Remote Gaming Duty and Greyhound Racing — How the Tax Rise Affects the Sport

A near-doubling of the Remote Gaming Duty threatens the voluntary levy model that funds UK greyhound racing. The RGD increase — from 21% to 40% — is not a greyhound-specific measure; it applies across the entire online gambling sector. But its downstream effects on greyhound racing are disproportionate, because the sport depends on voluntary bookmaker contributions that are calculated as a percentage of gambling revenue. When the tax take rises, the revenue available for voluntary contributions falls, and the levy under pressure is the levy that keeps tracks like Yarmouth racing.

This is not an abstract fiscal concern. The funding chain that connects a bet placed in a bookmaker’s app to the prize money at a Wednesday evening BAGS meeting at Yarmouth runs through the BGRF levy, and that levy is sensitive to every variable that affects bookmaker profitability. The RGD increase is the largest such variable introduced in recent years, and its impact on greyhound racing funding is a practical question with practical consequences for the fixture list, the prize structure and the long-term viability of smaller tracks.

What RGD Is and Why the Increase Matters

The Remote Gaming Duty is a UK tax levied on operators that provide gambling services to British customers through online platforms. It was introduced in 2014 at a rate of 15%, subsequently increased to 21%, and has now been raised to 40% as part of a broader fiscal measure in the UK budget. The duty applies to the gross gambling yield — the difference between stakes received and prizes paid — generated by remote operators licensed to serve the UK market.

The increase from 21% to 40% is, in proportional terms, enormous. It nearly doubles the tax burden on online gambling revenue, which has implications for every sport and entertainment product that depends on bookmaker funding. For greyhound racing specifically, the concern is straightforward: if bookmakers pay more in tax, they have less margin available for voluntary contributions to the BGRF, and the sport’s primary funding mechanism is squeezed.

The mechanism is indirect but reliable. Bookmakers do not pay the RGD on greyhound racing separately — it applies to their entire remote gambling operation — but the financial pressure it creates flows through to every line item in the bookmaker’s budget, including the voluntary levy that funds greyhound racing. A bookmaker facing a 40% tax rate on online revenue will scrutinise every discretionary cost, and the voluntary nature of the greyhound levy makes it inherently more vulnerable than a statutory obligation.

The political context of the RGD increase is broader than greyhound racing. The government’s stated aim is to increase tax revenue from a sector that has grown significantly through the shift to online gambling. The measure was not designed to harm greyhound racing, and no specific provision was made to mitigate its impact on the sport. That absence of mitigation is the problem: the sport’s funding model was not considered when the tax rate was set, and the consequences for the BGRF and the tracks it supports were not part of the fiscal calculation.

BGRF Income Under Pressure: £6.75 Million and Falling

The British Greyhound Racing Fund collected £6.75 million in voluntary bookmaker contributions during the 2024-25 financial year, a figure derived from a levy rate of 0.6% on relevant greyhound betting turnover. The previous year’s income was £7.3 million — itself a 4% decline from £7.6 million the year before. The trend is downward, and the RGD increase is expected to accelerate it.

Joe Scanlon, chairman of the BGRF, has been candid about the financial trajectory. He noted that the voluntary system covers 90 to 95 per cent of the income that the sport would be owed if every UK-facing bookmaker contributed, but warned that the fund would eventually reach a point where the income was simply insufficient for the sport’s ambitions. That warning, delivered before the RGD increase was announced, takes on sharper relevance now that the tax burden on bookmakers has nearly doubled.

The arithmetic is not complicated. If bookmakers face higher tax costs and respond by reducing or freezing their voluntary contributions to the BGRF, the fund’s annual income drops. A reduction from £6.75 million to, say, £5.5 million would require cuts somewhere in the distribution — lower prize money, fewer track improvement grants, reduced welfare funding or a combination of all three. The tracks that depend most heavily on BGRF distributions — typically the smaller, regional venues with limited alternative revenue — would feel the impact first.

Sir Philip Davies, chair of the GBGB, acknowledged the funding dynamic in public remarks at the GBGB Awards in 2025. He noted that everyone in the industry understood that funding had been declining year on year, that this decline could not be positive for the sport and that bookmakers were receptive to the argument for increased contributions — though receptiveness and action are not the same thing. The RGD increase makes the gap between the two wider.

Downstream Effects: Prize Money, Track Investment and Meeting Frequency

The most immediate downstream effect of reduced BGRF income is pressure on prize money. BAGS meetings — which form the majority of the fixture list at Yarmouth and every other licensed track — carry prize levels subsidised by the BGRF distribution. If the distribution falls, the per-race prize money at BAGS meetings may be reduced, which in turn affects the economics of training: lower prizes mean lower income for trainers, which means fewer dogs in training, which means thinner fields and a weaker product for the betting market. The circularity is self-reinforcing, and once it begins, interrupting it requires an injection of revenue from somewhere outside the existing loop.

Track investment is the second casualty. The BGRF allocates a portion of its income to capital grants for stadium improvements — the kind of investment that produced Yarmouth’s track upgrades in 2012 and similar projects at other venues. With a shrinking fund, the grants budget is the easiest line item to cut, because the consequences are not felt immediately. The track still races, the dogs still run, but the surface quality, the facility standard and the equipment maintenance gradually decline. The effect is cumulative: deferred investment compounds over years, and by the time the deterioration becomes visible, the cost of remediation has multiplied.

Meeting frequency is the third variable. The BAGS fixture list is negotiated between the BGRF, the PGR and the bookmakers, and the number of meetings per week at each track reflects the balance between content demand and funding availability. If funding tightens, the fixture list may contract — fewer meetings per week at some tracks, or the withdrawal of some venues from the BAGS schedule entirely. A track that drops from four BAGS meetings per week to three loses 25% of its fixture revenue, which can be the difference between viability and closure.

For Yarmouth, the RGD-driven funding pressure is a risk rather than an immediate crisis. The track’s ARC media deal provides a degree of commercial insulation, and its position within the PGR schedule is secured through to the end of the decade. But the voluntary levy that underpins the broader BAGS economy is not immune to the tax changes affecting the bookmaking industry, and a sustained decline in BGRF income would eventually affect prize money, track quality and fixture allocation across the entire circuit — Yarmouth included.