Flutter confirms 200 UK and Ireland jobs at risk as part of UK & Ireland restructuring

Flutter Entertainment has begun a consultation process on as many as 200 voluntary staff redundancies across its UK & Ireland business, EGR has learned.

The redundancies come as part of measures taken by the Dublin-headquartered operator to improve efficiency across the Sky Betting & Gaming  (SBG) business via further integration into the wider Flutter group.

The changes encompass three areas: optimisation of marketing and promotional spend, integration of the SBG platform onto the proprietary technology used in Flutter brands including Paddy Power and Betfair, and removing team structure complexity across the business.

“These initiatives will both help offset the current high inflationary headwinds we are seeing, and ensure the UK&I division is well-placed ahead of the pending gambling act review,” Flutter said in a statement outlining the strategic changes released as part of its H1 financial results.

The first reports of redundancies across the business surfaced last month, with macro-economic conditions and a “more challenging external environment” cited as factors behind the decision.

Leaked emails confirmed a change in the Flutter management structure, shifting from UK&I brand CEOs to become chief commercial officers (CCOs) with full ownership of each brand.

Each CCO was tasked with a review of operational structures in line with this efficiency focus. It is understood that contact centre team managers, trading and marketing staff could be affected by the voluntary redundancies.

Speaking to EGR about the changes, Flutter CFO Jonathan Hill cited a need to “re-evaluate” the UK and Ireland operational model, with the business conducting extensive analysis in areas such as marketing spend.

“Across marketing and promotional spend, we spend over £700m so we are going into the detail of that to try and find some efficiencies and then decide whether we reinvest some of those in other profitable opportunities that we can find in that market to drive growth,” he told EGR.

“During the Paddy Power Betfair merger, we moved on to a single global betting or GDPR-compliant global betting platform and we want to do the same with SBG, that will take a 24-month programme so we expect that to be completed in 2024.

Hill continued: “The third element is really looking at how we can set the business up from a organisational perspective to run more effectively and more efficiently.

“There have been some press reports looking at how we structured our business and there will be some roles at risk as part of that. This was always foreseen as part of both the integration of the business and the efficiency cuts and we’re just moving forward with it at this point,” he concluded.

When pressed, Hill affirmed Flutter’s desire to retain those staff members affected by the efficiency changes, transferring them instead to other parts of the business such as US market leader FanDuel, which has seen an influx of 400 staff members moving into it from other areas of Flutter.

“There’s around 200 roles at risk but we’d hope that it will be less and we can reallocate those roles to other areas of the business where we see other growth opportunities across the business,” Hill explained.

“There’s a lot of growth parts of the business where we need great people with great skills and if we’ve got those people in other parts of the business and they want to move, it’s a benefit,” he added.

Flutter’s UK & Ireland business reported a 4% year-on-year total revenue decline during H1 2022 to £1bn, punctuated by a 13% drop in online revenue to £956m.

The operator’s UK & Ireland retail business reported strong revenue growth during H1, with revenue skyrocketing 227% YoY to £136m due to comparables arising from the Covid-19 shutdown period.