Estimated Reading Time – Five Minutes
Last Updated: April 20, 2026
Written by Iain Fenton
In a wide ranging interview gambling expert and prominent bookmaker Geoff Banks tells SlotsHawk that Arena Racing Company (ARC) CEO Martin Cruddace “threw gaming players to the lions” after “actively engaging” with the anti gambling Social Market Foundation (SMF) which will have a significant detrimental effect to online gambling operators and the horse racing industry itself.
Cruddace recently appeared on Racing TVs Luck on Sunday and denied that he “collaborated with anti gamblers” on gambling taxes. Banks on the other hand, says that Cruddace did attend such meetings which has been to the detriment of casino gaming operators, players and eventually, horse racing too, speaking to SlotsHawk’s Iain Fenton, he said:
“Martin Cruddace engaged actively with the anti-gambling lobby headed by the SMF, was involved in discussions with those people, which he denied on the show, but he did in fact do that.
“The horse racing industry, notably the race tracks, were able to negotiate fantastic details with gambling operators in the last decade simply because operators were making a lot of money out of gaming and FOBT’s (Fixed Odds Betting Terminals) and saw horse racing as a vehicle for more successful products. Gambling operators therefore were prepared to pay horse race tracks an amount of money in data terms which they probably did not deserve as a stand alone business,” said Banks.
“What I think Cruddace has forgotten is how well he did out of all of the negotiations that took place when these gambling companies made billions out of gaming and now the race tracks have supported the SMF and its views which were to punish the gambling operators on gaming taxation.
“Cruddace took the view a considerable rise in gaming and sports betting taxes, would make betting on horse racing more appealing. As the playing field would be levelled. In said regard his views, and the SMF were, apparently, aligned. But for differing reasons,” states Banks.
Horse Race betting has managed to escape an increase in General Betting Duty Tax, but others were not so lucky.
As of 1 April of this year, Remote Gaming Duty tax will rise from 21% up to 40% which raises major implications for online operators and consumers regarding profitability and long-term sustainability in the UK market. As of 1 April 2027, General Betting Duty tax will also increase to 25% but this will not apply to bets made on UK horseracing, not yet anyway.
However, Banks argues that these rises will still have a ‘significant effect’ on horse racing, he says:
“The easy money will no longer be available to gambling operators for them to be able to invest in horse racing. That is why we are seeing so much friction now between Betfred and Flutter and companies like Arena Racing.
“Anytime you engage with the anti-gambling lobby and join in with them and advocate for increasing taxes in gaming, it will have a huge impact on horse racing and grey hound racing which is suffering terribly,” says Banks.
The most blatant upcoming effect which casino gaming and slots players specifically will face will be decreased return to player levels on casino games including slot games. Banks believes that this will have the knock-on-effect that either players will just stop playing at casinos or they will instead begin playing at online casinos that are not regulated by the UKGC (aka black market sites).
“Certainly, return to players (RTP’s) will be considerably less, they have to be. Whether players choose to remain in the regulated market after they see a decrease in the RTP’s of slot games and the return on their money is inevitably less remains to be seen. Taxation will have a massive effect on how much is returned to gamblers and therefore, one can easily envisage a lot of people who either they decide its just become too expensive to play slots or roulette because ‘I don’t win as much as I used to when i win’ or they will just go to Curacao licensed casinos because the RTPs will be significantly higher because they don’t have the huge tax costs,” states Banks.
The expected outcome of increased gaming taxes in the UK then will likely see:
- An increased number of UK players betting with black market casinos.
- Increased profits for black market casinos enabling them to become more user-friendly and trustworthy in the eyes of players.
- Ever-decreasing protection for UK players.
As for Cruddace, his mission is clear, as he stated on Luck on Sunday, that his primary motivation is growing the profits of Arena Racing Company or as he put it ‘extrapolate all of the value through the vertical’ which he helpfully explained in simpler terms as ‘maximizing the value of everything going on our race course’ and to ‘grow our product and develop that product internationally’.
Will the success of Arena Racing Company be at the expense of the rest of the UK gambling industry and players and bettors themselves? Almost certainly. The anti-gambling brigade will be here for ARC too, if the taxes don’t catch up to them first, its inevitable. Perhaps Cruddace will have sold up by then, although he says they are “not for sale, but we have a number of very profitable assets.”
Fittingly, we will leave the final say to Banks regarding the UKGC and its regulations, he said:
“Any increases in taxation or regulatory hoops has only ever had one result in the online gambling world. That of pushing players elsewhere. We have reached a tipping point in said regard in the UK.”
CONTRIBUTORS
Greetings, I’m Iain Fenton
Iain has worked within the iGaming industry for over eight years and is an NCTJ accredited journalist. Iain brings with him a wealth of knowledge and comes from a writing and journalistic background. Iain is a graduate of Leeds Trinity University.
