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Jumpman Gaming Wins £13.2m Remote Gaming Duty Case Over Free Spins
The Upper Tribunal ruled on 25 September 2026 that further free spins won through a Jumpman welcome promotion fall outside Remote Gaming Duty. HMRC can still seek permission to appeal.
The UK Upper Tribunal has cleared Jumpman Gaming of about £13.2m in Remote Gaming Duty (RGD) that HMRC assessed on free spins won through a welcome promotion. The decision was released on 25 September 2026. Two judges concluded that the further free spins fell within a statutory exclusion, and said the assessments should be reduced to nil. HMRC can still seek permission to appeal. We found no sign that it has.
What the tribunal decided
The case is Jumpman Gaming Ltd v HMRC, [2026] UKUT 364 (TCC), case number UT/2025/000131. Judge Swami Raghavan and Judge Guy Brannan heard it on 17 and 18 June. It concerned Jumpman’s welcome offer. A new customer who made a qualifying deposit received a free spin of the “Mega Reel”, a game of chance whose prizes could include cash, vouchers or free spins on other games. HMRC accepted that the first spin was not taxable. It assessed duty on the further free spins won from it, for accounting periods between 1 July 2018 and 31 December 2022.
Two provisions of the Finance Act 2014 were at issue. Section 159(4) treats play under an offer that waives a payment as if the full payment had been made. Section 159A(4) and (5) switch that off where the offer was “won in the course of the person’s participation in the gaming”. HMRC argued that a further free spin qualified only if it was won from an earlier game played under a waived payment. Jumpman argued that “the gaming” meant remote gaming generally. The tribunal agreed with Jumpman. It held that the phrase refers to the remote gaming identified in the subsection and is not confined to play under a waived-payment offer.
The judges said the wording alone favoured Jumpman only marginally, and they called HMRC’s reading linguistically possible. What counted against HMRC, in their view, was that its approach would mean tracing a free spin back through any number of intervening plays to an original waiver, which they did not think the statutory words naturally required. They also held that the First-tier Tribunal was wrong to ignore the 2016 consultation papers that preceded the 2017 rules. HMRC did not defend that exclusion on appeal. The judges found the consultation material of limited help on the specific question of what “the gaming” means.
Where Jumpman did not win
The win was narrower than some headlines suggest. Jumpman also argued that the welcome spin was itself a game normally paid for and played for free, which would have brought it within section 159(4). The Upper Tribunal dismissed that ground and found that the First-tier Tribunal was entitled to treat the spin as a free game. The judges also declined to rule on a broader argument about how section 159(4) works, saying it fell outside the ground of appeal as pleaded.
The initial spin therefore stays outside the charge, and the tribunal decided that the further spins won from it were excluded. It did not hold that free spins are generally outside RGD.
Why operators are watching
RGD has been charged at 40% since 1 April 2026, up from 21%, according to HMRC guidance. The tax treatment of promotions now carries more money than it did in the 2018 to 2022 periods at issue. Section 159A has not changed since it was inserted in November 2017, according to legislation.gov.uk, so the ruling concerns rules that are still in force.
The case was a disclosed risk for listed operators. Super Group, whose results include Jumpman, said with its full-year 2025 results in February that it had provided $26m for the matter. Of that, $17m was for gaming taxes and $4m for penalties, with $5m recorded in finance expense. Separately, evoke’s FY25 results estimated an RGD exposure of £17.6m to the end of 2025 relating to winnings from free-to-play games, and NEXT.io reported that this exposure was tied to the Jumpman outcome. We found no statement from either company on how the ruling affects those figures.
Lawyers are already advising on it. CMS partner Stephen Hignett said HMRC has recently been assessing operators on games that are always free to play. He said that if the decision is not successfully appealed, operators should consider seeking repayment of RGD or withdrawal of such assessments. Pinsent Masons VAT partner Bryn Reynolds called the outcome very surprising and said he would expect HMRC to respond by changing the legislation, as it did after an earlier loss in the insurance sector. Both are legal opinion, not findings.
What happens next
A further appeal would need permission. As of 6 October we have found no public statement from HMRC, Jumpman or Super Group on the ruling, and no report that an application has been made.
The First-tier Tribunal had gone the other way a year earlier. In its decision of 16 September 2025, [2025] UKFTT 1117 (TC), it dismissed Jumpman’s appeal on the basis that the further spins were taxable. The judgment now turns on one promotion and one phrase in the statute. Operators with similar mechanics will be reading it closely, and reading it for what it decided rather than what the headlines say.
Reporting & Methodology
This report is based on the Upper Tribunal’s judgment in [2026] UKUT 364 (TCC), read in full from the copy published on GOV.UK, and on the First-tier Tribunal’s decision in [2025] UKFTT 1117 (TC). We also checked the text of section 159A of the Finance Act 2014 on legislation.gov.uk, HMRC’s Excise Notice 455a for the current rate, and Super Group’s full-year 2025 results release filed with the US SEC. Trade and legal commentary from NEXT.io and Pinsent Masons was used for context and is attributed. The link between evoke’s disclosed exposure and this case rests on NEXT.io’s reporting, which we did not verify against evoke’s notes. We did not contact HMRC, Jumpman Gaming or Super Group. Dates were checked against the judgment’s release date of 25 September 2026, not the dates of news coverage.