Unprecedented strike shows racing unified to send pre-budget message to Labour over betting duty crisis

Rare blank day in the racing calendar highlights the threat posed by harmonisation of betting and gaming taxThere was just a single day of racing in Britain between 22 December and 9 March during the famously bitter winter in 1962-63 and dozens of blank days during the foot-and-mouth outbreaks in 1967 and 2001. Even in the era of racing on Polytrack and Tapeta, which dates back almost 40 years, there are occasional days when, to the delight of headline-writers, the so-called “all-weather” surfaces cannot cope.But there has never been a day throughout those decades when a scheduled programme of racing has been called off voluntarily, so the decision to “strike” on Wednesday, when meetings were due to be staged at Lingfield, Carlisle, Uttoxeter and Kempton, is a sign of how seriously racing’s administrators and stakeholders view the threat to the sport’s finances from a government proposal to “harmonise” the rate of duty charged on profits from betting on sport and other uncertain events, and fixed-margin casino products such as online slots where the operator takes a guaranteed percentage of turnover. Continue reading...

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