UK racing has softened its stance against having any dealings with online bookmakers that haven’t earned the new Authorized Betting Partner (ABP) designation.

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) announced on Tuesday that it would continue to allow affiliate websites to maintain a sponsorship presence at UK racetracks, even if these affiliates steer customers to online betting sites lacking the ABP designation.

In October, the BHA and the industry’s two main racing groups announced that only bookies who’d agreed to give racing a certain percentage of their online race betting revenue would be allowed to maintain racing sponsorship deals. To date, only Bet365, Betfair and 32Red have received official ABP club cards.

At the time of its October announcement, the BHA insisted that affiliate websites that continued to direct punters to non-ABP bookies would also be hit with the sponsorship ban-hammer. This language has since been scrubbed from the BHA’s press release.