Sky Bet revenues fell by over £100m in 2025, new documents reveal as explanation issued
One of the country’s largest gambling firms with a major presence in Leeds saw its revenues fall by more than £100m last year as it failed to match “a strong 2024”, The Yorkshire Post can reveal.
Newly-published Companies House documents reveal substantial falls in turnover and profit for Sky Bet in 2025, with a controversial move to Malta separately going through towards the end of the year.
Sky Bet and its parent company Flutter faced criticism last year after ITV News revealed it had moved its sports betting business to the Maltese branch of a new UK company called SBG Sports Limited. Treasury Select Committee chair Meg Hillier said at the time that the move “takes the biscuit” given lobbying by the gambling industry extolling the amount of UK tax they contribute.
Corporation tax in the UK for a company the size of Sky Bet is 25 per cent, but in Malta the effective rate can be as low as five per cent.
Flutter confirmed in November 2025 that while it would continue to pay UK corporation tax on profits, there would be “some tax implications” from the change.
Flutter subsidiary Hestview Limited had been the economic beneficiary of the sports bookmaking business operated under the Sky Bet brand. At the start of November 2025, the Sky Bet sportbook was transferred to SBG Sports Limited, which is based in the UK but is a subsidiary of Skybet Malta Holdings Limited.
Hestview’s newly-published 2025 annual results reveal that revenues fell from £586m in 2024 to £407m last year, with £389m of the 2025 revenue relating to ‘discontinued operations’ which now fall under SBG Sports.
Revenues are based on gains from customer betting activities, with customer promotions like free bets deducted from the figures.
Hestview’s total tax expense was £26.5m compared to £39.8m in 2024.
In both cases, this was largely made up of 25 per cent corporation tax on profits. The firm paid £39m on £156.1m of pre-tax profit in 2024, dropping to by £24.1m on £96.5m of pre-tax profit last year.
SBG published its own annual results for 2025 in August, showing it paid £504,000 in corporation tax on a £2.016m profit after delivering £64.5m in revenue.
Taken together, it means that SBG and Hestview made revenues of £471.5m in 2025 – down by more than £114m. Profits reduced by over £57m while the two entities paid a combined £24.6m in UK corporation tax in 2025 – down by more than £14.4m on the year before.
A Flutter UK and Ireland spokesperson said: “These figures reflect comparisons with a strong 2024 and Sky Betting and Gaming’s transition onto a new tech platform at the beginning of last year. Flutter’s recent Q2 results highlighted that Sky Bet’s performance has strengthened as customers adapt to our new offer.”
Flutter’s results for the second quarter of 2026 said Sky Bet performance had “strengthened as customers continue to adapt to the highly-rated new product interface” and added the company had made a “strong start to the FIFA World Cup”, which ran into the start of the third quarter.
The Hestview results stated that the Sky Bet transfer was designed to “simplify the commercial leadership structure for the UK and Ireland with centralisation of the commercial teams in Malta”.
When details of the Malta move were first revealed, a Flutter spokesperson said the wider group had paid more than £700m in UK taxes last year and that the company employs over 5,000 people in Britain, including nearly 2,000 in Leeds.
They said at the time: “As with most global businesses around the world, we are constantly striving to remain competitive and efficient and to give ourselves the best chance of success in an incredibly challenging environment.
“This decision was made for a number of strategic and commercial reasons and will have some tax implications. But Flutter is committed to the UK and Sky Bet will continue to pay UK corporation tax on its profits.”