MEP David Casa urges gambling operators not to replace staff with AI, as job fears grow

Maltese MEP David Casa, of the Nationalist Party (part of the EPP group), has urged gambling operators to invest in their workforces before turning to artificial intelligence, in order to cut costs, warning that reports of gaming workers losing their jobs to AI “deserve our attention”. He was speaking in a keynote at the SiGMA World conference in Rome on Wednesday and afterwards with iGB.

Casa, Malta’s longest-serving member of the European Parliament, said Europe should embrace AI’s potential to save time, detect fraud and help staff do their jobs better. But he said the human cost of automation could not be ignored.

“Behind each job, there is a person, a family, a rent payment and a plan for the future,” he said. “My appeal to you is to invest in the people who helped build your success.”

Human choice, human voice

The MEP asked operators to look at how professional roles might change instead of being simply cut, and to offer training before losing skilled workers. He argued that experienced staff bring judgment that technology cannot replace.

“A tool may help you work faster, but an experienced team knows when something has gone wrong, when a player needs help and when a decision needs a human choice and a human voice,” he said.

Drawing on his work on employment and EU funding, Casa said training should be part of company plans from the start, with time and money set aside. “The gain from AI should reach the people whose work makes it possible,” he said.

An industry under pressure

Casa’s remarks come as the sector faces a wave of job cuts. Last month Flutter announced it would cut up to 1,400 roles across its UK&I division, spanning Leeds, Dublin and offshore hubs in Porto and Cluj-Napoca. The company put the blame on the UK’s sharp rise in remote gambling taxes.

Some industry observers have suggested other factors are at play. BDO corporate finance director Ollie Woodward told iGB that automating roles with AI could have contributed to drive the scale of the restructuring, alongside tax pressure on margins. He said operators are deploying AI across coding, customer support and CRM, adding: “This is having a direct impact on the shapes of those teams.”

Stockholm-based platform provider Cubeia previously told iGB it had set a target of using AI-written code for all new features and releases by August. Chief operating officer Stefan Grenstad said the idea came during a salary review, when data showed mid-level developers using AI had pulled ahead, with two or three developers delivering almost 60% of results. He framed the shift as a matter of competitive survival but was careful not to present it as a headcount play, although he said not joining the transition was not a choice for developers or for the company.

AI driving job cuts

Other companies have been more explicit. In May, affiliate and sports data company Gambling.com Group announced an AI-led restructuring to cut its workforce by 25% and save $13m a year, which equates to about 150 employees according to SBC Americas. Its incoming CEO, Kevin McCrystle, told investors that 80% of the company’s new code is generated by AI, Front Office Sports reported.

“We continue to integrate AI into our workflows and are moving quickly to adopt AI as the foundational layer of how the entire organisation operates,” McCrystle said. “This shift to AI-first working principles enables a proposed restructure of teams that is expected to drive substantial annualised cost savings.”

In the US, former FanDuel employees told Front Office Sports that AI adoption, along with prediction markets and economic uncertainty, was behind cuts at the operator earlier this year.

Also an issue in Malta

The issue has also reached Casa’s home market of Malta. A former iGaming designer in Malta told Times of Malta they lost their job after they helped train an AI system that managers believed could replace around half their team, although that figure has not been independently verified. GamingMalta disputes reports of widespread AI-driven layoffs, saying talent is being redeployed rather than replaced.

The true scale of AI’s impact remains hard to measure. In a December 2025 Resume.org survey of 1,000 US hiring managers across all industries, 59% admitted they emphasise AI when explaining layoffs or hiring freezes because it plays better with stakeholders than citing financial constraints, while only 9% said AI had fully replaced roles.

Shared rules and a level playing field

Beyond AI, Casa called for more common ground across Europe’s fragmented gambling markets. He described the single market as one of Europe’s greatest strengths but said it often feels like a maze for firms working across borders.

“In gaming too, Europe should seek more common ground,” he said. “Strong shared standards should help Europe and give players better protection across borders.”

He said trust starts with the legal market. “A licence must mean something,” he said, adding that players should know who holds their money, understand the terms and have a fair way to complain or seek help. Licensed operators, he argued, should not carry the cost of compliance while illegal sites reach the same players with little fear of enforcement. He called for closer cross-border cooperation with public authorities, banks and online platforms to make it harder to profit from breaking the law.

Tax opposition restated

Casa also repeated his opposition to a proposed EU-level gambling tax, which he spoke against in the European Parliament earlier this year.

“We could drive investment away with a new EU tax, we could put jobs at risk and we could make illegal sites more attractive,” he said. “That would serve no one.”

Casa did not address Article 56A of Malta’s Gaming Act, known as Bill 55, which is the subject of European Commission infringement proceedings.