Commitment To Sport
Betfair is a company committed to sport at all levels, both in terms
of direct investment and leading the fight to ensure its integrity.
Industry Funding
Like all other UK-based bookmakers, Betfair pays 10% of its gross profits to the horseracing levy which supports the industry in Britain. However, in addition to this statutory requirement, the company goes a number of significant steps further:
Betfair pays UK levy on its international business as well. Most operators structure their businesses to ensure that international customers do not pay levy. There is no legal mechanism which requires an operator to pay levy on its international business; but Betfair voluntarily chooses to do so.
In the last five years Betfair has paid £27 million in horseracing levy.
Betfair also funds sport through a comprehensive sponsorship strategy. Betfair sponsors key sporting events and teams, for example the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot and the England Rugby Union team, and has an ongoing commitment to sponsor races at every UK racecourse on a three-year cycle.
Ensuring Integrity in Sport
Betfair was set up by a management team whose backgrounds were in the global financial markets. Part of their aim was to bring the transparency of the markets to an industry which traditionally had been opaque - instilling financial markets best practice in the sports betting market.
Those initial values helped Betfair to set new standards in the fight against corruption in sport. The company has led the way in information-sharing agreements with sports authorities: the Memorandums of Understanding that we have in place with most major sporting regulators allow them unprecedented access to our audit trail. This transparency provides the regulators with the best available means of identifying any fraudulent betting on their sports.
Betfair has signed 44 MoUs with the likes of the British Horseracing Authority, the South African, Australian and US horseracing authorities, the International Cricket Council, the English FA, UEFA, FIFA and many more. The company can also provide its MoU partners with access to Bet Monitor - a system which gives 'real-time' details of bets, as they are placed and as they are matched.
Betfair has already entered a number of agreements with sporting bodies, giving them a share of the revenue generated by Betfair through betting on events as part of an on-going commercial partnership. Betfair is happy to enter into discussions with any sporting body on this basis, as the company made clear at the Sport Accord conference in Madrid in June 2002.
Betfair:
- Successfully completed a two-year partnership with UK charity
SportsAid to raise £250,000 for young athletes - a figure that
Betfair matched.
- Was a donor to the British Olympic Appeal, Beijing 2008.
- Supports community sport: Betfair has a vision to be a champion of regional sport and launched the 'Cash for Clubs' initiative to fund sport at its grass roots.
- Organises 'The Pride of Racing', an event in aid of Racing Welfare which recognises the unsung heroes of the horseracing industry in the UK. Betfair has made other significant commitments to racing charities including the Thoroughbred Rehabilitation Centre and the Injured Jockeys Fund in a three-year deal.
- Pays a voluntary product fee of its profits to South African Racing, Cricket Australia, Racing Australia and the Australian Rules Football League.
- Pays a voluntary donation to the Greyhound Levy in the UK.
- Is a fellow of the Animal Health Trust.