A joint statement from Ian Barlow, Chairman of the Racecourse Association, Paul Dixon, Chairman of the Horsemen’s Group and Paul Roy, Chairman of the British Horseracing Authority:
“Since March, when Racing submitted its proposals for the 50th Levy Scheme, we have sought to negotiate a settlement under the new process and timetable established as part of the previous Levy agreement.
“The Bookmakers’ Committee response was not received until July, several weeks behind the timetable, and was rejected by the Levy Board over six weeks ago. They were told by the Independent Members of the Levy Board to come back with a much improved offer, but they never did.
“On current forecasts, their proposal would mean a contribution of some £50m to the Levy in 2011, down from well over £100m just two years ago.
“Racing regrets the need to go to Determination but this decision was forced by the Bookmakers’ Committee and its steadfast refusal to make any changes to its initial submission. It was very apparent that the only way Determination could be avoided was if Racing agreed to their wholly unacceptable initial submission.
“This Determination is vital to the future of Racing and the sport has united to campaign for a fair Levy. There needs to be a level playing field across all betting platforms. This means the offshore betting industry paying Levy, exchange betting being dealt with properly, scrapping the distortive threshold rules that currently exempt more than 60% of betting shops from paying the full rate of Levy and reinstating payments for customers in Britain placing bets on overseas racing.
“We welcomed the Government’s recent announcement that they will they retain and modernise the Levy to ‘ensure that funding for Racing from betting is fair and collected from as broad a base as possible’ and to remove Government from the determination process. We are committed to working with them to achieve this objective.”
