RGD Hike Puts the Brakes on New UK Casino Brand Launches

Shantel O · 14 October 2026

Autumn used to bring a flurry of fresh UKGC licence numbers and shiny new lobbies. This year the register has gone quiet instead, and the reason sits squarely with April’s Remote Gaming Duty rise. Fewer standalone brands are making it to launch, and the ones that do are increasingly borrowing someone else’s licence to get there faster.

What’s been released

Rather than a single product drop, this is a market-wide shift visible in the UKGC’s own licensing data.
Nine businesses held a UKGC casino licence issued in the 12 months to 30 August 2026, though not all of those were actually trading, meaning new online casinos in 2026 produced fewer open sites than licences.
Among the handful that did reach players, the register shows a familiar pattern of operators sharing infrastructure rather than building from scratch.
Brands such as Betty Casino, BetAhoy, Casushi, FruitKings and Proper Bet sit against network licensees like Skill On Net, which carries 60 domains on a single licence granted back in 2014.

Network brands can launch faster precisely because the licence, the platform and the payment rails already exist, so a brand can go live in 2026 on infrastructure approved more than a decade earlier.

What’s changed

The trigger is the Remote Gaming Duty increase that took effect on 1 April 2026, lifting the rate operators pay on gross gaming revenue from online casino products from 21% to 40%.
The rise was confirmed in the government’s Finance Act changes published the previous November, and every operator launching a UK site this year has had to build its business around a rate that did not exist twelve months earlier.
That has reshaped how new entrants approach the market from day one.
It has forced a genuine rethink of how a new casino’s economics work, with operators launching now building bonus structures, wagering requirements and even game selection around thinner margins from the outset rather than adjusting after the fact.
The squeeze isn’t limited to newcomers, either.
Entain and Flutter both said the duty change would cost them hundreds of millions of pounds a year, and operators are absorbing that heavier tax bill alongside tighter compliance costs while the underlying market keeps expanding.

Even established groups have felt the pinch, with Entain cutting 500 roles globally over the summer, though the company framed it as broader cost optimisation rather than a direct reaction to the tax rise.

Where it fits

Not everyone reads the figures the same way. Some trackers argue the real story is a market clearing out weaker players rather than shrinking overall, noting that
the number of new casino launches had already slowed during the regulatory uncertainty of 2024 and 2025, and 2026 has instead seen a clearing of the decks following the April duty increase.
What both readings agree on is the shift towards network launches over standalone brands, since
the high regulatory costs and the new 40% tax rate make it far more viable for a trusted operator to launch a fresh brand on an existing tech stack and licence than for a new company to start from scratch.
For players browsing UK lobbies this autumn, that means fewer genuinely new standalone names appearing, and more familiar faces turning up in new branding instead. It’s a quieter kind of product news than a big slot release, but it says plenty about how the supply side of the UK market is adapting to life under the higher duty rate.

RGD Hike Puts the Brakes on New UK Casino Brand Launches

What’s been released

What’s changed

Where it fits

Sources

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