THE TOTALISATOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 232, 20 December 1927, Page 12

THE TOTALISATOR

FOR BRITISH RACECOURSES The introduction or the totalisator to British racecourses is made an immediate and live issue by the Jockey Club’s recommendation in favour of it. The motive for the change is the decline in racecourse receipts. For the period March-September inclusive only £712,220 was taken this year as against £848,764 in 1925 —a drop of more than 16 per cent, says a recent issue of the London "Daily Chronicle.” Tho Jockey Club is so influential a body that Parliament is likely to fall in with its wishes. The present mode of levying the Betting Tax admittedly causes great irritation to racegoers and backers as well as bookmakers. If tho Jockey Club’s policy were carried out, ;ind racecourse authorities were permitted to instal totalisators and also to charge fees to bookmakers, the tax in its present form would presumably be replaced by an arrangement, under which the State shared with the racecourse the proceeds of the totalisator and the fees. Opposition will come from the bookmakers. But. the system, under which bookmakers in this country have been allowed to enrich themselves off undertakings to whose upkeep (apart from tho few pounds of their entrance money along the rails) they con tributenothing, seems bound to go. And if the Jockey Club’s plan is followed, there is no reason to suppose that they will be crushed out, any more than they have been in Australia and Belgium.