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Some of Britain's leading bookmakers are calling on Racing For Change to scrap its decimalised odds initiative after a recent trial.

The trial was one of 10 ideas suggested as part of Racing For Change's plan to modernise horse racing but one of the bookies involved said punters hated it.

Independent bookmaker Geoff Banks told BBC Sport: "A lot of people were quite confused. People were standing in front of me and didn't understand it.

"A lot of my regular customers were coming up and asking what my [decimal] odds represented.

"I have done the trial now and it was quite an expensive exercise for me as a businessman.

"I felt it was important to give it a go but there was no evidence it would make more people go racing. I remain far from convinced of the value of decimal odds.

"The trial should stop now. It was only supported by a few bookmakers and a couple of them pulled out during the day because they had so little business."

However, another initiative – Free Racing Week – which ended on Saturday, has been hailed as a big success.

Nine racecourses joined the promotion and 40,000 extra racegoers attended.

Racing For Change spokesman Nick Attenborough said market research had been conducted and added: "Early results for the first seven meetings show that 31 per cent of respondents were visiting a racecourse for the first time. A further 32 per cent were infrequent visitors or lapsed racegoers."

He said 55 per cent of those questioned stated they were very likely to come racing again and less than 1 per cent said they would never come again.