RWWA boss Richard Burt said the funding of racing in Australia - which is among the most lucrative in the world - would shift towards the UK model where corporate bookmakers dominate and prizemoney is poor.

Australian owners, trainers and jockeys compete for almost $400 million more in prizemoney each year than their British counterparts.

"You can see how the market is going to unfold," Mr Burt told the tribunal. "If the TABs don't remain competitive, I believe you will end up with more of a UK-type model. And when corporates get a hold of the customers en masse, as evidenced by the UK, you end up with situations from a racing jurisdiction ??? you will find racing will decline.

"I'm very concerned that a non-competitive TAB going forward that doesn't have greater capacity to compete in marketing and digital innovation and when the market is moving that way, you will find there will be much greater market share shift and an underfunding of racing."

The tribunal is part way through 14 days of hearings to decide whether the two companies should be allowed to merge to create and $11 billion gambling company.

The merger is supported by all Australian racing jurisdictions except Victoria. Racing.com and CrownBet have also intervened in the proceedings to oppose the merger.

Mr Burt who told the tribunal he came to the hearing as a neutral party, but with expertise, said TAB operators such as RWWA, Tabcorp and Tatts - which supply the vast bulk of racing funding - were under intense pressure from Northern Territory licensed bookmakers.

"I evidenced in broad terms that the non Territory operators, which does include Betfair and rails bookmakers and TABs including ourselves, have grown approximately 4 per cent over the last seven years from $17 billion to $17.7 odd billion turnover," he said.

"And the corporates [NT-based corporate bookmakers] in the same period had grown approximately $5.4 billion to about $10.8 billion.

"If you don't have consolidation, if you don't have a strong TAB going forward, you will find that they will be marginalised, they won't be able to innovate, they won't be able to compete and they are the major funding of racing currently and I believe prospectively going forward."

Mr Burt also brushed aside suggestions that Tatts and Tabcorp would be the only bidders for the WA TAB if privatisation were put back on the table by the WA government.

He dismissed suggestions from counsel for the Victorian racing industry, Simon White SC, that corporate bookmakers lacked the expertise in running a tote and that would be a barrier from them bidding - a claim that opponents of the merger such as CrownBet and Racing Victoria have been pushing to portray the transaction as limiting competition for future wagering licences.

"The skills involved in running a risk-based corporate book are more intellectual than what running a tote is. They're not unique skills, to be honest and the corporate bookmakers through their parents have got the skill in the UK. Genuinely they're not unique skills," Burt said.

"You can acquire the talent very easily and they have a background of having this experience through their parents."