BHA urges industry unity post-Budget

After some reflection, Jack Barton, the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) Policy & Advocacy Manager, published a piece ruminating on how the recent Budget announcements may affect the horseracing industry.

He started off the piece by discussing the main points of the Axe The Racing Tax campaign, mainly that a harmonised tax rate of 21% could cost the industry around £66m ($88.46m) a year and potentially cost 2,752 jobs or worse if the tax rate went higher.

"Going into the consultation, racing held a comparatively weak tax position where competitor products such as sports betting (charged at General Betting Duty - 15%) and online casino products (charged at Remote Gaming Duty - 21%) had an edge built in given the existence of the Horserace Betting Levy, which made British racing's effective tax rate 25%," he explained. "A bad result would have only exacerbated this and may have proved terminal for operators' appetite for promoting British racing."

However, as soon as Rachel Reeves took the floor (and the leaked documents spread online), the horseracing sector's fate was revealed: the worst had not happened.

"The recognition of the sport's 'unique circumstances' by the Treasury was a vindication of the effort that went into the cross-industry Axe The Racing Tax campaign to highlight why racing needed to be treated differently," Barton continued. "Every part of the industry played a vital role, whether it be sending letters to their MPs, sacrificing a day of racing to help facilitate or attend the campaign event in Westminster on September 10th, or representing the sport in national and regional media to help the public understand the predicament faced by the industry."

Almost 900 individual pieces of coverage on the Axe The Racing Tax campaign, "helping the sport achieve an unprecedented amount of mainstream news coverage. It will hopefully have an additional benefit as an awareness-raising exercise for British racing."

However, gambling did not escape unscathed, which was no doubt worsened by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's heavy-handed input over the summer.

Barton went on to say: "Given the importance of online casino products to operators' business models, it remains to be seen how this tax rise will impact their marketing, sponsorship and advertising spend on products like horseracing and other sports.

"The rise in gambling taxes in the Budget will impact betting operators significantly and British racing is keen to work closely with the betting industry to understand the wider impact of these changes and look at how we can grow the sport in what is a challenging economic climate.

"Collaboration is imperative if we are to ensure that British racing is not only an attractive betting product but a sport that is able to grow in popularity in a crowded leisure market."

Of course, nothing in this industry operates in isolation, and any significant change will ripple out across the various elements in a butterfly effect-like motion.

But with open communication and collaboration between companies in the industry, the full effects may not be as bad as first imagined.