Following on from the announcement that William Hill is considering the closure of 700 shops, GVC Holdings has issued a response to the announcement by confirming that it has outlined 900 shops that could face closure, which is ten per cent lower than its previous estimates made in April.
The potential closures, in a similar manner to William Hill, have been attributed to the FOBT stake cut brought in on April 1 of this year.
As it stands, Ladbrokes currently owns 1,849 retail premises, while Coral holds a further 1,540. GVC has stated that it “will provide more detail when we announce our H1 results in August.”
In a statement from GVC, the operator group explained: “We now expect up to 900 shops to be at risk of closure, affecting up to 5,000 roles, over the next two years as a result of the reduction in maximum stakes on FOBTs to £2 that came into force on 1st April, and there are a number of shops that have been identified for closure as part of this process.”
“This is not a decision we are taking lightly and we will be working hard to minimise the number of redundancies through redeployment within the business, whilst offering redundancy terms enhanced beyond the statutory requirement.”
GVC has previously stated that the initial impact of the FOBT legislation had not been as severe as first predicted. The group first predicted that it would take a £145m hit to revenues in 2020, and £120m in 2021, however it is now thought that the impact would instead be £120m and £105m respectively.
