Eleventh-hour agreement halts bookmaker legal action

A row between Cheltenham and its on-course bookmakers appeared to have been resolved at the 11th hour on Wednesday when legal action by the layers was dropped.

The case against the course's owner Jockey Club Racecourses was due to reach court this week, but the fact it will now not has left some on-course bookmakers critical of the settlement.

The action brought by the Federation of Racecourse Bookmakers (FRB) – an umbrella organisation covering three on-course bookmaker trade bodies – centred on which bookmakers were able to stand in the Courtyard ring at Cheltenham and how that would affect any new betting areas (NBAs) courses might want to open.

Cheltenham had used the Courtyard for just the festival in March and the Open meeting but when JCR decided to use those positions for other fixtures they were offered to the bookmakers who already held those festival pitches.

Anger among some operators

However, the FRB said positions in the Courtyard should instead be populated on a one-for-one basis from the Tattersalls and Rails lists and set about taking legal action, which has been ongoing for more than two years.

Earlier this year course bookmakers were informed that the FRB had retained money from the data payments it received from SIS and TurfTV "in order to fund the current Cheltenham Courtyard legal action", which caused anger among a number of operators.

Neither side wished to comment on the settlement other than from a joint statement in which JCR said positions for any new betting area would be selected as the FRB wanted, that no existing or new NBA would be closed and that JCR would not introduce new pool betting facilities in the immediate proximity of existing or new betting areas.

However, those pledges did not apply to the Courtyard or to The Hill at Epsom.

Chris Hudson, president of the British Racecourse Bookmakers Association, which split from the other trade bodies in 2015, questioned what had been achieved.

"We have achieved very few additional benefits from this costly and divisive action," he said on Wednesday.

Data payments had reduced

"The original complaint was about who should be in the Courtyard. That has not changed and on-course bookmakers should receive a summary of the opinions that made the FRB accept this."

Another bookmaker, Barry Curran, who estimated his data payments had reduced by around 60 per cent because of the case, also criticised the action.

"From day one there were a number of us who thought there was very little to gain and a lot to lose from this action," he said.

"I think new areas have had an adverse effect on my business, so why should I be asked to finance action to promote them?

"Then it turns out when there is a sniff that the lion you are prodding with a sharp stick has claws, a life-and-death issue is no longer a life-and-death issue."