The loss of football betting during lockdown has cost the Hong Kong Jockey Club around HK$1 billion a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Hong Kong.- Covid-19 confinement measures have lost the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) HK$2 billion (about US$260 million) in football betting alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With most major football action called off for almost two months, local punters only had horse racing to be on during the period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
HKJC’s chief executive, Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, estimated there would be a signficant impact on the institution’s annual revenue. He told the South China Morning Post the lack of football was losing it around HK$1 billion per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fixed-odds football betting became a lucrative operation for the Jockey Club<\/em><\/strong> after it was legalised in 2003. It made HK$15.3 billion from $114.1 billion in turnover on football betting in 2018-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The return to the field of the Premier League in the UK, Serie A in Italy and La Liga in Spain is expected to offer some chance to recover losses from the last two months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless, Engelbrecht-Bresges said the crisis demonstrated the importance of horse racing in Hong Kong, and that he does not see a change of focus for the club’s operations despite football betting offering larger returns for a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said: \u201cEven if you look at football customers, 75 per cent of football turnover comes from original racing customer.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n HKJC’s Mark Six lottery, which brought in more than HK$8 billion in 2019, has been closed since February 1, but may return in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engelbrecht-Bresges said: \u201cOn a normal Mark Six day we have 400,000 to 500,000 people going into the off-course betting branches.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n