Podcast 28/02/25

A cracking good natter about racing matters, then Sean and I spent half an hour trying to work out the winners for several races taking place tomorrow.

For the members hard of hearing, please find my side of our conversation below.

1. Are Owners really shouldering all the burden in racings complex world of finances?

No real answer to this is there? I’ve spent a little time this week looking for details on who pays what and if we use the average cost to owners, we can say it’s around £316,330,000 just to have horses in training.

It’s estimated we have around 14,000 horses in training, and the average cost of keeping a horse in training (BHA figures), is £22,595 per annum….so multiply 14,000 x £22.595 and you get that figure of £316m

In 2024 it was estimated bookmakers would have to pay £315.2m for media rights. When you then add things like sponsorship, that rises to around £350m

So that implies the bookmakers pay most into the pot….but then, this doesn’t take into account the cost of purchasing a racehorse. It doesn’t take into account race entry fees, vets bills, cost of entries, diesel getting to a track, the bill you get for having stable staff going to the races with your horse, or the overnight bill you get for those staff, if they are required to go the day before.

I remember paying close to £700 nearly 10 years ago now, to have a vet go to a yard to perform an inspection of a horse I was considering buying. That included an onsite x-ray which found issues I had a feeling existed. Saved me £25k buying a horse that never saw a racecourse.

The biggest consideration I’d say we need to bear in mind is, the bookmakers spend that money to get a return, owners pay it and only a handful will ever get it back.

Without a doubt owners make the biggest sacrifices, and, as Dan Skelton quite rightly pointed out in his recent Racing Post article, if wasn’t for owners, we’d have no racing.

• Punters ignored once more – Baroness Twycross, gambling minister has a meeting soon with the BGC – but has so far failed to meet with punter groups – is she chatting to the foxes while ignoring the chickens?

This is not now, and never will be, about the chickens.

This, 100%, is about Government controlling your finances, knowing how much you make per annum, and where it is spent. If you spend more than you earn officially, they want to know why it wasn’t declared, and tax paid on it.

In today’s Racing Post someone is quoted as saying that if you go to a supermarket and use your credit card to buy alcohol, and fill a trolley, nobody is going to stop you at the checkout to discuss your drinking habits. Nobody is going to ask if you have an issue with alcohol, so we can forget this idea that the checks etc are anything to do with helping people that have an issue/addiction, with betting. They are now asking people that bet £10 per month to provide the information someone betting £10k per month has to provide.

At some point, out of courtesy, they may pay lip service to punter groups, but anything offered up by those groups will be written down, then the piece of paper put in the bin once the meeting has concluded and everyone has gone home.

I read recently that around 22.5m adults enjoy a flutter every month and a recent Health Survey for England estimated 0.4% of the population has a problem with gambling.

A way in which this enables the Amish out there to manipulate these figures is to say that’s 0.4% of the 68.35m that makes up our population, and not 0.4% of the 22.5m that enjoy a fl...