JIMMIE SAYS … Follow the money and you’ll find there is none

After pointing out the monetary value of taxation derived from betting on horse racing, local and overseas events, for the period 2022-2023, almost $500,000 million, as reported by the Betting Gaming and Lotteries Commission (BGLC), let’s take a look at the various tax percentages taken off the top of the betting dollar and apportioned to whom.

This exercise is intended to, again, point out to horsemen why purses, prize money for competing in horse races, are partially legislated as subsidies worldwide, via state and national law, as opposed to the standalone 51-49 per cent of gross-gaming revenue (GGR) agreement signed between local-racing promoter Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL) and horsemen in 2022.

First, what is gross-gaming revenue? It is simply an international metric used to calculate the total amount of money wagered minus the amount paid out as winnings. Therefore, at Caymanas Park, total sales on local racing, minus payouts (dividends), equals gross gaming revenue of which SVREL retains 51 per cent and 49 per cent goes to prize money (purses).

SVREL’s 51 per cent is what it uses to operate its business of promoting racing, paying its staff, etc, taxes, maintenance of grounds, the racetrack and its stable areas, plus paying Caymanas Track Limited (CTL) US$300,000 annually as lease.

Before further delving into why horsemen need to redirect their angst as it relates to purse money, it is of utmost importance to explain how the GGR agreement came into being and why those who had signed on behalf of racing folk thought they were getting a deal of many lifetimes and needed nothing else to live happily after.

After initially rejecting a purse offer from SVREL throughout a long period of squabbling, horsemen had agreed to an improved sum in increments with the promoting company pointing out that it could not be business as usual going forward, ‘we want an increase and, if we don’t get it, we won’t nominate horses for your race cards’, the model which was traditionally used to put a gun to government-owned CTL’s head.

After the GGR formula was put forward by SVREL, the Jamaica Racehorse Owners Association (JROA), lead negotiator, decided to do its ‘due diligence’ on local-racing sales. The JROA ‘got its hands’ on a flawed SVREL sales report submitted to the BGLC, indicating astronomical sales on local racing.

In a ‘gotcha’ moment, the JROA and the respective trainers’ associations, riding the premise that SVREL was long ‘cooking its books’, said ‘yipee, with this amount of local-racing sales, submitted by SVREL, we don’t even need overseas-racing sales (incoming simulcasts) to be a part of the agreement at this point in time’.

GGR was signed into being then, ‘oops’, wrong sale figures. What followed was insistence mixed with tough-headedness after SVREL proved to the BGLC that the sales reported had erroneously included outgoing simulcast, which, though conducted on local racing, were wagers placed at overseas racetracks from which the promoting company earned a meagre commission, being a minor player among bigger racetracks, which command higher commissions, a set-up known as inter-tote wagering (ITW).

To this day, horsemen are of the opinion that they were scammed, not only by SVREL but, laughingly, the oversight body, the BGLC then headed by Clovis Metcalfe, who, by all accounts, would have been the most unlikely bedfellow.

After being subsumed by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA), the JROA executive was roasted for signing a ‘stupid’ agreement despite its then president knowing fully well how the entire matter had developed and unfolded.

Hobbling along, purses have remained constant because there is a rider that prohibits SVREL from ever going below the initial figure in the first year of the GGR agreement, regardless of sales generated, meaning it has to dip into its 51 per cent whenever the 49 per cent falls short.

Back to where the conversation started, $500 million, ignored by horsemen being spurred by special interests, whose argument is that SVREL bid for the racetrack thus it should be the one approaching Government to enact legislation, mirroring how purses are funded internationally.

Are owners aware that breeders are allotted a percentage, off the top, of the JRC and BGLC’s portion of the $500 million in the form of a foal subsidy for which TOBA had lobbied and were successful in getting enacted as law?

Oops! Why has TOBA never lobbied for owners to similarly benefit by way of a purse subsidy taken directly from a percentage of BGLC and JRC’s largesse, more so now that it represents owners’ interests?

Who owns horses? Who needs better purses, SVREL or TOBA?