Labor’s proposed crackdown on gambling advertising will halve the number of new bookmaker customers and leave the racing industry $6.4 billion worse off over time as fewer accounts are opened.

That is the view of Taylor Collison’s Andrew Orbach, a respected industry analyst, who told clients that the number of customers signing up every year could fall to 225,000 from 450,000. After accounting for an annual churn of 250,000 customers, bookmakers would be losing punters.