westminster.”
Ms David continued: “A substantial increase in machine games duty (MGD) would bear directly on many of the people and places the Makerfield Test is intended to support.”
She warned that doubling the MGD rate would saddle Entain with an additional £100m in annual costs, threatening the viability of its high-street operations.
Ms David cited independent modelling from EY in her letter, stating: “A 40pc MGD rate could lead to up to 1,470 betting shop closures and 15,900 job losses, and ultimately result in a net loss to the Exchequer of around £120m.”
She further cautioned that job losses driven by higher taxes would disproportionately affect young people and women working part-time hours in betting shops.
Despite the industry’s warnings, Mr Burnham and Chancellor John Healey are understood to believe that 24-hour slot machine venues are damaging both lives and high streets across Britain.
Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown is among prominent voices calling for significantly greater taxes to be levied on the gambling sector.
Industry leaders, however, argue that aggressive tax increases will push gamblers toward unregulated markets that cause considerably more harm to vulnerable people.
Former chancellor Rachel Reeves had already raised taxes on online gambling from April 1 this year, with a further levy scheduled to take effect twelve months later.
Those changes are forecast to generate an additional £1.2bn from the gambling sector by the beginning of the next decade.
Ms David warned in her letter: “A further doubling of machine games duty would therefore add another significant cost to businesses already struggling to absorb major tax increases, stacking the odds against labour-intensive high-street operators.”
The job cuts at Entain coincide with a broader slowdown in hiring linked to inflation-busting minimum wage rises and a £26bn National Insurance tax raid on employers introduced by the Government.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that approximately 145,000 fewer people were employed on payroll in August compared with the same period a year earlier.
The retail sector has recorded the steepest job losses in that period, highlighting the mounting pressure on businesses dependent on physical high-street locations.
