Horse Racing Industry Focuses on Three Areas of Concern for the Sport

The horse racing industry has identified three key concerns among racegoers at an event organised by the British Horseracing Authority and Paddy Power and Betfair owner Flutter Entertainment.

The event, titled the Future of Racing Summit, gave 10 companies the opportunity to present a pitch to a collection of industry figures and venture capitalists.

The pitching companies included artificial intelligence (AI) platform Stablfy, which uses AI to support training and equine welfare, Fanbase, a raceday management tools and fan app, and E-Nano, which provides automated racecourse surface analytics.

Three key concerns

The cost of attending race meetings, difficulty in understanding the sport’s terminology and the welfare of racehorses stood out as the three main concerns that need to be addressed by the sport; these challenges are seen as particularly pronounced among the 18-28 age group.

The event was backed by Racecourse Media Group – the media rights holder for 37 major British racecourses – York Racecourse, and events company ClimbUK.

The event organisers aimed to build on insights from Project Beacon, a survey of more than 7,500 people published by the BHA last September, which identified open-minded rookies and social stakers as priorities for growth, totalling 7.1 million people in Britain and Ireland.

More to come

Pitches focused on four key themes; horse welfare, education, the raceday experience, and behind-the-scenes access to the racing world. York Racecourse will host a further event later in the year, providing an update on the outcomes from the Future of Racing Summit as well as the wider work of Project Beacon.

David Jones, Senior Independent Director of the BHA, said:

“The Future of Racing Summit was a fascinating event that demonstrated the range of technologies that exist which have the potential to grow our sport.

“It was most heartening to see companies travelling from all over the world to pitch to senior racing leaders, demonstrating that those of us inside the sport are not alone in seeing the opportunities that exist within British racing; others do too and we should be excited by what that tells us.”

Sebastian Butterworth, Strategic Racing Director for Flutter UKI, said:

“I’d like to thank all those who attended the event. We are really looking forward to continuing the work with the BHA to progress the programme over the coming months and explore how the concepts we heard can come to life and help grow our sport.”

Tax increase provides another issue

Aside from the issues mentioned at the Future of Racing Summit, horse racing is expected to feel the impact of the upcoming rise in online gambling taxes.

In April, remote gaming duty, paid on online casino betting, will increase from 21% of gross gambling yield to 40%. On top of this, general betting duty (GBD), paid on online sports bets, will go up from 15% to 25% of GGY.

While bets on horse racing will be exempt from the GBD tax rise, the industry is still expected to feel the impact, as a result of operators cutting their marketing spend on the sport in order to afford the increased tax bills. A potential early sign of this was Coral’s decision to end its sponsorship of the Coral Cup at the Cheltenham Festival.

The Entain-owned brand had sponsored the race since its inception in 1993, and Coral has been a sponsor at the Cheltenham Festival since 1974. When announcing the company’s decision, Simon Clare, Entain UK PR and Sponsorship Director, mentioned “the scale of the recent tax increase on betting operators means we must take difficult decisions to mitigate its impact.”