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The industry has blamed affordability checks for a £3bn drop in online betting turnover.
UK.- The UK horse racing sector has called for urgent action after Gambling Commission statistics suggested that online betting on horses had fallen by £3bn over the last two years, a decline of 16.3 per cent before considering inflation.
The industry says the downturn would be around £15bn after inflation is factored in. Betting turnover in horseracing continued to decline this year, with a 9.5 per cent drop year-to-date.
The Racing Post has suggested that the numbers represent a financial crisis for UK horse racing, noting that it comes on top of a drop in funding from media rights, sponsorships and long-postponed calls for a revamp of the betting levy. At the same time, the sector has had to contend with wage increases and higher National Insurance contributions. It’s called for intervention on recently introduced affordability checks for online gambling.
“The government must recognise the disproportionate effect of gambling’s affordability checks on UK racing, which attracts higher-staking customers compared to other forms of sports betting,” Racing Post wrote.
“Affordability checks cannot be applied with the same mechanism to UK racing, as Commission statistics reveal that horserace betting turnover has fallen by 16.3 per cent over the last two years before inflation is taken into account, whereas turnover on greyhounds was down by 12.9 per cent, football by only seven per cent, and online slots turnover remained flat over the same period.”
The Conservative MP Nick Timothy said: “These statistics show exactly why so many are worrying about the effects of disproportionate affordability checks on horseracing. I’ve raised this problem—along with the need to reform the levy—repeatedly since I was elected, and while the words have been warm, ministers are yet to come forward with solutions. The decline in betting on horseracing shows how urgent this is.”
British Horseracing Authority director of communications Greg Swift also called for an evaluation of affordability checks: “One of the things we have made clear to the commission is the need to work closely with DCMS, betting operators, bettors, ourselves, and wider stakeholders to make sure the results of phase one of the pilot tests are independently reviewed.
“They must be subject to really rigorous independent evaluation to fully understand the potential implications of these checks. Failure to do so would only lead to a significant lack of confidence across the sport and the industry in those provisional findings.”