happens online and we don’t have the
right mechanisms in place to capture
that revenue.
“I am worried. I remember the situa-
tion racing was in back in the 1970s,
before the sport was saved by the enor-
mous amount of international invest-
ment that turned our industry around.
“Unless we get organised with a sus-
tainable financial mechanism, we are
going to lose our place. I have a lot of
international owners, and they aren’t
going to want to play here, invest here,
buy horses here, in a shrinking busi-
ness. Places like the USA and Australia
will become their new focus.”
Gosden agrees the sport has beenslow to react to the threat. “We were
heading this way anyhow,” he said.
“And I’m clear that the BHA hasn’t
focused enough on this for the last two
years. People are losing their jobs. Some
racecourses will go to the wall. I would
hate to see us shrivel and die.”
Tom Goff, a leading bloodstock agent
(a person who buys and sells thorough-
bred horses), said that he worries about
major owners taking their business
elsewhere. “British racing owes the
Maktoums and other overseas inves-
tors an enormous debt of gratitude,”
Goff, the chairman of Blandford Blood-
stock, said. “But my concern is what
happens to the British bloodstockmarket when the current generation of
owners hands over to the next.
“The fact is the BHA claimed a great
deal of credit for the first round of levy
reform but it did not go the whole way.
They dropped the ball a bit. We are in
desperate need of this second round of
levy reform. Our Irish and French
counterparts laugh at our levels of prize
money.”
The BHA rejects any accusation it
has been slow to respond. “The idea
that the BHA has been dragging its
heels is wrong,” said Martin Fewell, the
BHA’s director of corporate affairs, who
liaises on behalf of the governing body
with the Department for Digital, Cul-
ture, Media and Sport. “We are in dia-
logue with the government. But we also
want to refresh our case because of the
impact of Covid.
“We recognise that racing gets a
higher return from betting in other
countries. That means higher prize
money, which in turn means we risk
seeing owners being drawn away to
France and Ireland.”
Steve Harman has intervened de-
spite stepping down as the chairman of
the BHA two years ago. In August he
arranged for the home secretary, Priti
Patel, and her husband to meet trainers
and other racing figures at Gosden’s
Clarehaven Stables. A cross-racing
working group, led by the BHA board
member Joe Saumarez Smith, was
formed to revisit levy reform.
Harman claims an opportunity has
been missed. “Further levy develop-
ment was discussed with government
in 2018, and there were strong and real-
istic expectations that the next stage
would be in place during 2019,” he said.
“However it is good to see racing now
trying to get the levy development back
on track.” Jon Hughes, an owner who is
behind the campaign Keep Owners in
Racing, said: “Is it crisis or catastrophe?
I don’t know, but it’s bloody serious.”British horse racing is in dire financial
trouble. Jobs are under threat — some
estimate as many as 20 per cent in an
industry that employs 85,000 people
in the UK. Only last week at John
Gosden’s yard in Newmarket a single
vacancy attracted 14 applicants, all of
whom had been made redundant from
their previous jobs.
As with many sports in this country,
racing has suffered a heavy toll as a
result of Covid-19. It is Britain’s second-
biggest spectator sport and the exclu-
sion of racegoers, and the temporary
closure of racecourses, has come at a
significant cost. Punters returned in
limited numbers yesterday but the
British Horseracing Authority (BHA)
estimates the bill is as much as
£300 million and counting.
Senior figures in the sport have told
The Times that the pandemic has
accelerated a decline that was already
under way: a decline that is a conse-
quence of British racing’s failure to
generate sufficient revenue to maintain
its position as world leader.
A lack of cash means a shortage of
prize money, and the fear among key
individuals such as Gosden, the cham-
pion trainer, is that owners, breeders
and trainers will up sticks and go
elsewhere. This week Nick Littmoden,
another Newmarket-based trainer with
Sport
Racing on the
brink: ‘rescue
finances... or
shrivel and die’
more than 600 winners, announced
plans to relocate to France in the spring.
He cited a lack of prize money as a
“major part in wanting to go”.
The view widely held across the
racing community is that the prize
money pot needs to more than double,
from somewhere just shy of £100 mil-
lion a year to £200 million. Many feel
that the BHA, racing’s governing body,
has not been proactive enough in lob-
bying the government for a second levy
reform that would generate an extra
£80 million a year.
The levy is a tax paid by bookmakers
on the profits they make from racing
bets, yielding close to £100 million a
year — the bulk of which goes towards
prize money. But some say that a push
for change should have come much
sooner after the last reform, in April
2017, when bookmakers were required
by the government to return 10 per cent
of their gross profits from racing bets
back to the sport. Many felt that it
simply did not go far enough.
The BHA and the other racing bodies
want to introduce a new model that
takes between 1 and 1.5 per cent of total
turnover. This, essentially, is the
system that exists in Ireland, while in
France racing benefits from owning
the bookmakers. “Levy reform is the
only thing that will save this industry,”
Gosden said. “There’s no silver bullet.”
Gosden paints a bleak picture. “Right
now we are still No 1 for racing on turf,
in terms of the quality of our racing,” he
said. “But if we’re not careful we are
going to become nothing but a nursery
for other countries. We need to reorga-
nise the finances of our industry. An
awful lot of betting on racing nowMatt Lawton
Chief Sports
CorrespondentI
t wasn’t quite the
Cheltenham roar,
but the cheers at
Ludlow yesterday
were just as rousing as
racing fans — 600 ofthem — returned.
Apart from two test
events in September,
the meet was the first
to allow fans since the
sport resumed in June.Spectators
getting back
on track...
Diminishing returns in UK
Annual turnover from betting
UK..........................................................£15.6bn
Ireland...................................................£4.7bn
France...................................................£8.3bn
Australia .............................................. £9.4bn
How much goes back into sport
UK..........................................................£86.3m
Ireland.....................................................£58m
France................................................£718.2m
Australia ........................................... £247.5mDAVID DAVIES/POOL68 1GM Thursday December 3 2020 | the times