GBGB announce £1m prizemoney windfall

01/10/2011

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Owners’ bonus series set for October launch... 

FOLLOWING the recently announced British Greyhound Racing Fund budget increases, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) is pleased to launch the Owners’ Bonus Series, which gets under way next week with the first competition due to take place at Belle Vue on Wednesday (5th October). The initiative, developed by the Board’s Racing Committee, is scheduled to take place between October 2011 and December 2012 and is expected to be funded to the tune of £1 million. 

Each of the 25 GBGB-licensed racecourses will stage a total of 26 Owners’ Bonus Series competitions, comprising heats and a final, for 12 or 18 graded greyhounds. The winner of each final will receive £500 plus a trophy and presentation jacket with other finalists receiving £100 and a further £100 going to the winning trainer. 

The total prize fund for each final totals £1,100 and the standard prize money, saved by the track not funding a race of the grade of the final itself, will be added back into graded prize money as increased run and/or win money across the card at a subsequent meeting.
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BGRF tireless in their efforts to chase non-payers

05/08/2011

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Up to an extra £1 million would go to Fund if the bookies paid up and looked big... 

BOOKMAKERS who refuse to make voluntary contributions to the British Greyhound Racing Fund consequently deny the sport of up to £1 million annually but the BGRF ensure that they are constantly busy trying to persuade the non-payers to think again.

There are approximately 650 bookmaker companies in Britain and a total of approximately 8,500 betting shops and the great majority of those do make contributions to the fund. But, frustrating though it is, the BGRF can’t hold a gun to the heads of those who don’t contribute.

Thanks to the Chancellor of the time [1992], Norman Lamont, payments are voluntary, much to the chagrin of the greyhound industry at large. “But we endeavour and will continue to endeavour to go after the bookmakers who do not pay, although we would need a full-time staff to pursue each and every one of them,” said Fund Secretary, Margaret Woodruff.
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Fund asks non-paying bookmakers to think again

31/07/2011

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Chairman Kelly warns abstainers of potential consequences... 

IN his first chairman’s statement since his appointment to the British Greyhound Racing Fund, Tom Kelly has urged those bookmakers who decline to contribute to the Fund to think again. 

In the recently published annual report of the BGRF, Kelly draws attention to the fall of fund income from off-course bookmakers to £7.8m. this year from a record £13.8m. in 2008-9. 

“This can no way be described as good news,” states the chairman. “At one point the Board was concerned that greyhound betting turnover would fall to such an extent that we might have been heading for considerably less than the £7.8m. finally achieved.” 
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