Bingo: 250 jobs at risk after the acquisition

250 employees of the largest online bingo site in Europe are at risk of being made redundant. Tombola is looking to save costs following its acquisition by betting giant Flutter in 2021, the Financial Times reports. The company, which has 700 employees in the UK, said it will redeploy as many staff as possible within the company and across the group as a whole.
Management at Sunderland-based Tombola let staff know in an email this week that members of the customer experience team were facing the possibility of their jobs being cut. Tombola has 700 employees in the UK. A meeting was held on Friday for affected staff. Flutter, the world's largest betting company, which bought Tombola for £402m in late 2021, said it would redeploy as many staff as possible within Tombola and across the group. Tombola chat moderators, who are part of the customer experience team, have been told that 250 seats will be reduced to just over 100. Other parts of the customer-facing team, including customer services and safeplay advisors, were also told their jobs were at risk. A person familiar with Flutter's plans said the job cuts were "an attempt to be more efficient" and to remove any "duplication" of customer support roles with other parts of Flutter, such as Paddy Power and SkyBet. Tombola said in a statement that it had “communicated a number of proposed changes to our customer support teams following an extensive operational review.” “As a result, a number of colleagues will now take part in a formal consultation process which will include significant redeployment opportunities within the business, but will unfortunately also lead to a number of redundancies,” the company added. The announcement of possible job cuts comes among the first signs of a slowdown in online betting in the UK in the wake of proposals for tougher regulation. Ministers this year announced reforms to reduce gambling problems, including checks on the affordability of some customers and betting limits on online slots. The UK government is overseeing consultations on how to implement the changes. Analysts will be keeping an eye on Flutter's third-quarter results, due to be released in early November, for signs of slowing UK revenue. However, analysts at Jefferies said in a note last month that they "expect continued momentum" for Flutter's sales in the UK. Last year, Tombola generated sales of £117m and made a pre-tax profit of £25m, according to accounts filed at Companies House.