Today in the Federal Court Justice Perram delivered two judgments both of which were in favour of Racing NSW.

Justice Perram firstly dismissed Sportsbet's application to amend his judgment delivered on 16 June 2010 to include Sportsbet's Race Fields approval for 2009/2010 so that it could recover all Race Fields fees paid to Racing NSW. Secondly, Justice Perram disqualified himself from hearing an application by Betfair to re-open its case, on the basis of apprehended bias.

As a result:
1. the Betfair judgment in favour of Racing NSW remains in place;

2. the Judgment in favour of Racing NSW in the Sportsbet case that the Race Fields Legislation and Regulations are valid, and enforceable remains; and

3. the judgment in Sportsbet for a refund of monies is confined to the period of the 2008/2009 approval (9 months) namely $2.1 million of the monies held by Racing NSW and does not extend to any subsequent approvals, including the 2009/2010 financial year.

Racing NSW in addition filed an appeal against the decision to refund the 9 months fees paid by Sportsbet and our lawyers are seeking expedition of that appeal. In the appeal, Racing NSW will argue that the findings of Justice Perram are so contrary to the evidence and the law that they should be overturned.

For example, Racing NSW will argue that the findings in relation to the settlement with TAB are not supported by the evidence and were not argued for by Sportsbet.

Racing NSW will also argue that his Honour's finding that the $5 million fee free threshold was designed to protect NSW bookmakers, was contrary to a number of important factual issues. These include that ALL wagering operators throughout Australia benefited from the threshold.

Racing NSW believes that there are strong prospects that part of Justice Perram's decision will be overturned on appeal and that the prosecution of the appeal is necessary to address the uncertainty created by part of his findings.

In the meantime, Racing NSW has modified the Race Fields scheme to address the findings of Justice Perram pending the outcome of the appeal.

Those modifications include the removal of the $5 million fee free threshold, an extremely unfortunate consequence of the Sportsbet decision.

Racing NSW is doing its utmost to minimize the impact of this on small bookmakers located throughout Australia.

Racing NSW remains committed to the current model of Race Fields Legislation which is essentially designed to ensure that wagering operators who profit from the use of NSW races should pay a fee for that use.

The fees will be used to increase prize money which in turn will substantially increase returns to owners, trainers and jockeys. It will allow funding for upgrading of race tracks to make them more conducive to competitive racing and thus, to provide better racing surfaces with less bias and making them safer for both the jockey and the horse.
 

racing and sports