The Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB) has firmly backed its commitment to transparency by publishing its race-by-race contributions to prize money for the first time in its history.
All Ratecard Plus and Incremental Prize Money (IPM) allocations made by the board for the first three months of the year can now be viewed publicly on the HBLB website, with the statements regularly updated for each quarter.
In Q1 ‘23, Ratecard Plus payments reached a total of £11.1m, which funding was distributed across several verticals – £8.2m went for Jump races, the Cheltenham Festival saw £1.3m in allocations, while £2.9m was given for Flat races.
Around £126k has also been set aside by the HBLB as prize money funding for additional fixtures added as a substitute to events that have been postponed due to weather-related conditions.
Ratecard Plus funding was introduced back in 2022 as a mechanism to help HBLB appropriately deploy funds on a race-by-race basis. Each racecourse has its own executive contribution, which dictates how much HBLB funding it can apply for.
Alan Delmonte, CEO of HBLB, said: “One of the benefits of the Ratecard Plus mechanism is that it directly and immediately links how much a racecourse puts in to how much HBLB pays out. Publishing our contribution to every race gives the industry and the public a clear view of how and to where most of our prize money contribution is distributed.
“HBLB already makes available a total per year of how much it gives to each racecourse and the amount split between Flat and Jump racing. Publication of race-by-race information adds further transparency in this key area.”
HBLB’s total budget voted for 2023 is £66m, of which prize money holds the biggest share – the Ratecard Plus mechanism is expected to pay out £56.8m, while IPM payments will amount to £4m.
