The Extraordinary General Assembly organized online on Monday 15 June brought together the world’s Pari Mutuel/Tote operators offering betting on horseracing events around the world

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An Extraordinary General Assembly is organized online on Monday 15 June to bring together the world’s Pari Mutuel/Tote operators offering betting on horseracing events around the world in line with their respective national regulations.

20 operators representing all continents have decided to join forces to advocate and promote:

- National and global pools utilising technology to ensure an engaging and positive customer experience;

- A percentage of revenues going towards supporting beneficiaries, including the horseracing sector

- The optimisation of technology and operations to ensure members can exchange best practice and develop mutually beneficial work streams collaboratively

- Leading standards for social responsibility that make safer betting and protection of customers a priority

EPMA will transfer its knowledge, achievements, and legacy to the new Association.

Members agree on the principle to transform EPMA into the World Tote Association, WoTA. An Extraordinary online General Assembly is scheduled on 15 June, and an Interim Board has the mandate to prepare it.

During the meeting, it was encouraging to hear that horseracing is slowly returning across many of the members jurisdictions after being completely stopped to fight against the coronavirus outbreak.

> Read the EPMA Annual Report 2019-2020

The virus has put the horseracing sport on hold and has reduced the Racing world from 40 to 5 nations still organising horse races.

Turnover of horse betting operators in certain countries have been reduced by 50% because of close down of point of sales like in Hong Kong and Finland. In France, the closure of Bars and Café has reduced the turnover by more than 80%. The popular French bet, Quinte+ is organised and run in Sweden and Hong Kong.

The common pool partnership between ATG in Sweden and UK Tote Group highlights the importance of International cooperation whatever the culture and whatever the traditional way of betting.

UK and France Racing Authorities have the hope to resume horseracing at the end of April – at least in a few racecourses, on a regional basis. Being the first sport to restart may seem an admirable thing to do but need to be explained. The responsibility towards the animals is huge and the industry highly depends on betting income and prize money.

Once again, the crisis is showing the importance of International Racing and cooperation between tote betting operators worldwide. The responsibility of Tote betting operators towards the equestrian and horse racing industry burst even louder. The relevance of common pools is more important than ever.

Racing Authorities in France, UK and Finland are the latest ones to take that decision. Activities behind closed doors continue in other countries leaving the possibility for Tote betting operators and EPMA members to offer horse betting to their customers.

The physical meeting on 4th May in Greece is cancelled but discussions and votes will be maintained on that day on audio/video conferencing platform.

Members of the European Horse Network met to prepare the next EU Parliament’s Horse Group meetings looking at the impact of the Green Deal on agriculture and the place of equines in CAP as well as the social licence debate and how equines are treated from the beginning to the end of their lives. MEP Hilde Vautmans joined the EHN members for a working session insisting on the economic importance of the European equine industry to be highlighted in the next Equine Conference scheduled in October 2020.

Around 550 delegates from all over the world attended the 38th Asian Racing Conference hosted by the South African Racing Authority.

The high-level speakers of the wagering session insisted on the necessity to cooperate between tote operators and promote International commingling. Because racing is a global sport and international betting represents between 15 and 17 billion dollars, the industry needs to work on a new efficient protocol to facilitate commingling said Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, CEO of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, as well as Paul Cross, International wagering manager at Tabcorp, informing that both structures, EPMA and AATA are working on a merger to operate efficiently on a new commingling protocol and agree on common requirements.

The topic of social license (social acceptance of our activities) was also high on the agenda of the conference. The industry needs to be proactive in horse treatment, before, during and after racing or it will lose the next generation of fans said Louis Romanet, Chairman of the International Racing Authorities.

> Please read the report of the wagering session

Members from 21 European Trotting Federations have agreed to apply stricter rules on equine welfare in the International Agreement: reduce the possibility to use the whip, no possibility to race during 4 days after vaccine injection.

Members support the dissemination of an updated document highlighting with facts and figures the economic and social importance of the trotting industry in Europe: More than 63000 horses generating 100 000 jobs in European agricultural areas.

Marjaana Alaviukhola, President of UET, insisted on the coordination of racing authorities on the funding of racing and advocating the model at EU level.