THE BRITISH GREYHOUND RACING FUND
The British Greyhound Racing Fund are the industry’s body that collects the annual levy paid by the bookmakers and allocates these monies to every aspect of greyhound racing in the form of grants.
The BGRF board of directors consists of representatives from the betting industry, many of whom are directors of the very bookmakers who pay the levies. It is not surprising then that the bookmakers are allocated a large slice of the funds and the directors/promoters of stadiums award themselves an even larger slice.
Of the £11.5 million paid into the fund by the bookmakers in 2007, two of the contributing bookmakers William Hill and Ladbrokes, were awarded a total of just over £1 million to improve stadia directly owned by them. Despite William Hill making pre-tax profits of £285 million last year, nearly a quarter of a million pounds alone was awarded to furnish ‘Bunnies Bar’ at William Hill’s Sunderland stadium.
A private company, the Greyhound Racing Association, who own a total of six stadia and who are also represented on the board of directors, were awarded over £1 million pounds to improve their stadia, despite all six stadia being put on the market for sale last year. Walthamstow stadium was awarded £154K last year and after months of speculation has now been sold to property developers. Mr Chandler was both a director of the BGRF and of Walthamstow Stadium.
In total over £3 million, just over 26% of the 2007 funds, were allocated to directors of companies, who were also directors of the BGRF. In comparison, and despite the BGRF claiming ‘welfare to be priority’, the directors allocated just £1.7 million to the industry’s re-homing scheme, the Retired Greyhound Trust.
Interestingly, another area of funding that is claimed to be of a welfare nature is listed as ‘Racing Surface Research etc’. In previous years this research has been undertaken by Liverpool University, the very same university that was recently investigated by Daniel Foggo in the Sunday Times, exposing the industry’s largest greyhound breeder, selling healthy young greyhounds that are either too slow or wont chase to Liverpool University to be killed and dissected for research.
Once again, the greyhound racing industry is insulting the public’s intelligence by diverting funds back into its highly profitable commercial sector whilst deceitfully claiming that welfare is priority. When in reality, they are further funding the abuse and exploitation of greyhounds for their own financial gain.