{"id":429,"date":"2016-10-17T10:41:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T10:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/?page_id=429"},"modified":"2023-02-08T15:35:40","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T15:35:40","slug":"tote-and-totepool","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/articles\/horse-racing\/tote-and-totepool\/","title":{"rendered":"Tote and Totepool"},"content":{"rendered":"
You may well be used to placing bets at a regular bookie where the starting price is declared and you can take it or leave it.<\/p>\n
Well Tote betting is a little bit different, with a dividend being declared instead. There are also some fantastic opportunities to win some large jackpots from more diverse and interesting, albeit more difficult, bet types.<\/p>\n
Best of all, it doesn\u2019t have much of a learning curve, so novice bettors can get to grips with it in no time and add to the scope of their betting possibilities.<\/p>\n
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The history of the Tote goes back to the 1920’s, before high street gambling was legal in the UK. There was a big problem with illegal off-course bookmakers at the time, so action was taken by none other than Winston Churchill to combat this.<\/p>\n
The 1928 Racecourse Betting Act set up the Racehorse Betting Control Board. The aim here wasn’t just to deal with the illegal off-course gambling problem, but to find a way to ensure that some gambling revenue was re-invested into the sport of horse racing. This led to grants being made to horse-racing related societies and the sponsorship of races beginning with the Tote Investors Cup at Kempton in 1956.<\/p>\n
More legislation took place in 1961 with the Betting Levy Act. This created the Horserace Totalisator Board which became known as The Tote. 11 years later, the Tote opened its first high street betting shop and these have grown in number over the years to the point where they now employ more than 4000 staff. Further expansion happened in 1992 with the introduction of ToteDirect; this channelled tote bets from other high street bookmakers into tote pools so tote betting is now accepted in more than 7000 betting shops around the UK.<\/p>\n
There were attempts made to privatise the Tote in the late 1980s but 1995 saw the Conservative Government abandon the plan. The return to power of Labour changed all this though, and the 2004 Horserace Betting and Olympic Lottery Act proposed privatisation once more. At one stage it looked as if a racing consortium and Tote staff bid would be successful, but it was rejected due to it being backed by private equity.<\/p>\n
Betfred eventually bought the Tote in 2011 making them the only bookie legally allowed to offer this type of betting in the UK, but in 2018 the monopoly in pari-mutuel betting ended, meaning that anyone with a licence could offer these services.<\/p>\n