British Racing Fears New PM Andy Burnham’s Government May Target Gambling With Fresh Tax and Sponsorship Crackdown

Britain’s horse racing industry is bracing for a new era of political uncertainty after Andy Burnham was confirmed as the country’s next prime minister following Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation. The former Manchester mayor takes over at a moment when racing is still absorbing a wave of gambling tax increases, and his long record of tough rhetoric on betting has left the sport wary of what comes next.

Burnham was sworn in on July 20, 2026, and moved quickly to name his first cabinet. While racing bodies had feared a wholesale shake-up of the ministers overseeing gambling policy, Lisa Nandy was reappointed as culture secretary, keeping her grip on the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and its oversight of the Gambling Commission. She was one of just two ministers Burnham kept in an unchanged role, giving racing a familiar face to continue ongoing conversations about the horserace betting levy and licensing reform.

A Chancellor With Recent Form on Gambling Duty

The bigger shift came at the Treasury, where John Healey moved from defense secretary to chancellor of the exchequer, replacing Rachel Reeves. It was Reeves who, in the November 2025 Budget, doubled remote gaming duty from 21 percent to 40 percent effective April 2026 and introduced a new 25 percent general betting duty rate for online sports wagers starting April 2027. Racing secured a carve-out from that latter change, with remote bets on UK horse racing remaining at the existing 15 percent rate in recognition of the 10 percent statutory levy operators already pay into the sport.

That exemption followed a sustained lobbying push, often described in the trade press as the “Axe the Racing Tax” campaign, with Nandy acting as an intermediary between the industry and the Treasury throughout. With Healey now holding the purse strings at a moment when the government is under pressure over the cost of living, industry figures worry the door remains open to further gambling levies at the next fiscal event, even if racing’s current carve-out holds for now.

Sponsorship Bans and Local Licensing Powers Loom Larger

Tax policy isn’t the only concern. As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham co-signed a letter to Nandy arguing that local authorities should have greater power to block the spread of gambling premises on high streets, and he has publicly backed the campaign group Against the Odds, which wants to “phase out gambling sponsorship across all levels and all types of sport.” Burnham has said in the past that he wants to “relegate gambling sponsorship of sport to the history books” — a position that, if translated into policy without a carve-out for racing, could hit sponsorship deals that underpin prize money and race-day revenue across the sport.

Racing also remains on edge over the Gambling Commission’s rollout of affordability checks, a policy inherited from the previous Conservative government that Nandy has allowed to proceed despite warnings — including from some former supporters of the idea — that it could strip hundreds of millions of pounds from betting turnover tied to the sport. Bettors weighing where to place wagers amid the regulatory noise can compare current lines and props at futures odds before committing to a position.

Why Racing Has More at Stake Than Other Sports

Horse racing occupies an unusual position in British gambling policy because, unlike football or darts, its economics are directly tied to betting turnover through the statutory levy system. Racecourses, prize money, and the wider industry rely on bookmakers contributing a share of betting revenue back into the sport, which is why the British Horseracing Authority has fought so hard to keep racing exempt from the broader tax harmonization the Treasury has pursued. A government less sympathetic to that arrangement, or one that pairs tax reform with a sponsorship ban, could squeeze the sport from both directions at once, even as football and other sponsorship-heavy sports absorb similar pressure from campaigners.

What Happens Next

For now, continuity at DCMS means the ongoing strands of gambling reform — the statutory levy for research, prevention and treatment, local licensing powers, and the Illegal Gambling Taskforce’s work on unlicensed operators — continue under the same ministerial team that has been steering them for months. Nothing changes overnight simply because a new prime minister has been named, but Burnham’s personal record on gambling sponsorship and licensing suggests the direction of travel is unlikely to reverse in racing’s favor. Whether the sport’s tax exemption survives the next budget, and whether a sponsorship crackdown carves out an exception for racing the way the levy did, are likely to be the two questions that define the industry’s relationship with Downing Street for the remainder of Burnham’s early tenure.