Hope and despair
It’s difficult not to be encouraged by attendance figures over Christmas
This article is taken from the February 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
Regular Turf Account readers will know that I usually see a half-empty glass when it comes to the future of racing. But it’s difficult not to be encouraged by the attendance figures over Christmas.
For years crowd numbers have been in free-fall, thanks to the combination of cost — entry to a decent enclosure is rarely less than £25, plus parking (as blatant a rip-off as exists), a racecard and expensive food and drink and you’re down at least £50 a head before you even start betting — and some pretty basic facilities in all bar top-notch venues, plus changing post-Covid habits.
But this year there has been a pretty big rise across the board. Newbury’s post-Christmas fixture saw a 48 per cent rise in the crowd to 9,983. Despite thick fog, there were 8,500 at Chepstow for the Welsh National (up from 6,900 last year). Ascot’s pre-Christmas meeting had a record crowd of 19,449; and the two-day King George meeting at Kempton drew 21,000, an increase of 1,000. Wetherby had its biggest attendance since the pandemic on Boxing Day with over 10,000 for the first time in eight years.
It might be glib to point out that when you get good horses racing each other, people want to watch. Constitution Hill against Lossiemouth followed by Sir Gino against Ballyburn, plus what looked like a very open and classy King George, all at Kempton, was mouthwatering. A few weeks earlier, ITV’s Champions: Full Gallop series did an excellent job at opening up jump racing to the wider public. It is good news that there will be a second series this year. In a rare example of racing’s powers-that-be acting with some sense, the Horserace Betting Levy Board has handed over £1 million towards the production costs and promotional budget for the second series.
I’ve closed my accounts with bookies who are demanding intrusive personal financial details
Because — this is where we switch from half-full to half-empty — in almost every other respect those powers-that-be have been at best pusillanimous and at worst idiotic in their response to the existential challenges racing faces. I won’t regurgitate my criticisms of their handling of so-called animal rights campaigners, nor of their mainly lamentable attempts at marketing and promotion (Premier Race Days, anyone?). But all else is dwarfed by the threat posed by the Gambling Commission and the moral panic it is pushing using stats about the spread of gambling addiction that aren’t even correct.
At the end of last year the commission published figures showing a £3 billion fall in online betting turnover on the sport in real terms over the last two years, down to £8.37 billion in the year to March 2024 — a decline of more than 25 per cent. If betting turnover had risen in line with inflation it would now be close to £11.5 billion.
This collapse is a direct hit on racing’s funding from the betting-associated revenue streams such as media rights on which it depends — at the very time when costs have risen with inflation, as well as the recent National Insurance increase.
The reason for the fall is straightforward: affordability checks. Anyone who bets online knows what’s happening. I’ve closed my accounts with some bookies who are demanding bank statements and other extensive intrusive personal financial details. I rarely bet more than £20 at a time. The lunacy of such checks was highlighted in a recent Racing Post story about a punter with annual net losses of £16.22. Tom Lane had deposited £415 since May 2018 and withdrawn £270. In December he was told that the bookmaker would no longer accept deposits “following an affordability review”. At the time he had a balance of £39.58.
The green shoots are all well and good, but the overall picture is anything but. The seeds of racing’s destruction are being planted and nurtured by an unaccountable and dogmatic Gambling Commission, which seemingly acts on the basis of a hatred of the very pastime it exists to regulate. Racing’s response to it has been pathetic. There is widespread anger amongst punters, let alone across racing itself, but you’d never know it from the limp reaction from the sport’s leaders. It’s already clear that however bad the financial collapse engineered by the Gambling Commission was in 2024, 2025 is going to be even worse.
