Greg Wood running a story about Betbright not being an ABP.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jan/27/british-horseracing-authority-test-rich-ricci-betbright
BetBright’s deal at Cheltenham concludes at the end of next season but it will still be a blow to the credibility of the ABP campaign if a company which has appointed such a high-profile owner as its chairman refuses to sign up. It will also cast a sharp light on comments by Mullins before last year’s Festival, when he suggested the prize money on offer at the Festival was “not fair and not on”, and should be “at least doubled, if not more” to reflect the sums owners such as Ricci pay for young jumping stock.
The BHA said on Wednesday it had “written to all bookmakers, including BetBright,” with details of the ABP scheme and that “the process of speaking to the betting industry to outline the benefits of becoming an Authorised Betting Partner is ongoing.”
“At the moment we sponsor some fantastic races at Cheltenham, Doncaster and Kempton,” Brian Farrell, BetBright’s marketing director, said, “and will consider our options once these sponsorships come to an end. For now, we are focusing on working hard to make our sponsorships as successful as possible and engage with real racing fans. We do have a desire to continue to use race sponsorships as part of our brand building and marketing strategy.”
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Ricci had three winners at last year’s Festival but the fall of his runner Annie Power in the Mares’ Hurdle on the opening day was estimated to have saved the bookmaking industry many millions of pounds, as the mare would have completed many thousands of Yankees and other accumulator bets on four hot favourites from the Mullins stable.
Some punters may feel uneasy about the chairman of a bookmaker having such a close interest in horses that could do significant damage to the betting industry’s profits in March. Others may wonder whether BetBright will lay all requested bets on Ricci’s horses in full at advertised prices or, as is often the case with online operators, either restrict stakes or refuse bets altogether.
British racing has a long history of bookmakers owning horses, however. William Hill and Victor Chandler among those to have owned major winners. More recently, Michael Tabor, the former owner of the Arthur Prince betting shop chain and now leading member of the powerful Coolmore ownership syndicate on the Flat, bought Chandler’s company BetVictor.
The BHA’s rules on laying by owners state that it is an offence for any owner “to lay any horse he owns with a Betting Organisation to lose a race, instruct another person to do so on his behalf or receive the whole or part of any proceeds of such a lay.” Only last week, owner Alan Findlay was banned from racing eight years for laying his own horses on Betfair.
However, the rules also make it clear that “nothing in this rule prevents the laying of any horse owned by a Betting Organisation in the ordinary course of that Betting Organisation’s business”.
Ricci, who has invested many millions of pounds in National Hunt racing, lives in Britain but stables his horses exclusively with Mullins in County Carlow. He was a high-profile figure in banking and finance, and was one of a number of senior executives to leave Barclays’ investment arm in the wake of the Libor rate-fixing scandal which engulfed the bank in the summer of 2012
