Turfcall - campaigning for fairer distribution of racing profits

Save Our True Horsemen and Horsewomen Now
A Dying Profession

NEWS FLASH ... THE TOTE
Due to the recent controversy as unfolding daily, and brought to our attention by The Daily Telegraph on Monday January 21st 2002 Charlie Brooks says quote
" OF all the shenanigans that have been going on to prevent Peter Savill from getting a fair deal for British horse racing, the Tote’s behaviour is far and away the most deceitful. By refusing to buy live racing pictures for two per cent of their turnover they have well and truly stabbed the industry they should be wholly answerable to in the back.

The Tote exists to channel betting profits into racing for the welfare of the sport. Many of their customers only patronise them because they at least know their losses are going to support the sport they love." Not so .... Charlie Brooks ends with this quote " Speculation as to the personal ambitions of the few who run the Tote will doubtless continue. It will, of course, only ever be that until they publish the figures that prove they are entitled to betray racing and the BHB. Until then, they can be rightly judged the ‘Judases of horse racing.’

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NEWS FLASH ... THE TOTE
The Racing Post further brings to our attention: David Ashforth writes therein on Wednesday January 9. 2002 ... Quote: " Jones to face grilling at BHB over rights. TOTE chairman Peter Jones will appear before the BHB board at 3pm today to defend the Tote’s controversial decision to reject the BHB’s terms for the purchase of data and picture rights.

Jones who will be accompanied by Tote chief executive John Heaton and and finance director Tom Phillips, is expected to be subjected to hostile questioning by Peter Savill, the BHB chairman, and other board members.

Savill, himself a member of the Tote board, has expressed outrage at the Tote’s decision, which he has described as "the most astonishingly bad commercial decision I can remember".

The Racing Post Thursday January 10 2002 Howard Wright reports ... Quote "Jones in walkout as row over Tote stance deepens ........" further interesting factors therein.

NEWS FLASH ... THE TOTE
*A REMINDER, REFERENCE POINT TO NOTE:

*Alan Byrne writing in the Racing Post on July 18.2001. Quote "Having traded for years on the slogan ‘Our Profits Stay In Racing’ the Tote is, not surprisingly, keen to make the amount it contributes to racing look as significant as possible. But in reality its true ‘contribution’ amounts to not much more than one per cent of the Tote’s annual £509m turnover.

About one third of the claimed contribution of £12.285m comes from betting levy collected direct from the punter. On this basis, William Hill and Ladbrookes are far bigger contributors to racing (although The Tote voluntarily pays levy at a marginally higher percentage rate) and more of their profits ‘stay in racing’.

Levy payments should be seen as a fee for use of a product (horseracing), not as a ‘contribution’.

The Tote also lists its laudable sponsorship expenditure £2.4m as part of its contribution, although much of this should be regarded as commercial arrangement designed to establish branding and to general boost the business.

Similarily, the single biggest item listed under its ‘contribution to racing’ the payment of £5.7m to racecourses an average of less than £100.000 per annum per racetrack is in part, a commercial transaction, necessary if The Tote is to operate on British racecourses.

So, whatever, the £12.285m is, it is most certainly not a ‘contribution to racing’.

*** Are we entitled to know why the Tote won’t channel their profits back to racing via a percentage of their turnover ? When they have been leading us to believe otherwise over a considerable period of time ?