Jurnii analysis: how casino bonuses changed after remote gaming duty rose to 40%

Remote gaming duty rose from 21% to 40% of gross gaming yield on 1 April 2026, and Jurnii’s promotional intelligence shows UK casino operators reacted by cutting the value of existing‑customer offers rather than their number. Jurnii 360 compared the month before the change (March 2026), the eight weeks immediately after 1 April, and the period from late May to mid‑October 2026 to track promotions across all UK operators daily.

What Jurnii measured

Jurnii 360 logged offers on fully captured days for all UK operators from 1 March to 12 October 2026. The dataset compared three periods: March 2026; the first eight weeks after the duty rise (April–mid‑May); and late May to 12 October 2026. The platform records on‑site existing‑customer offers and valued promotions, allowing brand‑by‑brand medians and mean values to be calculated.

Operators increased small on‑site offers but cut average value

In the eight weeks after 1 April, the average casino brand ran 26% more existing‑customer bonus offers on site each day than in March, while sports betting offers on the same sites fell by 2%. From late May to mid‑October, casino offer volumes remained elevated at 17% above March levels and sports at 1% above March.

Most of the additional casino offers were trivial in cash terms: drops worth £1 or less, or loyalty‑coin offers with no stated cash value. Offers explicitly worth more than £1 did not increase in number.

Measured by the median change in mean offer value across brands, the typical casino operator’s existing‑customer offer was worth 16% less in the eight weeks after the duty rise and 19% less from late May to mid‑October. Across eight casino brands with enough valued offers, the average fell from £5.66 in March to £4.25 in the post‑rise window and stayed at that level through mid‑October.

The composition of offers explains much of this shift. In April and May, 53% of existing‑customer casino offers were worth £1 or less, up from 42% in March. The median valued offer halved from £2 to £1 in the immediate aftermath before returning to £2 later. By contrast, sport’s median valued offer remained at £5 throughout.

Five of the eight tracked casino brands cut value in the first eight weeks; six were still below their March medians from late May.

Sports betting acted as a control

General betting duty remained at 15% until April 2027, when it will move to 25% for everything except UK racing, so sportsbook promotions provided a contemporaneous control. Across the 10 sportsbooks Jurnii tracked for daily price boosts, the average margin conceded on a single boost edged up from 2.98 to 3.13 percentage points in the eight weeks after 1 April. The typical boost rose from 17.9% to 18.7%, and singles were boosted more often, not less.

Only bet365, Betfred and William Hill reduced margin given away on singles in that window. From late May the average margin conceded eased to 2.65 points as Coral and Ladbrokes moved to narrower boosts.

Jackpots, launches and acquisition offers

Jackpots gained prominence in casino lobbies. The share of live casino offers that were jackpots rose from 2.4% in March to 4.7% from late May, and the number of brands promoting a casino jackpot increased from four to seven by May. Many of these jackpots are pooled or networked products, for example Unibet’s £1m Hot Drops, rather than operator‑funded prizes.

New casino launches fell 22% in the eight weeks after 1 April, but sportsbook launches fell 43% over the same period. Jurnii interprets that as a calendar effect — March carries events such as Cheltenham — rather than a direct result of the duty change.

Acquisition offers were not cut. Every casino welcome free‑spins offer live in March remained live from late May onwards, including bet365’s £50, BetMGM’s £40, Sky Bet’s £25 and Unibet’s £20. The median welcome free spins figure fell to £10 later in the year only because more brands added new £10 offers, not because existing welcome deals were reduced.

What this means for casino promotion strategies

The observable response was to ration headline value for existing players while protecting acquisition offers. That led operators to shift cost from offer size to the frequency and reach of small, low‑value promotions — keeping brand visibility in the lobby but at much lower per‑offer cash outlay.

Mitch Vidler, chief commercial officer at Jurnii, leads the 360 product that produced the dataset and analysis. Jurnii 360 is Jurnii’s promotional intelligence platform for global sports betting and casino markets.

For further coverage on casino market reactions see the casino section and the regulation pages for tax developments affecting operator economics. Industry readers can also consult our b2b coverage for commercial analysis.