Hetta Harris

Since the Budget, two completely different versions of reality have emerged. On one hand you have a significant number of people within racing who genuinely believe they “won”: that holding racing at 15% while pushing Remote Gaming Duty to 40% and sports betting to 25% somehow protects the sport. This version treats the Budget as a victory worth celebrating. The problem is that it bears no resemblance to what is actually happening across the betting and gaming industry, which is now facing the most severe financial shock in decades. Look at the numbers. Rank Group has already said the Budget creates a £40m hit. Last year it made £45m profit and paid £188m in UK taxes. Under the new structure it will make no profit at all and will pay £228m. Flutter has published its projected impact too: £320m in 2026 and £540m in 2027 before mitigation. Even after they cut marketing, reduce UK investment and attempt to offset the damage, they expect hundreds of millions wiped from their UK-facing economics. Evoke has said publicly that the tax changes will lead to thousands of job losses across the industry, reduced investment, weakened products, and significant growth of the unregulated black market as customers migrate away from licensed operators. And the anger inside the Betting and Gaming Council is deeper than anything we have ever seen. Grainne Hurst said on the Nick Luck podcast on Budget day that a new levy deal would not be happening anytime soon. Michael Dugher was even clearer. There is no exemption for racing. Racing is not protected. Racing’s funding will now be hit by cuts to sponsorship, by pressure on betting shops, and by punters shifting to unlicensed operators. He also made the point that the idea of a big levy increase is now “unlikely” because racing allowed itself to be drawn into a campaign built on completely unrealistic assumptions. All of this sits on top of the tension that already existed long before the Budget. Racing has become the most expensive product for bookmakers to carry. Media rights costs have risen sharply. Turnover has collapsed. Affordability checks (suggested at £100 a month by the SMF) have hammered bets on racing. Even in stable conditions, racing was already seen by operators as a premium-priced, low-margin, high-cost product. The idea that the relationship was harmonious before this Budget is simply untrue. It was strained. When the Government asked whether online betting, gaming and pool betting duty should be harmonised, the correct answer from racing and bookmakers alike was straightforward: “No.” No harmonisation. And just as importantly, no moral hierarchy where certain gambling products are singled out for punitive taxation. No framing that implies racing is virtuous while everything else is harmful. A single united response would have shut down the SMF/IPPR proposals instantly, just as similar proposals collapsed in 2024. But racing did not deliver unity. Some at the top of the sport attended the SMF roundtable. They gave an economically illiterate plan, based on static analysis with no allowance for the black market, credibility. Racing then pushed for its own “special rate.” Some validated the idea that casino and sports betting should be taxed far more aggressively. What people in racing have failed to understand is that racing is part of a suite of products punters use. Racing is the most expensive. Casino is the most profitable. Sports betting sits somewhere in between. No online bookmaker can profit by servicing win-single racing customers alone. Media rights fees on turnover, levy payments, and all the other costs make it impossible. Racing is only viable if its costs can be spread across the entire ecosystem and bettors use other products as well. That whole ecosystem has just become far more expensive to run. If operators decide racing isn’t worth promoting, racing becomes a background product. If GGY falls, levy falls. If turnover falls, media rights fees fall. Global operators can cut racing tomorrow and their businesses will continue. Racing cannot cut operators. Racing needs levy, media rights and sponsorship to survive. The dependency is one-way. Operators are furious. The BGC is furious. Independent bookies will suffer the most, with BetGoodwin already pulling all racing sponsorship. And yet people on the periphery of racing are still declaring victory and still framing operators as the enemy. None of this is grounded in economic reality. Some are even calling for the levy rate to rise, asking for a bigger piece of a far smaller pie. Racing has not won anything here. It has misunderstood what happened and why. The Budget has not protected the sport. It has destabilised the environment that funds it. If racing wants a viable future, it needs to rebuild unity with the operators it depends on and recognise the fundamental truth that British racing needs a healthy, regulated gambling industry far more than the global gambling industry needs British racing. Racing must to sever all ties with the anti-gambling lobby. No more round tables with people who pushed £100-a-month affordability checks and called for massive tax rises. It is time for racing to side with those who support gambling, not those who oppose it. Then it must wait for operators to calm down and hope that a path forward can be found. As always, it is the punters and those who work in racing who will suffer if this cannot be resolved.