The subplot to all this is that the anti-gambling lobby have been working with the racing lobby to throw the rest of the gambling industry under the bus. The anti-gambling lobby in Britain is effectively Derek Webb and the various lobbyists and think tanks he funds or has funded, particularly Matt Zarb-Cousin (Clean Up Gambling), Will Prochaska (Coalition to End Gambling Ads) and the Social Market Foundation (SMF).
The SMF have called for remote gaming duty to rise to 50% (!) while Matt “not anti-gambling, just anti-FOBTs” Zarb-Cousin has called for online casinos to be taxed “into oblivion”. The SMF’s ‘concession’ to sports bookies is a 25% tax consisting 5% duty and 20% Horserace Betting Levy which amounts to the same as they pay now (15% duty plus 10% racing levy). This is because they know that horse racing is popular with the public and it gives them a way to “peel off and neutralise racing” - to quote Zarb-Cousin - while they hammer the rest of the remote gaming sector.
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