Racing is facing tough times as Levy Board warns of funding cuts

Racecourses and racing professionals will have to face up to harder times following the news on Tuesday that fewer fixtures are likely to benefit from central funding next year. A meeting of the Levy Board broke up without reaching a final decision on the matter but a statement from the sport's ruling body left little room for doubt that action will have to be taken in light of reduced income from the betting industry. The board, which collects a levy from bookmakers' profits on racing and channels it back to the sport, spent several hours on Tuesday considering whether it could commit to funding the same number of fixtures next year as for this, paying less per raceday. The obvious alternative would be to reduce the number of fixtures for which it pays. Racing's representatives on the board asked for more time to put together a proposal on the best way forward but it appears that the status quo will not be preserved. Paul Roy, chairman of the British Horseracing Authority, said in a statement that "providing funding for all existing levy criteria slots … is not an acceptable option and will just result in a further deterioration of the racing programme". Roy added that this was the settled view of the BHA, the Racecourse Association and the Horsemen's Group, and was a response to the fact that Levy Board expenditure for next year is budgeted at £52m, down from £60m for 2011. A proposal for funding next year's fixtures will now be made at the next board meeting in August, meaning that the 2012 fixture list, which would normally have been published by now, may not be finalised until September. According to Roy, the BHA is also working on a "wider strategy" for fixtures from 2013, which will be announced "shortly". The BHA will have to give up its control over the fixture list if bookmakers get their way, it emerged on Tuesday. The Association of British Bookmakers published its thoughts on a replacement for the levy system and looked forward to a world in which it could negotiate directly with racecourses. "It is high time to jettison the anachronistic levy," said the ABB's chief executive, Dirk Vennix, who said it should be killed off by 2014 and replaced with a commercial agreement between betting and racing. That, according to the ABB, should lead to a fixture list more in keeping with the betting industry's needs, with the emphasis on a steady supply of action. Asked to identify the flaws in the present system, Vennix pointed to "a lack of evening racing on Mondays and Tuesdays during the winter; two rather than three fixtures on Mondays, Tuesdays and Sundays in the summer and gaps between afternoon and evening racing". He also foresaw racecourses being subject to penalties for every race they stage which attracts fewer than eight runners. Vennix reiterated his strong opposition to the idea of a "betting right" as imagined by the BHA last week. "Bookmakers would be forced to pay upfront for a licensed betting right, which, once granted to horse racing, could allow them to unilaterally set the value and terms of the right," he said and offered dire predictions of the impact on the betting industry, including thousands of job losses. Even under the present system, however, the BHA does not have complete control over the fixture list, and its spokesman, Paul Struthers, said on Tuesday that it was powerless to prevent last weekend's pile-up of high-profile fixtures that caused so much frustration to racing professionals. Trainers complained of the difficulty in finding jockeys for their runners as Newmarket, Chester, York and Ascot all staged racedays on the same afternoon. "We have responsibility for the fixture list but without any really significant power," Struthers said, pointing out that Newmarket had been able to move its fixture from a weekday to the Saturday without having to obtain the BHA's consent. "It has been well documented that that was almost too strong a day's racing, particularly when looking at the Saturdays on either side of it. "But Saturday is the most accessible day for people to go racing, to watch racing and to bet on racing. In the current climate, with the levy system broken and offshore bookmakers not paying towards it, racecourses have to try to maximise revenue."