BHA warns revenue decline shows punters are turning to unlicensed betting

The BHA has reported that betting turnover was down by 6.8 per cent year-on-year in 2024.

UK.- The British Horseracing Authority has put the blame on Gambling Commission’s introduction of financial risk checks after its 2024 racing report found a continued reduction in betting turnover. The annual report states that combined online and retail horse racing betting turnover fell by 6.8 per cent in 2024. It was down by 16.5 per cent in comparison with 2022. However, the BHA did not publish the actual figures.

It also said that the decline was lower in the second half of the year, falling to just 1 per cent. That would appear to contradict the suggestion that the Gambling Commission’s financial risk checks were to blame, since these only came into force in August. But the BHA argued that the second half of 2024 had more races than in the second half of 2023. Average race betting turnover was down by 4 per cent.

BHA director of racing Richard Wayman said he had no doubt that affordability checks had an impact, suggesting that they had caused people to either cease betting completely or to move to unlicensed operators to avoid the checks.

The risk checks only apply for online gambling. Players are subject to checks via credit reference agencies if they deposit £500 or more in a month. From February 28, the threshold will be reduced to £150. The Gambling Commission’s report on its pilot checks says that 95 per cent of 530,000 checks performed were “frictionless” checks done by credit reference agencies.

Just last week, the BHA raised concerns about the extent of black market gambling in the UK after a study by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA) found a steep increase in traffic to sites not licensed by the British Gambling Commission. The study indicated that from 2021 to 2024 there was a 522 per cent rise in the number of unique visits to 22 of the most visited non-licensed sites offering markets on British racing.

The report was carried out by James Porteous, head of research for the IFHA’s Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Crime. It found that the figure for unique visits per month for the first nine months of 2024 reached 600,000. The total number of visits to unlicensed sites studied increased by 131 per cent in four years, reaching 1.3 million visits per month in 2024. In the same period, the number of visits to 10 licensed British sites rose by just 25 per cent.

BHA’s race calendar enhancements

Other topics in the 2024 report include a review of measures taken to avoid race clashes by spreading races on Saturdays and scheduling fewer between 2pm and 4pm.

Wayman said that for major events, a longer build up into a race (10 minutes or more) saw betting turnover grow. Meanwhile, the percentage of Saturday race clashes before 5pm fell from 11.1 per cent in 2022 and 7.9 per cent in 2023 to 5.8 per cent in 2024.

The BHA also ran a trial with 12 targets to try to improve horseracing’s presence in the betting sector. Premierisation was one key aspect, focusing on promoting interest in the best-known fixtures of the year. The BHA created a tiered fixture list to identify the biggest events and invested in prize money and quality at premier race days while reducing fixture list congestion and created more experiences. 

However, the BHA’s target of increasing betting turnover on the 33 Saturdays that have only three racing fixtures is proving to be a challenge. It said: “On average, those afternoons in the winter when there were only three fixtures between 2p and 4pm slightly outperformed Saturdays when there were four. However, that hasn’t been the case in the summer.”