Defunct working group resurrected to help improve racing's levy yield.

PUTTING a stop to the rapid decline in horseracing's share of the betting market could rest with the resurrected Betting Patterns Working Group, Levy Board chief executive Douglas Erskine-Crum said yesterday, writes Howard Wright.

Once sunk by BHB indifference, the Levy Board-supported group is back in action, bringing together experienced racing and betting practitioners, to make recommendations on improving the levy yield and bringing forward joint initiatives for promoting and marketing racing and off-course betting on the sport.

Erskine-Crum said: "This is a very important group and it's been possible to bring it back because the relationships between betting and racing are so much better, and mistrust about sharing data that was apparent five years ago has been put to one side.

"We have to have the right data from bookmakers if racing is to put on races at the proper time to suit the betting shops.

"The correct data is beginning to come through, and eventually we should get it from enough sources. I'm confident the group will work even better."

Erskine-Crum said that extra fixtures were not necessarily the answer to the problem.

He explained: "It's just as much to do with when to put on races, deciding the best gap between races, when there is the highest footfall in betting shops, the type of race that attracts the highest turnover, and the optimum number of runners."

Examination by the working group had already discovered that 'twilight' fixtures are increasingly important, Erskine-Crum said, because they plug the gap between afternoon and evening racing for betting shops.

"You can probably argue that twilight meetings are better for levy than evenings, which still give a positive levy yield, though perhaps not at the level we had hoped," he said.

"We've now got to make suggestions about the best time to race, which can then be incorporated in the 2011 fixture list. This dovetails neatly with our intended support for initiatives on the rebranding of racing."

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Douglas Erskine-Crum: 'It is a very important group'