Arena books 25% increase in profits

A REVIVAL in corporate entertainment has whipped Britain's biggest horseracing business into shape.

Arena Leisure, whose courses include Doncaster - which hosts next month's St Leger meeting - and all-weather venues Lingfield Park, Southwell and Wolverhampton, revealed that underlying profits to end-June rose 25 per cent to 2 million.

The upturn came on the back of 3 per cent rise in average attendances to 1,498. Corporate hospitality outstripped this, however, with a 13 per cent increase. Chairman David Thorpe, described the performance as commendable, and said he was encouraged by signs that corporate entertaining, increasingly a staple of a sports business's earnings, was picking up.

The group is expected to stage 353 fixtures this year - accounting for a quarter of all UK racing - but the size of next year's schedule is still uncertain due to the impact of a sharp fall in the horseracing betting levy. The sport is funded by a levy on bookmakers' profits, but the figure is set to drop to about 70m from the 94.5m million expected this year.

The amount received by Arena racecourses from the levy during the first six months of 2010 fell more than 1m to 10.6m, with most of the shortfall hitting prize money. Arena said 88 fixtures leased from the British Horseracing Authority for between one and three years, were most at risk.