Report casts doubts over racing's levy hopes

British racing's hopes of restoring the sport's direct income to the levels witnessed before bookmakers moved their online operations offshore may have been dealt a blow by a report commissioned by the government to guide their efforts to introduce a levy replacement scheme next year.

Racing is hoping the new arrangement, plans for which were announced by the government in March, will bring in income of around £100 million.

However, the report by consultants Frontier Economics, entitled 'An economic analysis of the funding of horseracing', sets out a number of scenarios, the most extreme of which proposes common interest costs of just £10.4m once betting industry payments to racing through media rights and sponsorship are taken into account.