Arena Leisure

Worrying news revealed yesterday from Arena Leisure with their Chairman David Thorpe warning that dozens of race meetings may be scraped with the lack of funding for prize money and meetings coming via the Levy. With William Hill announcing they are to soon relocate their telephone betting organisation to Gibraltar to take advantage of the tax benefits it appears things can only get worse. The system is clearly out of date in today's world of telephone accounts, web accounts and betting exchanges. Something must be done to stop the rot before meetings are lost or in the worse case scenario some of the smaller courses cease trading all together.
Some good news for Arena though as their half-year profits were up 25% and average attendances at their tracks increased by 3%, which bearing in mind this was of course a World Cup year, has to be seen as encouraging. Lingfield and Windsor, owned by Arena, happen to be two of my favourite tracks and I believe it just goes to show that if you offer a good product with good facilities the crowds will come; lets hope the Racing For Change guys are taking note.