Britain’s opposition Labour Party is proposing a levy on all sports betting with revenues dedicated to supporting community sports organizations and helping tackle problem gambling.
The plan is set out in a new “sport for all” memorandum issued by shadow Culture Secretary Harriet Harman and shadow Sports Minister Clive Efford.
Under current UK regulations, only gambling on horseracing is subject to a levy, with the money returned to the racing industry.
Labour’s plan targets all UK operators, including online, by expanding the 10.75 percent racing levy, which will cost UK betting firms £82 million this year, to all sports. The levy would be voluntary to start, but Labour would seek to codify the fee in law.
“Football gambling online and in betting shops is now far larger than horseracing gambling and yet it does nothing to help the sport itself,” Efford stated in support of the Labour proposal. “I think they have a moral obligation to help the industry from which they make billions, and the results could be dramatic.”
The plan ties in to complaints by some sports organizations that their games are intellectual properties and bookmakers should pay for the right to profit on them.
Citing a report by the 1999 Football Task Force, Efford said income from domestic football rights had risen by 75 percent in recent years, but instead of the English Premier League helping grassroots sports, much of the money was being used for parachute payments or donations to lower league clubs.
The betting industry argues that it already pays tax on profits and there is no need to contribute more to the public purse.
The levy plan comes in the midst of an overhaul of Britain’s online market approved by Parliament and coming into force this fall that will require all operators taking bets in the country, including those located offshore, to be licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. A companion measure that takes effect the end of this year imposes a 15 percent point-of-consumption tax on all bets placed online.
A spokesman for the governing Conservative Party blasted the plan as a “short-term gimmick.”
“It is a tax on football fans which will mean higher ticket prices for ordinary people wanting to watch our national sport,” he said.
