Horserace Betting Levy Board

Race-by-race contributions to prize money by the Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB) are today published for the first time, further enhancing visibility of the organisation’s funding of racing’s fixtures.

HBLB’s allocations of Ratecard Plus and Incremental Prize Money (IPM) for the first three months of 2023 are available here and this will be updated each quarter.

The new Ratecard Plus funding mechanism adopted in 2022 allocates HBLB’s prize money on a race-by-race basis. HBLB’s contribution varies according to the racecourse’s own executive contribution (EC), providing an incentive for racecourses to unlock further funding from HBLB by increasing their own EC.

In the first quarter of 2023, HBLB’s Ratecard Plus payments amounted to £11.1m, of which £8.2m was to Jump races, including £1.3m to the Cheltenham Festival, and £2.9m to Flat races. The total also included £126,000 in prize money funding for additional fixtures in the light of the weather-related abandonments of certain fixtures originally in the race programme. The £0.9m IPM contribution was split approximately 50/50 between Flat and Jumping.

HBLB Chief Executive Alan Delmonte 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.”

With £66m budgeted in 2023, prize money is the largest HBLB expenditure item. Of this, the Ratecard Plus mechanism accounts for £56.8m and IPM £4m.

Details of the Ratecard Plus funding mechanism can be found here and IPM, here. The other elements of HBLB’s prize money contribution in 2023, to a combined budgeted value of £5.2m, are the Great British Bonus (GBB, here), Sunday Appearance Scheme (here) and the Divided Race Fund (here). 

For further information, please contact Alan Delmonte on 07931 701536