Deadwood Rip

What is Deadwood Rip?

In March, William Hill told staff it plans to permanently close approximately 200 of its retail shops in the UK, around 15% of Evoke’s retail estate.

Last month, meanwhile, Betfred announced plans to shutter 132 of its UK betting shops, reducing its workforce by over 600 employees.

Betfred CEO Jo Whittaker said: “We have tried hard to protect all our sites and the colleagues who work in them, but the combined impact of higher employer National Insurance contributions, wage inflation, increases in gambling taxes and wider economic uncertainty has left us with no choice.”

How to play Deadwood Rip

“A proceeding aimed at impairing a single creditor is not the collective administration Chapter 15 contemplates, and the mismatch is not a technicality. It is part of the Debtors’ bad faith effort to forum shop for the most advantageous tool to use against their litigation adversary,” Skillz attorneys alleged.

The Debtors here deployed an insolvency statute against the one creditor whose judgment they wished to defer and compromise, left every ordinary-course creditor untouched, preserved their own equity, and sought releases for the insiders who directed the conduct that produced the judgment—then asked this Court to treat that machinery as proof that their affairs are centered in Israel,” the petition continued.

“The Court should refuse the relief requested by … because it is manifestly contrary to the public policy of the United States based on the Debtors’ well-documented and pervasive bad faith conduct,” the petition said. “The Debtors are using the Israeli Action—a limited action which lacks many of the core characteristics of a collective insolvency proceeding—as a strategic tool to evade responsibility for their deceptive conduct.”

What is Deadwood Rip?

Compared to the 2021 licensing round, the KSA adopted a more granular and stringent approach to its licence renewal process. This was expected following new policy rules set out by the regulator in September 2025.

One such rule was for licensees that had faced compliance enforcement during the five years operating in the Netherlands.

At the time KSA announced: “Providers that made mistakes in the past five years must explain during the application process how they have learned from previous mistakes and how they intend to prevent recurrence. If we find this explanation insufficient, the permit may be denied or additional conditions and restrictions may be imposed.”