Alex Frost, outgoing chief executive of UK Tote Group, at his Ladyswood Stud in Wiltshire.
Alex Frost, outgoing chief executive of UK Tote Group, at his Ladyswood Stud in Wiltshire.
The Tote, the UK’s horseracing pool betting operator, is changing its chief executive and its strategy in the same announcement. Alex Frost, who led the project to buy the Tote from the bookmaker Betfred and has run UK Tote Group since it took ownership in 2019, will step down at the end of 2026 after almost nine years in charge. His successor is James Coxon, chief operating officer of Gaming Innovation Group (GiG), and the business is closing its online gaming operation to concentrate on racing and pool betting.
The decision makes more sense next to the group’s last filed accounts. In the year to September 28, 2025, UK Tote Group made an operating loss of £8.5 million, wider than the £7.4 million a year earlier, and its customer-facing business lost £11.9 million. The part that made money was the business-to-business (B2B) arm that runs betting pools for racecourses, bookmakers and overseas partners. Alex Frost’s final strategic move is to put the whole company behind that side.
Who Is Taking Over From Alex Frost
Coxon brings more than 20 years in betting and gaming, across both B2B and consumer-facing businesses, according to Gaming Intelligence. He held senior positions at DraftKings after the US group acquired the betting technology supplier SBTech, and most recently served as chief operating officer at GiG, a supplier of betting and gaming platforms.
The handover was planned rather than forced. Frost approached the board about succession at the beginning of this year, the Racing Post reported. He will stay on as an executive director through 2027 before becoming a non-executive director from 2028.
“All good things come to an end eventually. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time and I just feel it’s time to put new energy into the business,” Frost told Thoroughbred Daily News. Of his successor, he said: “James Coxon has huge experience in the sector, with DraftKings and so on. He’s a highly capable guy who I think can do a tremendous job.” The group’s chair, John Williamson, thanked Frost for “his significant contribution to the business and to the wider horse racing industry.”
The Numbers Behind the Handover
The most recent accounts, filed at Companies House (the UK’s official register of companies) and reported by the Racing Post in July, set out the shape of the business that Alex Frost is handing over:
- Operating loss: £8.5 million, against £7.4 million the year before.
- Underlying EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, a common measure of operating cash generation): a profit of £1 million, down from £1.8 million.
- UK host pool wagers: £614 million, down from £621 million, but up 1 per cent once an extra 53rd week in the previous year is stripped out.
- B2B EBITDA: £15.7 million, down from £17.2 million.
- Customer-facing losses: £11.9 million, narrowed from £12.8 million.
- Central overheads: £2.8 million.
- Payments to British racing: £8.9 million.
“In a challenging operating environment, the UK pool grew by one per cent, and underlying Ebitda for the year was £1m,” Frost said when the accounts were published. Read together, the figures describe two businesses. The B2B pools operation generates millions in earnings; the consumer side, which spent heavily to win online customers, consumes most of it. Closing gaming and scaling back that spending is the obvious lever, and it is the one the board has now pulled.
Why the Tote Is Leaving Online Gaming
The Tote will withdraw its gaming content online and scale back what had been heavy investment in its direct-to-consumer digital business, with a more racing-focused offer across its platforms. Its websites, Tote.co.uk and Tote.ie, will stay open for pool betting and fixed-odds sports betting, and will be used to trial new pool betting initiatives and promotions, according to Gambling News.
Frost was direct about why. “We have been growing our digital business quickly over recent years but it operates at a loss,” he said, pointing to “increasing regulatory burdens on digital operators and the sharp increase in tax in the UK,” as reported by Gaming Intelligence. He told the Racing Post that “it is becoming increasingly difficult and costly for legal operators to retain customers while providing them with a good experience,” and argued that “racing and pool betting are where we can be genuinely brilliant and distinctive.”
The tax change he refers to is specific. In its 2025 Budget, the UK government raised remote gaming duty, the tax on online casino-style games, from 21 per cent to 40 per cent from 1 April 2026, according to a House of Commons Library briefing. A new 25 per cent remote betting rate within general betting duty follows from 1 April 2027, but remote bets on UK horseracing are excluded and stay on their current rates. The measures are expected to raise £810 million in 2026/27, rising to £1.16 billion in 2030/31.
On those rules, the products the Tote is dropping carry the steepest increase, while the racing bets it is keeping are largely shielded from the next one. The Treasury’s search for revenue has been a running theme for UK business this year, with government borrowing overshooting the fiscal watchdog’s forecast by £3.5bn in a single month.
The World Pool Is Where the Growth Is
The product Frost helped create, and the one the Tote is now betting its future on, is the World Pool, launched with the Hong Kong Jockey Club at Royal Ascot in 2019. It combines bets placed in several countries into a single pool on selected races, a practice known in the industry as commingling, which makes the pools larger and the payouts more attractive. The Racing Post reported that it has generated more than £65 million for British and Irish racecourses.
According to Gaming Intelligence, the World Pool has grown pool betting revenues by around 40 per cent this year, and the company expects double-digit growth to continue in 2027. The Tote’s partners in that work include the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), the sport’s governing body in Britain, and Horse Racing Ireland, alongside racecourses, bookmakers and international commingling partners.
“The Tote’s future is in developing horserace betting pools both in the UK and internationally,” Frost said. He also argued that “there is considerably more that we can do to accelerate this growth by investing to support our pool distribution partners.” He pointed to York as an example of what the money can do, describing races there “where you’re getting 100 grand in prize-money, thanks to the brilliant work of York and the World Pool funding mechanism.”
What It Means for Staff, Customers and Racing
For staff, the restructure means job losses in the digital business, partly offset by new roles in the B2B division. A consultation process has started, and the number of roles affected has not been disclosed.
For customers, the visible change is the end of online gaming content on the Tote’s sites. Pool betting and fixed-odds sports betting continue, and the company says it will use its own websites to test new pool products before rolling them out to partners.
For racing, the shift points the Tote’s investment back towards pools, the product racecourses depend on. The sport received £8.9 million from the Tote in the last accounts, and the World Pool is the mechanism Frost credits with lifting prize money. Frost told the Racing Post the group has “no debt and an incredibly supportive shareholder base,” which leaves the new chief executive room to make the change.
What to Watch Next
- The consultation. How many digital roles go, and how many new B2B roles are created, will show the real scale of the reset.
- Coxon’s first moves. His background in B2B platforms at DraftKings and GiG fits a company that now wants to sell its pools to other operators rather than compete with them for customers.
- The next accounts. The year to September 2026 will be the first to show the effect of the higher remote gaming duty, and should show the World Pool growth the company puts at around 40 per cent this year.
- The April 2027 betting rate. The exclusion for UK horseracing bets is the reason a racing-first strategy holds up; any change to it would alter the calculation.
Alex Frost leaves the Tote in better shape than the headline loss suggests: a profitable B2B core, a growing international product and no debt. What he has also left his successor is a clear instruction about what the business is for. “I am delighted to be staying closely involved and I look forward to playing my part in completing the journey we started,” he said.
About The Author
More Stories
Nike Marketing Spend Rose 5% in a Quarter Its Sales Fell 4%
Micron Cannot See the End of the Memory Shortage
The Ratchet Clause Keeping NZ Shop Rents High Is Now an Election Fight