The Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act of 1963 allowed high street bookmakers to be established and obliges them to pay racing a percentage of their profits to compensate for any decrease in race attendances.
The levy is administered by the Horseracing Betting Levy Board (HBLB), which negotiates the figure on an annual basis with the Bookmakers Committee, which was set up under the same legislation to at as a single point of contact representing bookies.
A new agreement was supposed to have been in place by the 31st October 2010, but as the date has passed the matter has been referred to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for adjudication, which has three members on the HBLB.
The horseracing industry wants this year’s figure to rise to £130–150 million. However, the Bookmakers Committee, which says last year’s levy stood at less than £80 million, believe that the levy should remain dictated by a specific percentage of their profits, although long-term would prefer to move towards a non-statutory, commercial relationship with racing.
Stuart McInroy, the Bookmakers Committee’s general secretary, told HR: "We pay a percentage of our profit for British horseracing back to them. Obviously if we’re making less money, then racing gets less back.
"Three years ago the price we paid for television pictures that you see in your betting office went up overnight by £18 million a year, which goes straight into the pockets of the racecourses, so we are already paying more.
"We paid roughly £75 million last year for the levy, £75 million for the television picture rights and £10 in sponsorship. It’s this constant eroding of our own business performance that makes the position unsustainable from a business model.
"We would like the levy to be scrapped and the statute to be rewritten so we can get into a genuine commercial relationship with racing."
