The Horserace Betting Levy Board: How Your Bets Fund British Racing
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Every Bet You Place Sends a Fraction Back to Racing
Most punters never think about what happens to the bookmaker’s margin after they lose a bet. I certainly did not for the first few years. The money disappears into the bookmaker’s accounts and that is the end of it — or so it seems. In reality, a portion of every pound wagered on British horse racing is channelled back to the sport through a mechanism that has existed since 1961: the Horserace Betting Levy.
The Levy yield reached £108.9 million in 2024/25, its highest level since 2017 and an increase from £105.3 million the previous year. That money does not sit in a bank vault. It flows directly into prize funds, racecourse improvements, equine welfare programmes, and the integrity services that keep the sport clean. Understanding the levy is not just an exercise in industry knowledge — it reveals the financial architecture that makes British racing possible and explains why shifts in betting behaviour have consequences far beyond the bookmaker’s profit line.
How the Levy Is Calculated and Collected
The levy is a statutory charge applied to bookmakers’ gross profits from British horse racing. The current rate, set by the Secretary of State, is 10% of each operator’s racing-specific gross gambling yield. Every licensed bookmaker and betting exchange that takes bets on British horse racing contributes. The collection is managed by the Horserace Betting Levy Board, an arms-length public body established by the Betting Levy Act 1961.
The calculation is straightforward in principle. If a bookmaker generates £10 million in GGY from horse racing in a given year, their levy contribution is £1 million. In practice, the accounting is more complex because operators must separate their racing-specific yield from football, tennis, and other sports — and the methodologies for that separation have been the subject of decades of dispute between the racing industry and the bookmaking sector.
The levy yield has tracked an interesting path over the years. It reached £100 million in 2022/23, rose to £105 million in 2023/24, and then to £109 million in 2024/25. The upward trend looks healthy, but it masks a paradox: betting turnover on horse racing has been falling, while the levy yield has been rising. The explanation lies in the bookmakers’ margin. As turnover falls, the remaining bettors tend to be more casual, less price-sensitive, and more likely to bet at shorter odds — which means the bookmaker retains a larger percentage of each pound wagered. Higher margins on lower volume can produce a rising levy yield even as the underlying betting market contracts.
Where Levy Money Goes: Prize Funds, Welfare, Racecourses
The HBLB allocated £77.1 million to fund racing in 2026, including an additional £4.4 million directed specifically at prize money. That allocation is divided across several categories, each critical to the sport’s functioning.
Prize money is the largest single recipient. The levy contributes a significant portion of the prize funds for British races, supplementing the contributions from racecourses, sponsors, and owners’ entry fees. Higher prize money attracts better horses, which produces better racing, which attracts more bettors. The cycle is self-reinforcing when it works. When prize money falls — as it did during the pandemic and during previous periods of levy decline — the quality of racing deteriorates and the betting product weakens.
Equine welfare receives a dedicated allocation. Programmes include the retraining of racehorses after they retire from racing, veterinary research, and injury prevention initiatives. The welfare strand is not large in absolute terms compared to prize money, but it is symbolically important and politically sensitive — public concern about horse welfare, particularly after high-profile incidents at the Grand National, has grown, and the levy provides the funding to address it.
Racecourse improvements are funded through capital grants. These cover everything from drainage upgrades (which affect the going and therefore the quality of racing) to grandstand renovations, stable blocks, and safety infrastructure. Smaller, rural courses that cannot self-fund major works depend on levy grants to maintain their facilities.
Integrity services — the BHA’s anti-doping programme, betting pattern monitoring, and intelligence unit — are partly levy-funded. The cost of keeping racing clean is not trivial, and the levy’s contribution ensures that the integrity framework operates independently of the bookmakers whose markets it oversees.
The Turnover-Levy Paradox: Record Yield vs Falling Bets
Here is the tension that keeps racing administrators awake at night. The levy yield is at a multi-year high. Betting turnover on horse racing is at a multi-year low. Those two facts should not coexist comfortably, and they do not.
Turnover per race fell by 8% year on year in 2024/25, by 15% compared to 2022/23, and by 19% compared to 2021/22. The HBLB’s interim chair Anne Lambert acknowledged these figures in the Board’s annual report, noting the sharp trajectory of decline. The levy yield has been insulated so far because the bookmakers’ margins have widened — fewer bettors losing a larger proportion of their stakes — but that insulation has limits. If turnover continues to fall, the margin gains will eventually plateau, and the levy yield will follow turnover downwards.
There is also a structural question about the levy’s long-term viability. The current 10% rate was set in an era when betting turnover on horse racing was growing. In a declining market, the rate may need to rise to maintain the same absolute yield — but raising it squeezes bookmaker margins further, potentially accelerating the very turnover decline it is trying to compensate for. Alternatively, the government could broaden the levy base to capture betting activity that currently escapes it, such as wagers placed through unlicensed offshore operators. That approach would require enforcement capabilities that do not yet exist at scale, though the Treasury’s £26 million funding injection for the Gambling Commission is a step in that direction.
The scenario is made more concerning by the growth of the unlicensed market. Every pound wagered offshore generates no levy. If the licensed market continues to shrink while the unlicensed market grows, the levy’s revenue base erodes regardless of margin trends. The paradox, then, is that racing’s funding mechanism is recording record numbers while the foundations that support those numbers are weakening. It is a situation that demands attention, not celebration. For punters interested in how their betting activity connects to the sport they follow, the levy is the thread — and understanding the broader UK horse racing betting ecosystem starts with understanding where the money goes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the Levy Board contribute to horse racing each year?
The HBLB allocated £77.1 million to fund British racing in 2026. The total levy yield — the amount collected from bookmakers — reached £108.9 million in 2024/25. The difference between yield and allocation accounts for the Board’s operating costs, reserves, and timing of distributions. Historically the yield has fluctuated between £80 million and £110 million depending on betting turnover and bookmaker margins.
Does betting on exchanges contribute to the levy?
Yes. Since the legislative changes in 2017, betting exchanges that accept wagers on British horse racing are required to pay the levy on their gross profits from those markets. The exchange levy is calculated on commission income rather than traditional bookmaker GGY, but the contribution is mandatory for all UKGC-licensed operators serving the British market.
Created by the ”Horse bet Racing” editorial team.
