A 25% machine duty would be a reprieve for the high street — and a warning shot for everyone buying online

The Chancellor goes to the despatch box on Wednesday with the gambling sector braced for a machine duty rise, a BBC commissioning cut reshaping the UK’s non-commercial schedule, and Meta’s rewritten advertiser terms pushed back after the CMA leaned on it.

Top five

• The Autumn Budget lands on Wednesday 28 October — the first of the Burnham government, delivered by Chancellor John Healey. Grant Thornton notes income tax rates, employee National Insurance and VAT are ruled out, leaving sector levies “including on the gambling sector” among the areas to watch.
• Machine Games Duty is reportedly capped at 25% rather than the 40% campaigners wanted, according to The Times sources reported by SBC News. Unconfirmed until Wednesday.
• Flutter is cutting up to 1,400 UK and Ireland jobs and evoke has shut 270 betting shops over the past year, both blamed on last year’s duty rises (PA).
• The BBC is cutting £80m from commissioning, closing around 100 roles in BBC Content and merging TV and audio commissioning in comedy, arts and classical music (Prolific North).
• Meta has delayed its rewritten commercial terms to 20 November from 30 October after UK and EU complaints, with the CMA confirming “urgent discussions” (Reuters).

A 25% machine duty would be a reprieve for the high street — and a warning shot for everyone buying online

The Times has reported, via unnamed sources, that John Healey will raise Machine Games Duty by five points to 25% from its current 20% on Wednesday. SBC News carried the report on 21 October. Set against what the sector has spent the autumn fearing — the Social Market Foundation’s June call to double MGD to 40%, echoed in a letter co-signed by 90 Labour MPs and written by Alex Ballinger, and public advocacy from Gordon Brown — five points reads as a reprieve. Nothing is confirmed until the despatch box. Treat it as a reported intention, not a rate.

The reason this matters to people buying airtime rather than running an estate is what the alternative was already doing to the market. Flutter announced on Tuesday 20 October it was cutting up to 1,400 UK and Ireland jobs, with UK and Ireland chief Kevin Harrington saying the group could not “fully absorb” the duty increases. evoke, the William Hill owner, told the market on 23 October that it had closed 270 shops over the past year, with Q3 group revenue of £406m, down 7% year on year — or 2% once the closures are stripped out. Chief executive Per Widerstrom urged the government to “carefully consider any further increases ahead of its forthcoming autumn Budget”. Horse racing sponsorship income is already down 17% year on year, per the Racing Post as cited by SBC News. Nicole Garrett of the Bingo Association told GB News that of the 239 clubs left in Britain, 102 would become loss-making at a 40% rate.

Analysis. For an online-only operator — MrQ, tombola, PlayOJO, Jackpotjoy — MGD is somebody else’s tax. The read-across is second order and it cuts two ways. A shrinking retail estate pushes acquisition budget out of shop fronts and into the channels you are already bidding against: broadcast, BVOD, radio, affiliate. That is more competition for the same Q1 inventory, not less. But the Chancellor spending his gambling capital on the land-based side is at least consistent with online rates being left where they are this year — Remote Gaming Duty went from 21% to 40% in April, and a 25% duty on online sports betting outside horse racing is already legislated for 2027. We would not plan on that. A reported MGD figure says nothing about online duties, and no online measure has been ruled out. Hold Q1 commitments flexible until Wednesday afternoon.

Market, audiences and spend

The IPA Bellwether for Q3, reported by VideoWeek on 15 October, put the overall marketing budget net balance at +14.3%, the strongest reading since Q2 2024, with 25.6% of marketers raising budgets against 11.3% cutting. Main media came in at +9.8%, a nine-quarter high. Within that: other online +17.2%, video +9.8%, out of home +3.6%, audio +1.1% and published brands +0.8%. Sentiment remains the awkward half of the picture — industry-level outlook at −20.3% and company-level at −2.7%, both negative but improved on Q2. S&P Global Market Intelligence lifted its 2026 UK ad growth forecast to 2.8% from 2.1%, while trimming 2027 to 1.3%.

Sue Benson of The Behaviours Agency, IPA Chair for England and Wales, called it “the most optimistic IPA Bellwether Report I’ve read in years”. Omnicom Media’s Bhavin Balvantrai noted that budgets are growing overall rather than being shuffled between media — which is the line worth holding on to when a sales house tells you demand is simply moving.

Separately, VideoWeek reports that British broadcasters, advertising bodies and retailers have written to the government opposing a change to the model determining which products fall inside the less healthy food and drink advertising restrictions, a change that would pull more products into scope. The letter warns of “wide-ranging financial, investment, and growth implications for our sectors”. No decision has been announced, and the consultation concerns the LHF nutrient profiling model only — nothing in this touches other restricted categories either way.

The BBC is buying fewer hours. That changes what you are competing with

Prolific North reported on 22 October that BBC content chief Kate Phillips has set out a restructure merging television and audio commissioning across comedy, arts and classical music, with around 100 roles closing across BBC Content by the end of the financial year. Chris Sussman takes commissioning across TV and radio for comedy, Suzy Klein leads audio and video for arts, and Sam Jackson, controller of Radio 3 and the Proms, takes classical. Julia McKenzie and Matthew Dodd move across from Radio 4.

The numbers behind it are the ones to write down: an £80m cut in commissioning spend, 100 to 150 fewer hours of original television and 350 to 400 fewer hours of audio by March 2028, and development spend down around 15%. VideoWeek reports BBC Three, BBC Scotland and Radio 4 Extra close as linear services in spring 2027, with BBC Scotland continuing as an iPlayer channel and BBC Three content moving to iPlayer and YouTube. All of it sits inside the BBC’s £500m savings programme to 2028.

Analysis. UK buyers tend to treat the BBC as weather rather than a competitor, because you cannot buy it. That is the wrong frame this time. Every hour the BBC does not commission is an hour of free, high-quality, ad-free viewing that stops competing for the same audience, and the 16–34 audience that sat with BBC Three is being pushed explicitly towards YouTube — where it is buyable. Fewer BBC originals also means fewer non-commercial tentpoles drawing audience away from ITV1, Channel 4 and Sky in peak. Expect commercial sales houses to price that in long before you see it in the data, and expect the squeeze to show up first in the audio market, where 350 to 400 fewer BBC hours and the closure of Radio 4 Extra is a meaningful release of speech-radio listening into a commercial market the Bellwether has growing at barely +1.1%.

Clients on the move

• Aldi and McCann Manchester have parted after more than two decades on the creative account, Prolific North reported on 23 October. Aldi’s global creative review is down to two groups and Omnicom, McCann’s parent, is not among them. Aldi says the tender is ongoing with no final appointments made, and McCann did not comment. Media is not in play here: Aldi moved its then-£60m media account from Universal McCann to Starcom in 2022. Whether the separately contracted social account stays with McCann was unconfirmed at the time of writing.
• Co-op has extended its data deal with Circana, per a Prolific North headline; the listing carried no terms and the detail was not retrievable at the time of writing.
• Oddschecker is scrapping its paid subscription, making the OC+ tools suite free from 27 October, with premium tipster content free from 8am that day (SBC News). The FairPlay Sports Media brand gave no commercial rationale in its notice to subscribers.

People

• Charlotte Liddell joins MiQ as Group Commercial Director, leading commercial growth and agency partnerships across the UK. She was previously Director of Commercial and a founding partner at The GoodNet (via VideoWeek).
• News UK has promoted four: Jenny Smith to Group Client Director, Tim Statham-Smith to Director, Programmatic and Revenue Operations, Tracey Hendle to Head of Agency Development, and Pavlina Theodoulou to Director of Affiliates and Partnerships for eCommerce.
• At the BBC, Chris Sussman, Suzy Klein and Sam Jackson all take expanded cross-platform commissioning remits under the Phillips restructure.

Online and connected TV

Reuters reported on 23 October that Meta will push the effective date of its updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms from 30 October to 20 November, “to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not”. The delay followed complaints to UK and EU competition authorities from advertisers and publishers who argued the terms would hand Meta an unlimited right to use their content for AI services, a characterisation Meta rejects. The CMA met Meta on Wednesday 21 October and said it was “engaged in urgent discussions with Meta as we consider our next steps”. Meta says it will clarify how it uses web crawlers and that content owners can still signal preferences through robots.txt. The European Publishers Council is unsatisfied: executive director Angela Mills Wade said “maintaining a business page or advertising a subscription should not confer general rights over a publisher’s website and archive”.

Also live: Nexxen has brought in Happydemics for third-party brand lift measurement for its advertisers in the UK and Australia. The early performance figures circulated are Happydemics’ own benchmark data and are not independently verified — treat them as vendor marketing until you have run your own read. And Sky Sports has launched Minus 1, a short-form WSL social series running on its own channels, opening on the Sky Sports WSL TikTok account with Ella Toone and Keely Hodgkinson ahead of the Manchester derby on 25 October (Advanced Television). No commercial partner was named.

Gambling advertising

The Gambling Commission confirmed on 23 October that three people were sentenced at Southwark Crown Court for cheating under section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 over bets on the 2024 General Election date. Anthony Lee, then the Conservative Party’s Director of Campaigning, received 10 months and two weeks suspended for 12 months plus 100 hours of unpaid work; Laura Lee four months and two weeks suspended, plus 40 hours; Amy Hind six months suspended, plus 50 hours. All three are barred from online gambling apps for 12 months. General Counsel Katharine Diamond called it “a significant case and a first of its kind for the Commission”, adding that “betting markets must be fair and must not be undermined by people using confidential information for their own benefit”. Craig Williams awaits sentencing and ten others face trials in September 2027 and January 2028.

On the consolidation front, evoke is being taken over by Bally’s Intralot in a £243m deal it expects to complete by the end of this year or early next, per PA. And in broadcast, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy remains “minded to intervene” in Sky’s £1.6bn acquisition of ITV’s Media and Entertainment division on media plurality and on-demand programming grounds, with ITV and Sky having been given until 20 October to respond. No final decision had been announced at the time of writing. If that deal is referred, the UK broadcast sales landscape a gambling advertiser negotiates with in 2027 looks materially different.

Media buying view

• Do not commit Q1 broadcast money before Wednesday afternoon. A reported 25% MGD cap tells you nothing about online duties, and the last Budget took Remote Gaming Duty from 21% to 40%. Hold optionality on January and February volume deals until the Red Book is out, then move fast — if online is spared, competitors will be in the market the same week.
• Price in a tighter Q1 regardless of the rate. With Flutter cutting up to 1,400 roles and evoke 270 shops down, retail acquisition spend is migrating to the channels you buy. Pull forward your BVOD and radio negotiations rather than waiting for the January scramble, and build a 16–34 YouTube line into the plan now that BBC Three’s audience is being routed there from spring 2027.
• Audit what your Meta business account has agreed to before 20 November. The new terms are delayed, not withdrawn, and the CMA has not closed its file. Check which domains are linked to your Business Manager, confirm your robots.txt position, and get a written view from whoever owns your brand’s content rights — three weeks is enough time to decide, and not much more.