The billionaire Done family took a £30 million dividend from their Betfred gambling empire before warning that they would close hundreds of bookies and cut jobs if the government increases tax on high-street slot machines.
The chancellor, John Healey, is understood to be considering proposals to double machine games duty in the upcoming budget, a move that the Social Market Foundation thinktank has said could boost state coffers by up to £460 million.
Industry figures, led by the Betfred boss Fred Done, argue that such a move would devastate the bookmaking and casino sector. On Wednesday, Done was among industry signatories who signed a last-ditch letter to Healey, warning that the policy could trigger up to 1,470 betting shop closures, 34 casino closures and 15,900 job losses. The plea was first reported by Sky News.
The letter came as Betfred's holding company filed its accounts at Companies House. The Warrington-based betting firm won a record £996 million from British punters in the year to the end of March 2026, the accounts show, booking a pre-tax profit of £64 million.
The strong performance allowed Betfred to pay its shareholders - mainly a series of trusts benefiting the Done family - an interim dividend of £30 million, taking the value of shareholder payouts to more than £105 million since 2022. The money is understood to have been reinvested into other Done family businesses, including their burgeoning property empire.
The juxtaposition of a £30 million payout with warnings of mass closures has drawn sharp criticism. Earlier this summer, Betfred closed 132 shops, resulting in hundreds of employees losing their jobs, citing the upcoming tax increases as the main reason. Last month, the company ended its partnership with the rugby Super League, again citing increasing taxes.
Done, who founded his first bookies in 1967 and went on to become one of Britain's richest men, has been vocal about his frustration. Last month he lamented that he "would not wish to be reborn" in the UK. "They keep saying those with the broadest shoulders should be paying more tax," he told the Financial Times. "Well, how broad do my shoulders have to be? We paid £400 million in taxes as a family last year."
The Done family, with an estimated combined wealth of around £3 billion, remains among the UK's biggest taxpayers according to the Sunday Times Tax List. Of the estimated £400 million they contributed in tax last year, around £54 million was attributable to machine games duty, according to the accounts of Betfred Group Holdings Limited.
The government faces a delicate balancing act: the proposed tax rise aims to address concerns about gambling addiction while raising revenue, but the industry argues that excessive taxation will backfire by shrinking the legal market, reducing employment and ultimately cutting the tax take. Critics of the industry counter that a company winning nearly £1 billion from punters in a single year can hardly claim poverty - and that the timing of the dividend, paid just before the job-cut warnings, speaks for itself.