Horserace Betting Levy Board

The Levy Board’s contribution to prize money will rise by £4.2m in 2012 as part of an overall increase in expenditure of £5m.

The vast majority of the extra £4.2m will be focused on improving the race programme, particularly on the Flat, with a view to ensuring that field sizes are maintained or improved and that higher quality racing is suitably underpinned. In total, £5.7m of the Levy Board’s £38.2m prize money contribution next year will be specifically for higher quality races.

Racecourses will benefit from an increase of 33% in the allocation to the Board’s Fixture Incentive Scheme, which provides funding to racecourses which stage fixtures in certain winter slots. The allocation to the Scheme increases from £2.1m this year to £2.8m in 2012.

The Board agreed that, in the light of the agreement of the terms of the 51st Levy Scheme and taking into account current estimates of 50th and 51st Scheme Levy yields, it was appropriate to increase total expenditure in 2012 to £65.1m compared to 2011’s budget of £60.1m.

Levy Board Chairman Paul Lee said:

“We are pleased to increase our contribution to prize money by over £4m. The Board has acted prudently in very difficult financial circumstances in the recent past and has taken some tough decisions. This prudent approach is continuing, but we believe that we can reasonably spend more next year than was possible this year. We expect the benefits of this targeted extra expenditure to be evident soon.”