UK Betting Market and Horse Racing: Turnover Trends, Levy and What They Mean

Editorial Team «Exotic Bets Horse Racing» July 25, 2026 Reading time: 8 min

Updated August 2026

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Richard Wayman, the BHA’s Director of Racing, described the picture bluntly in early 2025: total betting turnover on British horse racing had fallen 9% compared with the same period in 2024. The decline was not a blip. Since 2022, online racing turnover has dropped by £1.6 billion in real terms – £3 billion when adjusted for inflation. These numbers shape the environment that every exotic pool bettor operates in, because turnover drives pool sizes, pool sizes drive dividend quality, and dividend quality determines whether exotic bets remain a viable proposition for UK punters.

Betting Turnover on UK Racing: The Three-Year Decline

The decline has been consistent and broad-based. Year-to-date figures through Q3 2025 show total turnover down 4.2% on 2024 and 12.8% on 2023. Average turnover per race fell 5.8% year-on-year. The core fixtures – everyday racing at smaller tracks – have been hit hardest, with average turnover on core meetings dropping 14.4% in Q1 2025. Premier fixtures, where the biggest exotic pools sit, have remained more stable, but even they are not immune to the broader trend.

The causes are multiple and contested. Affordability checks, which I will address separately, are the most visible factor cited by the industry. The Gambling Commission’s introduction of financial vulnerability thresholds has pushed some bettors to reduce their stakes and others to migrate to unregulated platforms. But competition from other betting products – in-play football, casino, and slots – has also drawn money away from horse racing, and the sheer volume of daily racing fixtures may have diluted the betting audience across too many cards.

For exotic bettors, the turnover decline matters because it directly affects domestic Tote pool sizes. Fewer pounds bet on racing means thinner pools, which means smaller dividends and more volatile payouts. The trend is concerning, and it makes the World Pool partnership – which brings international liquidity to UK races – increasingly important as a source of the pool depth that exotic bets require to function well.

The Levy Board: Record Collection Amid Falling Volume

Here is the paradox that puzzles most people when they first encounter the Levy data. The Horserace Betting Levy Board collected a record £108.9 million in the financial year 2024-25 – the highest figure since the Levy was reformed in 2017, up from £105.3 million the previous year. How can the Levy be at record levels when turnover is falling?

Alan Delmonte, the HBLB’s CEO, acknowledged the tension directly: it may seem counter-intuitive that the Board continues to express caution about sustainability despite rising Levy income. The explanation lies in the mechanics. The Levy is calculated on bookmakers’ gross gambling yield (GGY) from racing, not on turnover alone. GGY can rise even when turnover falls if bookmaker profit margins expand – which happens when results favour the bookmaker. Delmonte noted that February and March 2025 saw bookmakers’ gross profits well above recent norms, with the Cheltenham Festival in particular producing results that were unusually bookmaker-friendly.

The HBLB’s expenditure on supporting racing reached £94.3 million in 2024-25: £66.9 million on prize money and £19.4 million on regulation and integrity. Reserves stood at £58.7 million. The Levy currently funds a significant portion of the ecosystem that produces UK racing – and by extension, the races that generate Tote exotic pools. A sustainable Levy requires a healthy betting market; a declining betting market threatens the Levy’s long-term trajectory even if short-term results have been favourable.

What the Turnover Gap Means for Pool Exotic Bettors

Pool Betting Duty receipts – a direct proxy for Tote pool turnover – tell their own story. HMRC data shows PBD receipts of £1.8 million for Q1 2025-26, a 19% decline on the same period the previous year. Overall PBD has fallen from £9.5 million in 2020-21 to £8.1 million in 2024-25. The Tote’s domestic pool business is shrinking in absolute terms, even as the Tote’s overall revenue has grown through World Pool partnerships and digital improvements.

For the exotic bettor, the practical implication is a widening split between two types of meeting. At World Pool fixtures and major Saturdays, pools remain deep and the exotic products function well. At everyday meetings – the midweek cards, the smaller Saturday fixtures – pools are getting thinner. The dividend on a Monday Trifecta at a minor track may be unpredictable not because of the race itself but because the pool contains so few participants that one large bet can distort the outcome.

My response to this trend has been to concentrate my exotic spend on meetings with meaningful pool depth and to reduce my exotic activity at lesser fixtures. The value in exotic pool betting is proportional to the liquidity available, and the liquidity gap between premium and ordinary meetings is widening. Betting exotics at a World Pool meeting with hundreds of thousands of pounds in the pool is a fundamentally different proposition from betting exotics at a thin domestic meeting with a few thousand.

Outlook: Tax Changes, Regulation and Pool Betting’s Role

The UK betting market faces structural headwinds. Remote Gaming Duty rises from 21% to 40% from 1 April 2026 – a near-doubling that the BHA has warned could cost the racing industry approximately £66 million per year and potentially 2,752 jobs. The impact on bookmaker willingness to offer competitive racing products is uncertain but unlikely to be positive.

Affordability checks continue to tighten, with thresholds dropping from £500 to £150 per month in February 2025. Richard Wayman noted that while racing needs product improvements to grow its betting appeal, a wider range of factors is contributing to the concerning decline. The regulatory environment is constraining the market from one direction while competition for the betting consumer’s attention constrains it from another.

Against this backdrop, pool betting – and the Tote specifically – occupies a potentially resilient niche. Pool products are not subject to the same margin pressures as fixed-odds bookmakers, because the operator takes commission rather than carrying risk. The World Pool partnership continues to grow, adding international liquidity that offsets domestic pool shrinkage. And the Tote’s revenue growth of 56% between 2019 and 2026 suggests that the product has appeal even in a contracting market.

For exotic bettors, the message is cautiously optimistic: the premium meetings where exotic pools work best are holding up, and the World Pool is getting larger. The everyday domestic pool business is under pressure, but for punters who target their exotic activity at the right meetings, the structural advantages of pool betting remain intact. The complete guide to exotic bets in UK horse racing provides the framework for navigating this evolving landscape.

Prepared by the Exotic Bets Horse Racing editorial staff.