How Illegal Betting is Contributing to a Global Wave of Racecourse Closures

Introduction

Over the past six years, 15 horse racing venues have closed across the world, 50% more than in the equivalent 2015–2020 period. This despatch examines how illegal betting markets have contributed to this decline in racecourses and identifies venues now under pressure. This despatch also demonstrates that illegal betting accelerates a damaging cycle for racing, showing that as more racing wagering migrates to illegal markets, legal operators lose the levy, taxation, and rights-fee incomes required to fund prize money, racecourse infrastructure, and integrity programmes. The closures documented here are, in material part, the physical expression of that revenue loss.

Confirmed racecourse closures: 2021–2026 1

No.	Venue	Country	Year of closure
1	Arlington Park	USA	2021
2	Arizona Downs	USA	2023
3	Sun Downs	USA	2023
4	Golden Gate Fields	USA	2024
5	Freehold Raceway	USA	2024
6	Northville Downs	USA	2024
7	Markopoulo Park	Greece	2024
8	Macau Jockey Club	Macau	2024
9	Singapore Turf Club	Singapore	2024
10	Sonoma County Fair	USA	2025
11	Cal Expo (Tulsa)	USA	2025
12	Hastings Racecourse	Canada	2025
13	Pleasanton Racetrack	USA	2025
14	Chelmsford City Racecourse	UK	2026
15	Aqueduct	USA	2026

To 15 July 2026; includes racecourses where live flat racing has ended permanently, with an official closure, revoked operating permit, redevelopment decision, or clear abandonment of future racing.

United States

Table 1 above shows that the contraction of racecourses took place mostly in 2024 and 2025, when ten of the 15 closures documented occurred. This clustering may partly reflect a delayed post-pandemic adjustment, with the rebound in wagering recorded in 2021 following the onset of COVID-19 not being sustained, and US Thoroughbred handle falling for three consecutive years to 2024, alongside reductions in race days, races and starts. At the same time, regulatory assessments increased and placed additional pressure on venues already operating on narrow margins.

The United States accounts for two-thirds of closures, partly because many of its racetracks depend on a combination of wagering, attendance, sponsorship and casino-linked income, leaving weaker venues exposed when one or more of these supplementary revenue streams decline. The closure of Freehold Raceway, for example, followed a period of declining attendance and revenue and its failure to secure a casino licence. Valuable racecourse land has also encouraged consolidation or redevelopment, as demonstrated by plans to repurpose the Aqueduct site after racing was transferred to Belmont Park. The figures therefore suggest that the concentration of closures in 2024 and 2025 reflects not only the post-COVID landscape, but the culmination of other socioeconomic pressures that pre-dated the pandemic.

Singapore

Singapore’s closure reflected declining public interest, changing betting habits and competing land use priorities. Average raceday attendance fell from about 11,000 in 2010 to 2,600 in 2022, while younger consumers increasingly viewed racing as inaccessible and associated with an older generation. COVID-19 accelerated the migration from land-based betting to online platforms, where illegal operators adapted their products more quickly than licensed operators and strengthened their appeal as consumer behaviour changed. Repeated enforcement operations also confirmed an established illegal horse-betting market which continued to compete with the legal product, and as racing’s audience and commercial relevance diminished, the Government concluded that the 120 hectare Kranji site would better serve housing and other public uses.

Macau

The Macau Jockey Club’s closure in April 2024 followed years of heavy losses, but it also operated in a market where large-scale illegal and under-the-table betting was well established. The scale of that illicit activity was illustrated by the prosecution of former Suncity chairman Alvin Chau, whose alleged syndicate was linked to more than 62,000 proxy bets worth over MOP823 billion between 2013 and 2021. Chau was arrested in 2021 and later sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment for offences including illegal gaming and criminal association. These illicit channels compounded the commercial pressures on a regulated operator required to meet taxation, integrity and operating costs.

The Club ultimately relinquished its concession after accumulating losses of MOP2.5 billion, with the authorities then recovering the 363,192-square-metre Taipa site. The site’s land will now be used for public sport, cultural and performance uses, reflecting the same pressure seen in Singapore and parts of the United States: once racing can no longer justify a large, strategically located site, redevelopment becomes more attractive than preserving a declining racing venue.

Canada

At Hastings, declining wagers and industry revenue had already weakened the economics of racing before the British Columbia provincial government withdrew approximately CA$8–10 million in annual supplementary revenues, after which the operator concluded that another season was no longer viable. This contraction occurred in a provincial online betting market where the regulated platform was estimated to capture only 51% of activity. This low betting market capture placed further pressure on the track operator and increased its dependence on the aforementioned supplementary revenues provided by the authorities. The withdrawal of that revenue was therefore the immediate trigger for closure, but it followed a longer erosion of the regulated racing market.

Racecourses under existential pressure, 2026–2030

No.	Venue	Country
1	Kempton Park	UK
2	Hawthorne Racecourse	USA
3	Emerald Downs	USA
4	Thurles	Ireland
5	Gulfstream Park	USA
6	Fairgrounds Racecourse	USA
7	Monmouth Park	USA
8	Ferndale Racetrack	USA
9	Fresno Fairgrounds	USA
10	Ruidoso Downs	USA
11	Turf Paradise	USA
12	Rosehill Gardens	Australia
13	Awapuni Racecourse	New Zealand
14	Gwacheon Racecourse	Korea

Under existential pressure now means that live racing at the existing venue faces a credible prospect of permanent cessation by 2030, supported by evidence such as: bankruptcy or severe financial distress; loss of a licence or fixtures; sale or redevelopment proposals; withdrawal of essential funding; an unsustainable racing surface or environmental risk; or no viable long-term operator.

United States

US racecourses operate within an illegal and unregulated betting market estimated at US$673.6 billion annually (i.e. almost one-third of national gaming revenue) diverting potential handle, tax and purse income from legal racing. This helps explain why many tracks have become increasingly dependent on casino, slot-machine or historical horse-racing income to supplement wagering.

That dependence transfers racecourses’ financial risk rather than resolving it. When state law, licensing decisions or revenue-sharing arrangements threaten supplementary gaming income, venues with weak underlying wagering revenues have little capacity to absorb the loss; Hawthorne and Fair Grounds illustrate this exposure, while Gulfstream, Turf Paradise and Monmouth face related operating or redevelopment pressures. The causal sequence therefore becomes clear, with unregulated betting eroding racing revenue, forcing tracks to rely more heavily on external gaming income. The withdrawal or uncertainty of that income can turn financial weakness into ultimate venue closure.

Prediction markets create a further channelisation risk because sports event contracts operate under federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight rather than state betting regimes. Horse racing volumes remain small, with about US$1.2 million traded on the 2025 Kentucky Derby, but these prediction market-based bets on US racing bypass the pari-mutuel system and generate no direct return to purses, tracks, breeders or state racing programmes.

Because prediction markets are not required to pay host fees, source-market fees or statutory deductions that sustain racing products, they can offer lower-cost prices while using racing events without contributing to their production. Their federal structure also limits the application of state racing rules, including licensing, integrity controls, responsible-betting requirements and restrictions on who may offer wagers. The present financial impact remains modest, but expansion across major US races very likely will establish a parallel market that diverts customers and data value from regulated pools, weakens liquidity and further reduces the industry’s capacity to fund prize money and racecourse infrastructure.

United Kingdom & Ireland

Like their US counterparts, British racecourses continue to face declining legal betting turnover, rising operating costs and stronger redevelopment incentives for valuable land. Financial checks applied to licensed customers from 2024 have added friction to legal betting channels, with unlicensed operators growing in attraction as they remain outside those controls. As a result, an estimated 44,000-plus customers have moved to black-market operators because of the existing affordability checks regime.

The UK Gambling Commission’s July 2026 decision to proceed with staged enhanced financial risk assessments, despite industry concerns over the pilot evidence, consultation process and operational accuracy, is likely to intensify that channelisation risk. For racing, the consequence is not limited to bookmaker revenue – lower regulated turnover also weakens levy receipts, media-rights income and the financial firepower needed to keep UK racecourses running.

Irish tracks also face this pressure because their media-rights payments are increasingly derived from betting turnover on individual fixtures, including turnover generated in Britain. British racing turnover fell by about 20% over two years, raising concern that reduced betting activity and migration to black-market operators would lower payments to Irish venues. Smaller tracks must absorb rising regulatory, staffing and maintenance costs from a narrower income base, while at least 100 Irish pubs were reported to be facilitating unlawful betting services in 2026, showcasing further fragmentation of the regulated turnover on which their media income increasingly depends.

Australia & New Zealand

Oceanic racecourses also continue to face growing threats from illegal betting, which is weakening the revenue base available to sustain racecourses. Illegal online betting more than doubled from 2019 to reach AU$3.9 billion in 2024, and approximately 14% of Australian racing wagers were estimated to be placed with unregulated operators. The resulting loss to racing was estimated at up to AU$135 million annually through foregone product fees and regulated wagering revenue, reducing the funds available for prize money, clubs and infrastructure. As that financial base narrows, operators become less able to resist consolidation or redevelopment proposals for valuable urban sites. The proposed redevelopment of Rosehill Gardens for housing illustrates how reduced long-term confidence in racing can make the sale of a major racecourse appear more attractive than retaining it for the sport (while noting that any closure of Rosehill Gardens would likely result in relocation of the racecourse to a new site).

New Zealand has faced the same sequence on a smaller scale. New Zealanders were estimated to wager NZ$180–200 million annually with offshore providers, diverting income from TAB New Zealand – the principal funding source for domestic racing – before legislation in 2025 made it the sole legal provider of online sports and racing betting. This leakage weakened the resources available to renew ageing facilities and maintain racing surfaces, increasing pressure to concentrate fixtures at fewer venues. Although the reform is intended to restore revenue to domestic racing, venues such as Awapuni remain exposed where major infrastructure or track remediation is required and operators lack the financial capacity to absorb further investment.

Conclusion

The 15 racecourse closures recorded since 2021 reflect several converging pressures rather than a single cause. Regulated racing turnover has weakened as customers migrate to illegal channels that do not contribute levy, tax, product fees or media rights income. This has narrowed the funding available for prize money, integrity and infrastructure, while post-COVID changes in attendance and online betting behaviour have accelerated this decline. Meanwhile, rising operating and regulatory costs, smaller horse populations, the withdrawal of casino- or government-linked support, and the redevelopment value of large urban sites have helped turn reduced wagering income into permanent racecourse closures.

With ten racecourses closing permanently between 2015 and 2020, racecourse closures over the 2021-2026 period represent a 50% increase across an equivalent five-year period. While no authoritative global register of racecourse closures exists, the comparison points to a clear acceleration in closures, with the next three years likely to bring further consolidation.

The 14 venues identified as under existential pressure face varying immediate threats including loss of supplementary gaming income, weak fixtures economics, track remediation or strong production opportunity costs (typically stemming from land redevelopment), but share the same underlying vulnerability, with legal racing revenue often insufficient to support the land, facilities and horse population required for racing. Of late, these have been exacerbated by prediction market growth in the United States, enhanced financial checks in Britain and continued offshore betting growth on Australian and New Zealand racing, which are likely to create further leakage unless regulation and enforcement improve channelisation. Fixtures are therefore likely to migrate towards fewer, stronger venues, while marginal tracks remain exposed to consolidation, sale, licence loss or closure.