From April 2026, Remote Gaming Duty (RGD) for online casino gambling in the UK will rise to 40%, fundamentally reshaping margin dynamics of UK online operators. It changes how margins are managed and protected. For Boards and executive teams responsible for growth and margin performance, this regulatory change carries clear structural, commercial and often existential consequences.
When our Chief Data & Product Officer, Chris Conroy, discussed the implications of the shift to 40% Remote Gaming Duty in a detailed AMA session in December, the reality quickly became clear: this tax change is not a marginal adjustment. The modelling reinforced it. The distortion between GGR and GGY is significant – revenue is taxed before promotional efficiency becomes fully visible.
Mitigation levers are narrower than many expect. Once you work through the mechanics of how the tax is applied, a more important question starts to take shape — what actually separates the operators who survive this shift from those who win?
Under 40% RGD, imprecision is no longer inefficient. It's expensive.
Bonuses sit at the heart of player experience and retention, and they are also one of the largest controllable levers of margin.
Under the current structure, operators are taxed on revenue that includes promotional spend, which makes imprecise awards expensive.
When segmentation is flat, campaigns are scheduled rather than responsive, and exposure is broad without clear profitability visibility, the impact is no longer marginal – it is material to the P&L, exposing the operator to a greater tax liability than necessary.
These traditional approaches were always suboptimal. Under higher RGD, the commercial cost of legacy ways-of-working becomes very expensive, very quickly.
As discussed in our recent AI Masterclass on bonus efficiency at ICE Barcelona, operators are already moving away from blanket awards towards real-time behaviour-led allocation models. Boards are no longer simply asking whether campaigns drive activity; they are asking whether they preserve value and protect margin. That shift in scrutiny changes the role of bonus strategy, turning it into a core commercial discipline rather than just a marketing tool.
40% RGD changes three commercial realities:
An instinctive response to structural pressure is to cut player rewards. The challenge with blunt reductions in bonus spends is that revenue tends to fall alongside it, leaving operators exposed on both sides of the equation.
The more considered response is control — understanding player behaviour in the moment, allocating incentives with clear margin discipline, measuring impact at an individual level, and acting in real time rather than retrospectively.
Cutting is defensive. Control is deliberate. AI facilitates all.
With higher RGD, real-time personalisation stops being an enhancement or pilot programme and becomes core commercial infrastructure. When incentives are deployed precisely, and you reach the right player at the right moment, they make commercial sense and bonus spend shifts from reactive to disciplined. It becomes a managed investment rather than an absorbed cost, and that is where margin resilience is built sustainably.
Some operators will respond to RGD by tightening spend and absorbing margin pressure. Others will take the opportunity to redesign how bonus and promotional decisions are made. The distinction will come down to quality of decision making, rather than promotional budget size. Those who treat this moment as a catalyst to sharpen decision making – rather than simply tightening budgets – will be the ones who build sustainable competitive advantage.
RGD has revealed inefficiencies that were always present. The advantage now belongs to operators who treat real-time personalisation as operational infrastructure, not marketing optimisation. That level of precision and speed requires AI-driven, real-time decisioning embedded at the core of commercial operations. In a higher-tax environment, surviving is defensive. Winning is deliberate.
Surviving is defensive. Winning requires control. AI facilitates all.
If you're reviewing your promotional strategy under RGD and want to understand how real-time personalisation improves bonus efficiency while protecting margin, book a demo.