Racing tourism looms

The Hong Kong Jockey Club must be delighted to see more mainland visitors showing up at its racecourses in Sha Tin and Happy Valley for the first day of races in the new year.

While the club has been open about its aspiration to make horse racing a major tourism attraction, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu also included horse-racing tourism in his last policy address, along with panda tourism.

It is about the experience of being there among the crowds and enjoying the facilities at the racecourses, not merely about placing bets on the numbers.

HKJC chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges earlier expressed a wish to see the number of mainland tourists visiting its horse-racing facilities double over the next five years.

The club had an auspicious start to the year yesterday. Of the 43,000 punters at the Sha Tin and Happy Valley racecourses, a total of 4,120 came from the mainland, nearly doubling the number on the 2024 New Year's Day.

But every coin has two sides - on the back side is the increased expectation for the organization to contribute to society.

Although already the city's biggest donor to charitable causes, the HKJC was asked last year to contribute more to the government to help narrow a deficit gap that is widening at an alarming rate.

An old Chinese expresses that, while successful people are afraid of becoming famous, pigs are equally afraid of being fat and strong as they were the first to be sold to the abattoir in the old days.

In the 2023/24 financial budget, the government slapped the organization with a special football betting duty of HK$2.4 billion a year for five years as Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po came under mounting pressure to fill the black-hole deficit.

That hole is expected to expand by a further HK$100 billion when the fiscal year ends in March. It is a conservative estimate because, if borrowings were excluded from the revenue column, the actual shortfalls would have almost doubled.

While Chan has pledged to prioritize spending cutbacks rather than opening new revenue sources in his attempts to contain the deficits, an outstanding question is whether he will eye the HKJC for more after taxing it HK$12 billion over five years.

If this were the case, would it mean fewer funds available for worthy charitable causes?

It is true that sweeping taxes - such as a goods and service tax - would be unsuitable for Hong Kong if it is expected to maintain a simple taxation system.

Alternatively, Chan may allow the club greater flexibility to introduce new products so that it can tap areas of potential growth.

Betting on NBA games, Formula One races and golf tournaments are off-limit in Hong Kong although already available digitally elsewhere.

So should the HKJC be allowed to explore them to expand its revenue sources and then contribute further?

It is a controversial subject but one worth studying.

The time is right to rethink the matter with a view to striking a new balance to meet the city's various needs.