Bookmakers Betfred will, to all intents and purposes, end their commercial relationship with British racing next July when their exclusive deal to operate pools betting expires.
Betfred founder and chief executive Fred Done has said that the sport and his company “have got to learn to live without each other” after announcing that his company, a prolific race sponsor and on-course betting shop operator, will shut almost all their on-course offices and cease sponsoring in July 2018 when the pools licence ends. The move will affect more than 600 races, many of them high profile, and potentially cost racing almost £6 million a year in lost sponsorship income alone.
Only racing at Ascot and the Betfred-owned Chelmsford, both of which will retain the Tote post-July 2018, will avoid the cull – at least 49 of the firm’s 51 course betting shops will close.
Done’s far-reaching decision is in response to the decision of 54 British courses to launch their own pools betting operation from next year, marking the end of the Tote’s 90-year presence on most British tracks and its monopoly over pools betting. Among the prominent races that will need new sponsors are the Ebor at York, the Cambridgeshire and Cesarewitch at Newmarket and the Grand National Trial at Haydock. Betfred sponsored close to 1,000 races in 2016, almost one in 10 of the 10,035 contests staged last year – all of their sponsorship deals are due to expire in July 2018.
Fred Done has frequently clashed with racing over the years. His bid to buy the Tote was fiercely opposed by many within the sport, which backed two alternative bids for the pools operator before the government chose Done’s £265m offer, a sum later reduced to £233m because of early payment.
In more recent times, Betfred has refused to join up to British racing’s authorised betting partner programme, which sought voluntary payments from bookmakers’ offshore turnover, and initially declined to do a deal with betting shop television channel The Racing Partnership, representing 15 Arena Racing Company-owned tracks and seven independents, though eventually reached an agreement in July.
Of course, Betfred are still a serious player in the online market and will continue to award sponsorship in football and snooker, for example.
