We need to work out better


I'm paying the gap in the costs! In all seriousness, the two media rights owners in the UK won't like this – I'm less worried about international rights owners as they are a smaller chunk of my business – but when I look at my bottom line on racing, it is a luxury product.


Bookmakers generate engagement in racing but, unfortunately in my view, football is now the number one betting sport in the UK. Whereas it should be racing. We tread a fine line.


If we had a tote firing on all cylinders, that would make up for the shortfall in racing.


Fixed odds have become more popular in recent years for the simple reason that it’s been a race to the bottom – offering spectacular value to punters, which is why they have turned to the big five bookies.


ways of structuring racing and funding it. In my opinion, the sport needs a benign dictator (which it has in the Jockey Club). It is currently too


fragmented across media rights owners, racecourse owners, bookmakers who


have perhaps too much power, TV rights, the British


Horseracing Authority, the Horsemen's Group, the Racehorse Owners


Association – the list goes on.


Is there any win: win situations for the sport and the industry?


We need to work out better ways of structuring racing and funding it. In my opinion, the sport needs a benign dictator (which it has in the Jockey Club). It is currently too fragmented across media rights owners, racecourse owners, bookmakers who have perhaps too much power, TV rights, the British Horseracing Authority, the Horsemen's Group, the Racehorse Owners Association – the list goes on. We've turned slightly into this communist series of committees, and I look at US sport where you have one body at the top, albeit with its own positives and negatives. It would be fantastic to have a single unifying person to drive UK racing forward in the future, but that opinion won't be particularly popular with the 4,000 stakeholders we have now.


NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA P71


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