Greyhound Tracks versus The Bookies and The Fund

Greyhound racing’s issues with the betting industry were as old as the sport itself. 

While the bookmakers were initially seen as a vital part of the sport, many promoters hoped for the day that on-course bookies – who dominated gambling –  could be banned from their tracks. 

As it stood, the law allowed any licensed bookmaker to stand at a greyhound track – with or without the track owner’s permission – provided that they paid five times the admission fee. 

Various challenges were made to challenge the law or locate the bookies in inaccessible parts of the stadium, but they were invariably overturned in the courts. 

It meant the tracks could never – unlike Australia or America – operate a tote monopoly. 

Perhaps the biggest mistake that the tracks made though, was to become so alienated to the bookies that they missed their greatest chance. 

Prior to betting shops opening in 1961, the only gambling that could officially take place was either at the track, or remotely (over the telephone) with a credit account. 

In reality, there were millions of pounds changing hands daily via ‘street bookies’, including the likes of Joe Coral, William Hill and literally thousands of others. 

Had the track promoters not taken their eye off the ball, or the bookies’ hods, they might have seen a chance to own betting businesses. 

To ‘be’ the betting industry. 

They still had massive resources, property and ‘product’. 

Instead, as betting shops opened in 1961, they engaged in trench warfare with the bookies, banning the advanced publication of racecards or publishing without trap draws. 

Then they vetoed publishing results in the hope it would force punters to the tracks. 

At this stage, betting shops were extremely restricted in terms of what they could offer punters, audio commentaries only. 

They were also restricted to daytime racing and most of their daytime turnover was on horseracing. Only a handful of dog tracks raced in the afternoon. 

If the shops chose to bet on the afternoon or evening greyhound racing, they could do so scot free with no return to the dog industry.  

Unlike horseracing, the dogs were never offered a levy, paid on the basis of betting tax. 

The bookies argued that most greyhound racing took place in the evening when they were closed and the Government accepted that argument. 

Eventually, greyhound racing decided to offer a deal. 

They were prepared to make greyhound racing available, full form, commentaries etc etc, when horseracing was called off for bad weather in the winter. 

The bookies didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity though gradually their turnover on greyhound racing increased. 

An organisation was created to act on behalf of (almost all) the betting industry, the Bookmakers Afternoon Greyhound Service (BAGS). 

It was at this point that the NGRC saw an opportunity – as referred to by Fred Underhill (see previous column) – to obtain a levy by the back door. 

They would levy a hefty charge on every track for every race broadcast to the shops. 

The tracks went mad. The betting industry went ballistic. 

In 1976, in a blatant act at self protection, Ladbrokes snapped up the Greyhound & Totalisator Company which owned six tracks. Coral and William Hill would also later buy their own tracks. 

The BGRB, who planned to screw the bookies by refusing to license tracks who didn’t pay the ‘special licence fee’, were faced with the threat of an alternative governing body, run by and financed by the betting industry. 

It was at this stage that the bookmakers effectively began their quest to control the greyhound industry/protect their interests, albeit at arms length.  

They were playing a risky game. 

The last thing they needed was to be seen controlling the betting product while pursing some form of cartel. 

The 1992 budget

In his budget speech in March 1992, Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont threw an unexpected spanner in the works. 

Heavily lobbied by horseracing, he decided to divert some of the betting tax income back to horseracing and also stated ‘“I hope that voluntary arrangements can be found to direct some of the money to the greyhound racing industry.” 

The problem was - there was no mechanism to distribute this windfall. 

The (promoter controlled) BGRB announced that they were the obvious body to distribute the funds. 

The bookmaking industry was having none of it. Firstly, they considered, that since they were collecting the cash, they should have a say in how it was spent. 

They would want a significant percentage to go towards ‘security and integrity’ services (more stewarding and tons of drug testing). 

The tracks refused to engage. 

So the Ladbrokes CEO Berjis Daver set up the Greyhound Racing Trust. The aim is to collect contributions from the major betting companies, though since it was voluntary, many of the medium and small sized companies declined to contribute – and, to a lesser extent, still do. 

In fact, nine months after its inception, the new fund was still to receive its first bookmaker cheque, despite Daver’s admission that 21% of his company’s turnover came from dog racing. 

Eventually, fearful that if they didn’t engage, the bookmakers would simply distribute the cash how they best saw fit, the tracks reluctantly engaged in dialogue.  

For their part, the bookies feared that unless they stumped up the collected cash, the Government might intervene with a compulsory collection. 

The two sides eventually thrashed out a deal and in 1992 the British Greyhound Racing Fund (BGRF otherwise known as ‘The Fund’) was created. 

The Fund’s board of directors had equal numbers of bookmakers and representatives of BGRB. The Fund directors would agree in principle where money should be allocated and the BGRB would be in charge of the distribution. 

Its first chairman was the very capable Tory peer Lord Marcus Kimball, ‘the last countryman of the shires'. 

When Kimball presented his first budget, of the £830,000 collected in the first year, it was heavily bent towards the bookmakers’ pet projects.  

£210,000 (25.3%) went to the NGRC’s drug testing/’Flying Squad’, a further £248,000 (29.9%) went to chromatography – a pre-race drug testing procedure that would ultimately prove worse than useless.  

£180,000 (21.7%) went in grants to tracks, £100,000 (18%) went to prize money, £50,000 (9%) towards a national inter-track. Just £42,000 (5%) went to welfare via the Retired Greyhound Trust.  

The prize money allocation was distributed ‘on a pro-rata basis’ states chairman Lord Kimball. “The smaller tracks each share at least £1,000!” 

The early issues with the Fund were immediately apparent, and growing. 

Firstly, many of the betting firms simply refused to contribute to a non-statutory (“voluntary”) fund. 

In early 1995 MP Willie McKelvie tells the House of Commons that the bookmakers contributory arrangement with the BGRF is not working with only 57% of payments. 

The Fund chairman claims the figure will rise to 80% though he won’t be around to see it. When his two years are up, GBGB oppose his reappointment. He is replaced by Charles Lenox-Coyngham who will remain at the helm for 14 years. 

There were also issues among the tracks. For a start, independent track promoter John Curran lobbied hard that the cash should also go to the ‘entire industry’. He failed. 

Even among the NGRC registered tracks, there were perceived to be injustices. The prize money allocation was carved up by the bigger stadia after it was agreed that all grants would be based on totalisator turnover. 

So a track like Walthamstow would receive something like 50 times the figure of near neighbours Harlow. 

The bigger tracks are also carving up the grants. The four biggest recipients from the 1997 budget are Belle Vue (owned by GRA), Romford and Hove (owned by Coral) and Walthamstow. 

Then in 2001, a new player appears on the scene. Labour peer David Lipsey, the owner of a former Wimbledon grader makes an impassioned speech concerning the poor funding of ex-racers. In the space of a year, the RGT grant went from £285,000 to £600,000. 

Meanwhile behind the scenes, a plot is brewing and it results in ‘New Deal’ which is launched in early 2003. 

The aim, very similar to Fred Underhill’s 30 years earlier, it is a 10 point plan for the BGRB to control the copyright to its runners and form. 

Unlike the 1970s where the bookmakers needed to buy their own tracks, they use different levers of power. 

Within two weeks of its launch, the William Hill owned Sunderland announce that they are to up their minimum win prize money to £100. 

Ladbrokes announce an immediate 33% increase in prize money at their two tracks and then Corals unveil an extra £210,000 to be split between Hove and Romford.  

It also emerges that all new BAGS contracts will have a 20% cash increase. 

Next, the BGRF’s bookmaker directors refuse to approve the BGRB’s proposed budget for 2004. 

The weakness in the BGRB’s plan was soon exposed. 

Some of the tracks felt railroaded by GRA’s forceful chairman Jarvis Astaire and the other architect of New Deal, the BGRB’s CEO Geoffrey Thomas. 

The cracks widen very quickly with Nottingham and Walthamstow among the first to waver. (BAGS deny that Nottingham have been rewarded for loyalty after gaining 23 Thursday evening meetings from Perry Barr.) 

When the smoke has settled, Geoffrey Thomas resigns (with a six figure pay-off) and Jarvis Astaire receives a vote of ‘no confidence’ from his fellow BGRB directors. 

Lipsey was now a popular choice (with the bookmakers) to become the new BGRB Chairman. Following his 2004 appointment the bookies agreed to increase funding from 0.4% to 0.6%. 

Within five years of Lipsey’s appointment, the BGRB contribution to retired greyhounds rose to £1.75m per year. 

The Fund continued to grow and reached a peak of £13.8m in 2008/9 – the equivalent today of £55.5m. 

The biggest area of expenditure is welfare, including the RGT, which received £3.6m with £3m going to prize money, £1.6m to track grants, £1.5m to integrity services, £2m to marketing.  

The track grants included £800,000 towards a new restaurant development and £176K to Harlow. 

But all was far from perfect. The bookmakers believed they were paying too much and they didn’t like the control the tracks had over the budget. 

They argued – it seems not unreasonably – that the tracks were subsidising their businesses way beyond capital grants. 

Did the owners and trainers really benefit from the £3m grant to prize money? Or was that subsidising the money that the track owners should have been paying from their profits? 

Or welfare initiatives like new hare systems, or track resurfacing. Shouldn’t they have been normal operating costs for a stadium? Or vets payments? And so many more. 

There were regular heated disputes between David Lipsey and his board, principally the promoter directors. 

The opportunity to replace the BGRB with something more to the bookmakers’ liking first presented itself in 2006 following a low-key, high-profile welfare incident at Seaham. 

A local builder was destroying unwanted pets, including greyhounds, though they were the only animals featured in a Sunday Times expose. He ultimately received a £2,000 fine and court costs.  

It presented the bookmakers and Lipsey with their golden opportunity. 

The start of the Greyhound Board of Great Britain

Following a long consultation period the Greyhound Board of Great Britain was launched in 2009 – using another £1m in consultation fees from the ’08 BGRF budget – and it was a shambles. 

The original whispered plan was that it would be run by Lipsey but with far more power than he had wielded at BGRB. He was to be the ‘greyhound racing czar’. The BGRF would be wound up and the bookies would pay directly into the new organisation. 

For reasons that have to be left unsaid, that appointment never took place and the early days of GBGB were an unmitigated shambles. 

Incompetent CEOs, chairman and senior officers came and went in a revolving door. 

Although the Board did finally get its act together, the whole dynamic of the sport had changed. 

For a start, its income reduced steadily as its welfare bills increased, to a point it was no longer a promoter controlled cash cow. The last accounts (2024/25) showed expected income of a mere £7.3m.  

(Had just the RGT donation from its peak years been index linked, it would now be £6,750,000.) 

No – the real change came about through industry decline. 

As crowd numbers fell, tracks became dependent of BAGS contracts to crack addict levels. 

Their very survival depended on bookmaker contracts. 

The bookies were aware of this.  

They had won their decades long battle with tracks. A total surrender. 

But they were determined to exploit their position and completely control the greyhound industry. 

So in 2015/2016, a plan was devised to finally cull the bits of the greyhound industry that were of no commercial benefit to them. 

What could possibly go wrong? 

We conclude next time with a look at the media rights battle (how the grand bookmaker plan went completely tits up). 

Where we are now. 

And the likely conclusion with its consequences for the greyhound industry.