Levy Board adds £21.8m in prize-money with support due to extend into 2022

The Levy Board has extended its above-average contribution to prize-money with the announcement of a £28.1 million contribution to the funding of racing for the final four months of 2021.

Of that, £21.8m will flow directly into prize-money, bringing the total contribution for the year to £78m, a 32 per cent increase on the grants initially budgeted for in 2020 before the pandemic struck.

The additional funding is separate from the money the HBLB will distribute around the sport as part of the UK government's £21.5m loan to racing from its Winter Survival Package.

But with crowds beginning to return to racecourses since May and restrictions on attendance set to be lifted imminently, the HBLB contribution for September 1-December 31 represents a payment of 70 per cent of race values compared with the allocations for the first four months of the year, a figure which was reduced to 80 per cent for the four months between May and August.

Alain Delmonte: 'Even before taking into account the additional expenditure arising from the loan taken from Government, HBLB expects to spend around £78m in prize money for the year, 32 per cent more than usual.'

Although the Levy Board's contribution remains above the norm, chief executive Alan Delmonte argued it demonstrated the next step towards the a return to a sustainable level of prize-money funding as racecourses continue to increase their own contributions.

Delmonte said: "This latest announcement confirms that HBLB will have been able to keep up significantly higher than usual contributions throughout the whole of 2021, as it has since June 2020.

"Even before taking into account the additional expenditure arising from the loan taken from government, HBLB expects to spend around £78m in prize-money for the year, 32 per cent more than usual.

"Consideration is now being given to 2022, recognising that the recovery from the financial effects of Covid-19 will be gradual. The majority of the additional £15m expenditure package announced last month will be spent in 2022 and the board will look to provide extra support next year for as long as this remains affordable."

How the Levy Board has kept prize-money afloat

The contribution from the strategic reserves of the Levy Board over and above normal levels has been the crucial factor in keeping racing in Britain going while crowds have been negligible or non-existent.

By the end of this calendar year, the Levy Board will have pumped £125.1m into prize-money since the resumption of racing in England on June 1 2020, which amounts to nearly £31m above what had originally been budgeted.

In addition to being the distributor of the government loans, the HBLB has also made several one-off payments to help finance racing, including a £28m support package during the suspension of the sport last spring – £20m of which went directly to racecourses and a figure which was boosted by another £3.2m in August 2020 – as well as stepping in temporarily to rescue the jockeys' insurance scheme.

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