17/09/2026

The Betfred St Leger Festival this year marked the 250th anniversary of the world's oldest Classic horse race: founded in 1776 at Doncaster, four years before the celebrated Epsom Derby, the St Leger is the centrepiece of the British racing season.

According to estimates from the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), the UK betting industry's trade body, approximately £8 million was wagered across the entire meeting on platforms without proper authorisation. For the main race alone, the estimated illicit flow exceeded £2 million. BGC Chief Executive Grainne Hurst stressed that major sporting events attract those who seek to exploit public enthusiasm in order to fuel circuits operating entirely outside any regulatory oversight.

A problem that knows no borders

The British case is geographically distant, but the logic it describes is the same that IHP has been documenting in Italy for years. The illegal horse-racing betting circuit is neither a marginal phenomenon nor one confined to areas of social decay: it is a structured supply chain, capable of intercepting significant economic resources and operating in parallel with the regulated sector.

The regulated market is not enough

The institutional response, in both the UK and Italy, tends to focus on defending the legal market as a bulwark against illegality. This is a wholly inadequate approach unless it is accompanied by genuine traceability of horses, rigorous oversight of ownership transfers, and systematic checks on activities straddling the official sector and informal circuits.

Funding the official circuit without reforming the equine registry, without imposing real traceability, and without building a mandatory post-career protection system does not mean protecting horses: it means continuing to ignore the path that, in the worst cases, leads them from the racetrack to the clandestine slaughterhouse.