Betfred revamps Bet Builder ahead of 2026/27 football season

• Betfred has revamped its online Bet Builder with a BRUNO-powered product, expanding its partnership with T5C ahead of the 2026/27 football season.
• The launch follows T5C’s retail rollout across roughly 1,300 Betfred shops during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
• Betfred, one of the UK’s largest bookmakers by shop count, is pushing digital investment amid a tougher retail tax environment.

Betfred has revamped its online Bet Builder, extending its partnership with T5C to bring a BRUNO-powered product to its digital sportsbook ahead of the 2026/27 football season.

The move follows a retail rollout of the same technology across Betfred’s shop estate during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Bet Builder overhaul

The revamp lets BRUNO identify and surface relevant Bet Builder combinations, drawing on available markets, statistics and Betfred’s current prices. Customers now see pre-configured combinations built around selected fixtures, cutting the steps needed to construct a bet manually.

Betfred keeps control of pricing, market availability and risk throughout, with BRUNO operating inside the bookmaker’s existing trading and commercial framework rather than replacing it.

Mark Hartley, Head of Product & Commercial at Betfred, said:

“Bet Builder is naturally a huge focus for us, and we’re always looking for ways to remove friction for customers when placing bets. T5C’s technology helps us surface relevant, ready-made combinations, making it quicker and easier to discover and place the bets they’re interested in, while we retain full control of our pricing, markets and risk.

“It’s a natural extension of the work we’ve already done together in retail and another step in improving the Bet Builder experience for our customers.”

Scaling across channels

The online launch builds on T5C’s retail deployment during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, when its Smart Accas, Trending Accas and Trending Bet Builders went live across approximately 1,300 Betfred shops.

Smart Accas let customers pick preferred competitions before seeing statistically relevant accumulator options in real time, while the Trending products offer pre-configured one-click combinations at event, competition and global level.

The expansion means the same underlying system now runs across Betfred’s retail, web and app channels, echoing a similar push into retail platform technology with Sportradar earlier in 2026.

Andrew Grimshaw, Commercial Director at T5C, said:

“The strongest technology partnerships expand across channels and solve more than one customer problem. Our World Cup retail deployment demonstrated how BRUNO can deliver relevant acca and Bet Builder content across a major SSBT estate.

“Extending that relationship online shows that the same intelligence can be adapted for a different customer environment, giving Betfred a scalable supply of relevant Bet Builder content for the new season.”

Betfred’s wider operations

Betfred traces back to 1967, when brothers Fred Done and Peter Done opened a single shop in Salford, funded by winnings from a bet on England’s 1966 World Cup win.

The business remains privately held by the Done family; Fred Done, who ranked among the UK’s biggest taxpayers earlier this year, now serves as chairman after stepping back from the chief executive role in 2021.

The operator has grown into one of the UK’s largest bookmakers by shop count, running more than 1,200 betting shops alongside its online sportsbook and casino, plus a retail presence in South Africa.

That estate has come under pressure in 2026: on 31 July, Betfred confirmed it will close 132 shops and cut more than 600 jobs from September, citing the Remote Gaming Duty increase from 21% to 40% that took effect on 1 April 2026 – a levy that applies to remote gaming rather than retail betting duty – alongside higher National Insurance and wage costs. After the closures, Betfred expects to operate around 1,100 shops in the UK.

Under pressure

HM Treasury disputed that framing, telling The Times that “gambling duty rates for high street shops have not changed.” The exchange reflects a wider industry debate over how much of the closures trace to tax policy versus broader cost pressures such as wage inflation and National Insurance increases.

Betfred has also faced regulatory scrutiny alongside the tax pressure, fined £900,000 by the Gambling Commission in June over harm-detection failures, and it paused its Irish operations from 30 June 2026 as Ireland’s incoming GRAI licensing regime took effect.

Investment in digital product, including the T5C-powered Bet Builder revamp, points to a business leaning further into technology as its physical shop position and regulatory position come under strain.

The revamp positions Betfred to carry a consistent Bet Builder experience into the new season across every customer touchpoint. With retail margins squeezed by tax, shop closures and compliance costs, deepening supplier partnerships that scale across channels looks set to matter more to Betfred’s strategy than expanding its physical footprint.