BetFred 130+ Shop Closures and the Declining Trend of High Street Betting

BetFred will close over 130 betting shops across the UK, around 10% of its entire portfolio, in what the operator described as a cost saving measure. This is the first bigger wave of closures in 2026, but if you consider that just last year, between Paddy Power and William Hill, a good 250+ betting shops were shut down, it casts light on a striking trend. Betting shops are slowly becoming old-hat.

We have covered the impacts of the Autumn Budget last year in the UK, which saw the remote betting and remote gaming duties rise. The duties for retail betting and gaming, which these very shops would pay, were left untouched. Yet still, they are among the first services that operators will scale back on to reduce the impact of the gambling tax hikes across the UK. The Autumn Budget is not entirely to blame for this either; the trend of slowly dying high street betting shops has been years in the making, and at this rate, they may become obsolete across the next decade.

BetFred Shuts 130+ Betting Shops

The well-known bookie BetFred confirmed it will close 132 betting shops across the UK, reducing its network of 1,350 shops by just under 10%. BetFred’s retail division is headquartered in Birchwood, Cheshire, which is under 15 miles from where the company opened its very first betting shop, back in 1967. While no official statement has been made, these closures are not a surprise. Last year, co-founder Fred Done announced that BetFred may be forced to close some of its shops to leverage the rising tax burdens.

BetFred, unlike William Hill or Paddy Power, is not actually owned by a massive corporation or gambling company. Fred Done and his brother Eric founded the company together back in 1967, legend has it that they funded the first betting shop with returns made by a footie bet on England to win the 1966 World Cup the year before. They never sold the company, which is something of a rarity in this modern world.

The only comparable bookies are bet365 and BoyleSports. Bet365 was founded in 2000 by Denise Coates, who still runs it today, but the company sold its betting shop chain in 2005 for £40 million to Coral. BoyleSports is an Irish bookie that was founded in 1982 by John Boyle, who ran the operations until 2017, when he assumed the role of executive chairman. BoyleSports has betting shops, but they are actually one of the few in the UK that are bucking the trend and expanding while others are shutting down their shops. We will get back to this in a bit.

Betting Shop Closures in 2025

Because the trend of betting shop closures has impacted virtually everyone in the UK (barring BoyleSports), family-run and major gambling conglomerates alike. William Hill, which is still owned by Evoke but is entertaining takeover bids, started proceedings to close over 200 bookies last year. Another, Paddy Power (owned by Flutter who also run Sky Bet, FanDuel and BetFair), announced 57 betting shop closures across the UK and Ireland. In total, that makes up nearly 400 betting shops closed in just the space of a year, with more potentially on the horizon.

The UK gambling tax hikes are definitely a major catalyst for these closures, but the BetFred chief executive Jo Whittaker also hinted at aspects such as higher employer NI contributions, wage inflation and the fact that it has just become more expensive for companies in the UK to employ people. These 132 shop closures are estimated to make around 600 redundancies across the UK. So if you look at 2025 and 2026 (so far), that brings the total to 389 betting shops closed and an estimated 2,350 jobs either lost or impacted.

How Many Betting Shops Are Left in the UK?

The UK betting shop industry peaked in the 1970s and 80s, when there were an estimated 16,000+ retail locations spread across the country. By the 2000s, the figure had shrunk down to around 8,500-8,700, a number which slowly expanded to around 9,000 in the mid 2010s. Skip forward to last year, and there was an estimated 5,200 shops, most of which belonged to powerhouses Ladbrokes and Coral (Entain), William Hill and BetFred. The figures are not exact, but there were around 8,900 to 9,000 in 2016, which suggests that the UK has lost around two-thirds of its betting shops in just 10 years.

Ladbrokes/Coral

• 2015/16: ~3,500 shops (following the Ladbrokes–Coral merger)
• 2019/20: ~2,900 shops
• 2026: ~2,300 shops

William Hill (evoke)

• 2015/16: ~2,400 shops
• 2019/20: ~1,400 shops (following the sale of around 700 shops after the merger with Mr Green and further sales)
• 2026: ~1,200 shops, with around 200 more closures on the way

Betfred

• 2015/16: ~1,370 shops
• 2019/20: ~1,530 shops (after acquiring hundreds of former William Hill shops sold as merger remedies)
• 2026: ~1,100 shops following the latest 132 announced closures

Paddy Power

• 2015/16: ~620 UK & Ireland shops
• 2019/20: ~620 shops
• 2026: ~560 shops after 57 shops closed in 2025

BoyleSports

• 2015/16: ~220 shops
• 2019/20: ~270 shops
• 2026: ~390 shops

2019 was a key turning point for many of these shops. Because the UK Gambling Commission introduced a strict maximum £2 cap on FOBT machines, taking the maximum bet down from £100 to just £2. This seriously hit the UK landbased gambling sector, amid growing popularity in the UK’s online betting industry. Max stake limits can have detrimental effects on revenue – just look at the minimum online slot caps introduced in Germany, which were recently raised from €1 up to €5 in efforts to win players back from the black market.

Gambling Duties Not Entirely To Blame

That FOBT £2 maximum cap, as well as the recent employee tax and NI contribution rates, all took their toll on high street betting shops. These were already in decline with the advent of the internet and rise of mobile and online betting, severely impacting their market share. The funny thing is, that the gambling duty hikes did not impact these retail shops at all. The betting duties for the retail sector was kept at 15%.

Online gambling operators, who pay remote gaming duties, saw their tax rates rise from 21% up to 40% from April 1. The remote betting duties (for online bookies), has not yet risen, but will rise from 15% up to 25% from April 1, 2027. Operators who run retail betting shops generally also have an online presence, and verticals in horse racing, online casino games, and possibly other alternatives.

How to Leverage Rising Costs and Duties

When it comes to cutting costs, these operators can scale back on their casino bonuses, cut some of their games portfolio and drop more expensive branded games or live dealer games, or they can do the unthinkable and quietly cut RTP percentages to leverage the gaming duties.

But the online casinos and bookies are their highest earning products, and if these are tampered with too much, the operators risk losing customers. So, instead, they tend to look at their alternative, or “side products”, or their operational mechanics. For example, Flutter Entertainment (FLUT ) announced last year that they would relocate Sky Bet to Malta to reduce operational costs, while doubling down on their UK Tombola gaming app to reinforce that vertical. But the most straightforward option for most of these operators is to scale back their retail footprint.

Possible Lifelines for High Street Betting

If the next 10 years brought about another two-thirds reduction, that would leave the UK with just over 3,400 betting shops. Or, if the trend goes faster than that, with William Hill, BetFred and Ladbrokes Coral shutting a good ~10% of their shops with each passing year, then we could see the UK’s betting shop industry reduced to just 2,000 shops or fewer.

But BoyleSports has quietly made itself the industry’s outlier. This bookmaker has increased its number of betting shops across the UK, and now places behind LadBrokes Coral (~2,600), William Hill (~1,200), BetFred (~1,150) and Paddy Power (~560) with around 390 shops. BoyleSports is still investing in the retail sector with a confidence that is quite refreshing.

It may not be all doom and gloom for this industry. It may just be a transition period, in which the classic smaller venues with FOBT machines and the occasional lottery tickets, are slowly phased out for something new. Potentially, taking a leaf from Vegas’ book, they could look into creating sports viewing venues, with dining, wall-to-wall screens, and attract sports fans not only to make bets, but also sit in and enjoy the classic US sportsbook betting experience.