UK chancellor George Osborne (pictured) used Wednesday’s budget to introduce a horse race betting right to replace the longstanding horse race betting levy.
The Treasury’s budget document said the new "racing right" will "apply to all bookmakers wherever located, who take bets from British customers on British racing,” making it easier for more online gaming operators to offer wagers on British horse racing.
The British Horseracing Authority welcomed the rights introduction but a spokesman for the Association of British Bookmakers told Reuters it believed the “racing right is unworkable and the detail will derail it”.
The sector body said that its members already paid 10.75 per cent of horseracing profits to racing industry and £173m to racecourses for the right to show races in their bookies.
