Horse Racing: Coward Insists Levy is Here to Stay

Nic Coward, British racing's new chief executive, entered the dispute over live broadcasts in betting shops yesterday with a warning to Britain's bookmakers that it should not be seen as a back-door way to abolish the Levy on their profits, by which racing is funded.

It is nearly two months since most of Britain's betting shops lost the right to show live coverage of races at Ascot, Chester, Bangor, York, Goodwood and Newbury that are not also being shown on terrestrial television. From January 1, bookmakers who do not sign up with the new Turf TV channel will lose pictures from another 25 tracks.

Last week, Chris Bell, chief executive of Ladbrokes and the chairman of the Bookmakers' Committee of the Levy Board, suggested that payments for pictures could be "the commercial mechanism that racing wants" to replace the Levy. Yesterday, though, Coward said that the idea was a non-starter.

"Despite what bookmakers might be saying, what is going on now will never be a commercial alternative to the Levy," he said. "Deals in relation to such things as picture rights have always been seen as an add-on to the Levy. The Levy is the mechanism which allows [bookmakers] to offer a bet on racing. This dispute is a commercial one and has to be seen as such.

"Turf TV is a group of racecourses selling their picture rights to a third party. It does not affect the structural relationship between racing and betting."

Coward has maintained a low profile in the media since his appointment as chief executive of both the British Horseracing Board and the Horseracing Regulatory Authority, pending the imminent arrival of the body he was originally hired to run, the British Horseracing Authority.

The BHA's launch is now likely within weeks, however, and Coward will soon be a much more visible face of the sport's administrators.

He seems unlikely to adopt the us-and-them attitude towards the betting industry that has characterized some of the sport's previous rulers. "You hear people talk about the relationship between racing and betting in the past, and quite what the reality is in that, I don't know," Coward said. "But what I do know is that as we go forward, we have to be working together.

"We hear bookmakers saying that racing is suffering a decline in terms of the proportion of their betting turnover, but if that's the case, and they are committed to driving their businesses through racing, then we have a common interest. They are our commercial partners in the sport, and we can work together to bring more people to racing.

"The Turf TV dispute is a commercial issue, and to solve it, it is necessary to get everyone around the table to talk it through. There must be a deal to be done, and the sooner it is done, the better it will be for all concerned."

Jamie Spencer will be unable to ride in either the Oaks or the Derby at the end of next week after his appeal against a suspension, imposed by the French authorities after he rode at Longchamp recently, was unsuccessful yesterday.