406 | Recreation, Sport and the Arts
The Hong Kong Jockey Club
Horse racing is one of Hong Kong's most popular sports. The huge turnout on race days, reaching 90 000 sometimes, highlights its popularity.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club is the city's only authorised operator of horse racing. It was founded in 1884 and has become one of the world's largest and most respected racing organisations.
Races are normally held twice a week at Sha Tin in the New Territories and the historical Happy Valley racetrack on Hong Kong Island, drawing an attendance of nearly two million a year. The races are also a big tourist attraction.
In addition, the club offers betting on overseas football matches and runs a lottery, called Mark Six. Regulated football betting was introduced in 2003 at the request of the Government. The club has become the world's biggest football betting operator since then.
The club is Hong Kong's largest single taxpayer, contributing $13.62 billion to the public purse in 2009-10, or about 7.6 per cent of all taxes collected during the year. It is also one of the city's largest employers, with more than 26 000 full- and part-time staff.
The club is a major community benefactor, operating under a not-for-profit business model. Having no shareholders or dividends to pay, its surpluses are used for funding important charitable and community projects. In 2009-10 it donated a record $1.52 billion to more than 100 local projects through the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. In recent years it has also actively established several projects of its own to address challenging Hong Kong needs such as holistic youth development, environmental protection and care for the growing number of old people.
The club works closely with the Government to promote responsible gambling behaviour and to combat illegal betting. Since the implementation of betting duty reforms and the introduction of more local race days and overseas simulcasts, the club has been able to regain some of the revenue lost to illegal and offshore bookmakers, but illegal bookmaking remains a concern. Discussions are continuing on the question of introducing additional measures to maintain the club's competitiveness in the face of the growing number of gambling establishments in the region.
The club is a long-time supporter of sports development in Hong Kong. Its donations helped establish the Hong Kong Sports Institute, rebuild the Hong Kong Stadium, and create Hong Kong's only public golf course at Kau Sai Chau. It also built world-class venues at its own cost for staging the Beijing Olympics' equestrian events in Hong Kong, and was a major sponsor of the East Asian Games held in Hong Kong.
In 2010, the club played a significant role in helping neighbouring Guangzhou to host the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games, by designing and building the equestrian venue at Conghua. It also sponsored overseas training for the Hong Kong team who
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