EU iGaming weekly: Machine games duty rise, Finland licences, Dutch GGR

The UK raised machine games duty to 25%, Italy asked the gambling sector for €700 million, Finland named its first 18 licence holders, and Dutch online GGR fell 21%.

This week at a glance

• The UK raised machine games duty from 20% to 25% on higher-stakes machines, well short of the 40% campaigners wanted.
• Entain expects the rise to cost its UK and Ireland retail business about £25 million a year.
• Italy’s 2027 budget asks the gambling sector for €700 million, but the measures behind it are not yet known.
• Finland granted its first 18 licences under the new Gambling Act, with 63 applications still pending.
• The licensed Dutch gambling market shrank to €4.1 billion in 2025, as online GGR fell 21%.

Five biggest stories of the week

1. UK raises machine games duty to 25%

UK Chancellor John Healey raised machine games duty (MGD) from 20% to 25% in his first Budget on 28 October, to help pay for business rates support on the high street. From 1 April 2027, the higher rate applies to machine games with stakes over £1 or prizes over £100. Lower-stake machines keep their current rate, which protects pubs and seaside arcades.

From 1 April 2028, suppliers will also pay the duty on machines they own and run under profit-sharing deals. The government expects the two changes to raise £135 million in 2027/28 and £150 million in 2028/29. The rise falls well short of the 40% the Social Market Foundation and 90 Labour MPs had pushed for.

2. Entain puts the duty rise cost at £25m a year

Entain expects the MGD rise to add about £25 million a year to the costs of its UK and Ireland retail business, before any mitigation. The Ladbrokes and Coral owner gave the estimate in a statement to the London Stock Exchange on 28 October, Budget day.

Entain expects to fully offset the cost by the end of 2028 through estate rationalisation, group-wide optimisation, and potential market share gains. Its FY26 guidance and its target of £500 million in adjusted cashflow in 2028 are unchanged. Chief executive Stella David said the new taxes would push more people into the growing illegal market.

3. Italy’s 2027 budget takes €700m from gambling

Italy’s gambling sector will contribute €700 million to the 2027 budget, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on 28 October after her Cabinet approved the bill. The figure matches the draft budgetary plan sent to Brussels in mid-October, which puts the sector’s contribution at about €700 million a year in 2027 and 2028 and about €480 million in 2029.

The government has not published the text, so it is not yet clear how operators will pay. Il Sole 24 Ore reported a one-point rise in PREU, the levy on gaming machine stakes, and costlier extensions of machine, betting, and bingo concessions, which expire on 31 December 2026.

4. Finland names its first 18 licence holders

Finland’s National Police Board (NPB) has granted 18 licences under the new Gambling Act, with 63 applications still under review. The licences run from 1 July 2027, when the market opens to licensed competition, to 30 June 2032.

The NPB now expects each application to take six to eight months, up from the three to six months it expected when applications opened. Most applicants are foreign companies, which have to supply official documents the board would otherwise get from Finnish registers. None of the licences has gone to Veikkaus, which keeps its monopoly on online betting and casino until the end of June 2027.

5. Dutch online GGR falls 21% in 2025

The licensed Dutch gambling market generated €4.1 billion in GGR in 2025, down from an inflation-adjusted €4.5 billion in 2024, according to the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA). Online GGR fell 21% to €1.20 billion, with online casino down 18.2% and online betting down 30.2%.

The KSA links the fall at least partly to stricter player protection rules, including deposit limits, the gambling tax rise to 34.2% in 2025, and a tough comparison with Euro 2024. Holland Casino grew GGR by 2.8% to €683 million. Online GGR picked up again in the first half of 2026, rising about 11% to €670 million on the second half of 2025.

What to watch next

The new machine games duty rate takes effect on 1 April 2027, the same day general betting duty on remote betting rises to 25%. The consultation on making suppliers liable for the duty closes on 20 January 2027.

Italy’s Parliament is expected to approve the budget by the end of the year, and lawmakers can still change the gaming measures. In Finland, the NPB expects dozens more licence decisions, and the market opens on 1 July 2027.

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