A blueprint with teeth
The covering sheds are emptying. The betting market is haemorrhaging £3 billion. The genetic base is shrinking faster than a bookmaker's margins after affordability checks. And somewhere in Whitehall, a minister is deciding whether to back a sport that knows where it's going — or one that can't agree which direction to face.
Here is what British racing can actually become, if it acts now, writes Ed Grimshaw, one of the authors of the Racing Innovation Group’s report
“Racing Needs Transformational Change not Incremental Tinkering”
** Written before Lord Allen's departure
The rebellion begins in a February yard
Walk into a British racing yard in March 2026 and the pressure announces itself before anyone speaks.
It’s in the empty boxes — ten of them, standing open to the wind, that had horses in them 18 months ago.
It’s in the phone call the trainer is making to an owner who’s wavering, doing the maths one more time on £30,000 annual fees for a 10p-in-the-pound return.
It’s in the yard radio playing the same grim arithmetic: prize-money down, field sizes down, betting turnover down, everything spiralling in the wrong direction except the one number that keeps climbing — 522 per cent more people visiting unlicensed betting operators since 2021, taking their money to a black market that contributes nothing to this sport’s future.
Drive 30 miles to a stud farm and you find the rebellion’s true epicentre.
Mares who were covered last season won’t be covered this one. Stallion books have thinned from expectation to reality. And in a farm office somewhere in Newmarket or The Curragh, a breeder is looking at a spreadsheet that shows a median £33,000 loss per yearling sold after nomination fees, a £27,000 loss per foal, and a market in which only 29 per cent of yearlings made any profit in 2024.
The owner-breeder share of the foal crop has fallen from 52 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent by 2024.
The commercial breeders are walking away. The sentimentalists are running out of sentiment.
A declaration of interest: I’m one of three authors of the Racing Innovation Group’s report “Racing Needs Transformational Change not Incremental Tinkering”, alongside Jon Hughes (procurement and supply-chain specialist, 140 wins as an owner, former chairman of specialist management consultancies) and Ged Shields (former VP at Sherwin-Williams, the man who gave the world “Does Exactly What It Says on the Tin”).
We are self-funded. We have no institutional alignment, no racecourse group backing us, no financial stake in the proposals we make.
What we have is a combined 100 years of experience in commercial leadership, strategic consulting, and financial turnaround — and a conviction, grounded in data we didn’t invent, that British racing is choosing its crisis right now, in real time, by continuing to do what it has done for a decade: talk eloquently about transformation while structurally preventing it from happening.
The numbers don’t lie, and they don’t care about your feelings. Here they are.
The Death Spiral: Numbers that bite
Betting: Inflation-adjusted online racing betting has collapsed from £11.5 billion to £8.37 billion [BHA/HBLB data].
Year-to-date turnover through Q3 2025 sat 12.8 per cent below 2023 and 4.2 per cent below 2024. Average turnover per race at core fixtures is down 14.4 per cent. That’s not a blip. That’s a market in retreat.
The black market: Visits to unlicensed operators are up 522 per cent since 2021. These are not people who stopped betting on racing. These are people systematically driven away by affordability checks and account restrictions, who migrated to a market that contributes zero levy, zero prize-money, zero to anyone in this sport.
Breeding: The British foal crop stood at 3,872 in 2025, down from a peak of 5,920 in 2008 — a third gone in 17 years.
The TBA projects approximately 3,263 foals by 2026/27, against 4,601 in 2022. That’s a near-30 per cent collapse in five years. What was forecast to take 25 years has taken five [Weatherbys Return of Mares 2025, TBA AGM September 2025].
Stallions: In Britain, 88 stallions stood in 2025 versus 147 in 2021 — a 40 per cent reduction in four years. Stallion numbers have halved in 15 years, while broodmare numbers fell only 25 per cent, producing what Weatherbys calls “the highest stallion-to-broodmare ratio in the world.” The genetic base is concentrating precisely when diversity is what competitive fields demand.
Field sizes: 40 per cent of races in 2025 featured seven or fewer runners. The critical threshold for betting market liquidity – identified in the Racing Innovation Group report at 7.9 runners – is where self-reinforcing deterioration accelerates. British racing is already there.
Ownership: 97 per cent of owners fail to recover their costs. Median return: 10 pence in the pound on training fees approaching £30,000 per year. The proposition is not viable. Owners are not stupid.
The young: Less than 20 per cent of racing’s audience is under 35, against 45 per cent for comparable sports. Flat meeting attendance has fallen by nearly a million since 2015.
This is (see table opposite) not a forecast. This is the operating reality, documented, measured, and accelerating.
Marcus Aurelius would call this a self-inflicted wound. British racing is choosing to bleed out.
But, and this is the point of everything that follows, the chain runs in reverse, too. Arrest any link decisively and the virtuous circle can compound upwards instead of down. That’s not hope. That’s mechanics.
Not a menu — a machine
Here’s the single most important thing to understand about the Racing Innovation Group’s blueprint: it is not a menu.
Every industry strategy document produced for British racing in the past decade has been treated as a selection of options from which stakeholders pick the least disruptive items, implement them partially, achieve partial results, and then declare the whole programme a disappointment. The result: a decade of stalled initiatives that the BHA’s own annual reports document in painful detail.
The Racing Innovation Group’s eight strategic initiatives are different in one fundamental respect: they work as a system, not a shopping list.
Past reforms failed due to stakeholder veto culture with 20-plus organisations with differing priorities.
Every well-intentioned initiative has been watered down to the lowest common denominator that everyone in the room can tolerate — which is, by definition, insufficient to address a structural crisis. The governance structure has historically supplied enough vetoes to prevent uncomfortable conversations from reaching conclusions. Well-intentioned proposals are announced, applauded, gradually softened in implementation, then quietly absorbed back into the structures they were supposed to replace.
The Racing Innovation Group’s answer? Implement the system as a system.
Governance creates execution capacity. Product reform drives betting revenue. Revenue funds prize-money. Prize-money sustains breeding. Technology enables intelligence. The political bargain builds the government framework for Levy reform. Each element depends on and reinforces the others. Weaken one and you constrain all. Invest in all and the multiplier effects compound in the right direction — faster and further than any single initiative could reach alone.
Governance: build the execution beast (or admit you’re just talking)
Racing is in limbo. Lord Allen’s governance reforms, announced with fanfare, endorsed by industry figures whose support was required to make them credible, are on hold.
The permanent CEO expected during 2026 has not been confirmed. The commercially-oriented independent directors have not been appointed. The independent executive structure exists in principle but does not yet operate with the authority it will need to deliver transformation rather than incremental tinkering.
Every month in limbo is a month the crisis compounds. Breeder exits don’t wait for the new CEO. The betting market doesn’t pause its contraction.
The foal crop continues its collapse on a timeline entirely indifferent to the BHA’s organisational transition. And the longer the reforms take, the greater the risk they arrive too late, too tentative, or already compromised by the concessions that extended negotiation always produces.
The question? Will Lord Allen’s board reach the starting line with real authority?
Or will it arrive, like its predecessors, already weakened by the deals required to get it into existence?
This is not cynicism. This is the pattern. Racecourses still control fixtures, prize-money allocation, and commercial infrastructure.
A board that cannot override racecourse veto on tier licensing, cannot mandate fixture restructuring, cannot compel prize-money redistribution — can govern the status quo with slightly better minutes. It cannot transform anything.
What real authority looks like. A central commercial body, within the BHA or free-standing,staffed with top-flight private sector executives carrying genuine programme management credentials and delegated power to act within agreed parameters.
Not advisory. Not conditional on consensus. Not the kind of authority that exists on paper until someone exercises it and discovers it doesn’t exist at all.
Authority within a framework: transparent milestones, published quarterly metrics, regular external review.
That’s what makes it accountable rather than arbitrary. Authority without accountability is a power grab. Accountability without authority is a talking shop. British racing has had enough talking shops.
The Regulatory Speed Prize (a quick win for any incoming CEO)
British racing’s regulatory approval processes are two to three times slower than Hong Kong and Australia [international benchmarking data].
Every new betting product, race format innovation, technology integration requiring regulatory sign-off takes between two and three times as long as it needs to.
The fix: AI-assisted licensing within a digital-first framework, a single registration system.
Controlled sandboxing of new products. This is not radical. It’s standard practice in the jurisdictions British racing competes against.
Moving to that model within 12 months would transform the sport’s ability to respond to commercial opportunities at commercial speed.
Product: Four tiers to rule them all (And save the breeding base)
The fixture list conversation British racing has been having with itself for
15 years ends here.
Entry to each tier is earned (see table in magazine), not assumed with qualification-based licensing against objective criteria.
A racecourse that doesn’t meet tier 2 standards doesn’t host tier 2 racing. This is how every major tiered sport in the world operates. British racing has avoided it because the conversations are uncomfortable and requires telling a racecourse it’s been relegated. Not every racecourse will sign up, but 100 per cent unanimity is not required.
That’s fine. Actively promote and support those prepared to participate. Those that decline aren’t blocked, they simply bypass the benefits. The sport doesn’t need every venue, it just needs enough.
The breeding revival hidden in the prize-money
And here is the connection the industry hasn’t discussed loudly enough: those prize-money targets are the mechanism for slowing breeder exit.
Tier 2 rebuilds the economic case for producing the quality of horse who competes in Listed and valuable handicap company, the bread-and-butter of commercial breeding operations who are not targeting Group 1s.
At the foundation tier, a horse finishing fourth in a Class 5 handicap will generate something toward the cost of its existence.
The proposed racecourse tiers will not rescue breeding economics overnight, but could begin to restore the logic of staying in the game – of keeping the mares, renewing the stallion books, producing foals for a British market rather than selling stock to France, Australia, India (61, 46, 61 mares exported respectively in 2024 alone), or simply walking away.
A foal who is not born in 2025 cannot run in 2027, a race can not be filled with horses who do not exist – the fixture reform and the breeding revival are the same reform, seen from different angles.
Funding: Five Moves to Flip the Script
1: Double the Levy, halve the duty, keep bookmakers whole
The hack: Increase Horserace Betting Levy from 10 per cent to 20 per cent, simultaneously reduce general betting duty from 15 per cent to 5 per cent
Bookmaker’s total combined burden: unchanged, distribution shifts from Exchequer to sport (James Noyes & Thomas Savill)
Why it’s winnable: The Treasury’s own rationale for exempting racing from the November 2025 Remote Betting Rate increase was that the existing 10 per cent Levy already creates a de facto
25 per cent combined rate.
Apply that logic consistently and a doubled Levy at halved duty is revenue-neutral redistribution, not additional cost imposition. The Treasury has already implicitly made this argument. Racing just needs to make it back to them explicitly.
Context: Remote Gaming Duty rises 21 per cent → 40 per cent (April 2026). General online sports betting duty rises 15 per cent → 25 per cent (April 2027).
The wider gambling sector faces £1.6 billion in additional costs. Racing’s licensed commercial partners are being systematically weakened by a regulatory environment racing cannot control. The notion that racing prospers while its funding ecosystem compresses is strategically naive.
2: Build the racing-owned platform and recapture the black market
The 522 per cent problem: Visits to unlicensed operators since 2021 aren’t evidence of people who stopped betting on racing. It is evidence of people systematically driven away by affordability checks, account restrictions, stake limitations – they have not stop betting, just migrated.
The solution: A racing-owned wagering platform (modelled on Hong Kong Jockey Club) offering:
It coexists with bookmakers, and doesn’t displace them. It competes for customers currently lost to the black market and competing sports.
The bookmakers’ objection – partial market displacement – is real.
The answer: the alternative is continued black market growth and Levy pressure on a shrinking licensed market. A larger, healthier regulated market benefits licensed operators even if the margin split is different.
Minimum requirements: Substantial third-party investment to access proven technology. Independent governance with clear accountability.
Regulatory approval that doesn’t take three times as long as Hong Kong (see regulatory speed prize).
3: Target £250-500m in transformational capital
British racing is not short of narrative – it has Ascot, Cheltenham, Goodwood, Newmarket, it has the thoroughbred, the most compelling athletic animal in sport, with bloodlines stretching back centuries.
What it lacks is the commercial structure that allows serious capital to take it seriously (see table below).
Proof of concept and what comparable sports did
F1’s Liberty Media reboot: $1.8bn → $3.2bn revenue in six years. The sport tebuilt the product for audiences
who hadn’t previously considered themselves F1 fans with the netflix series, digital streaming and social media expansion.
Cricket’s The Hundred: ECB secured £1.1bn private equity. 25 per cent new audience, 42 per cent female viewership. Format innovation transformed revenue model.
Neither sport had better raw material than racing, and both required commercial structure before capital arrived.
Racing has the raw material in abundance. The problem is the structure, not the product.
4: Monetise the land, reinvest in the sport
Racecourse property assets represent billions of pounds in land value, there should be targeted joint ventures and selective sales for redevelopment — not closure, not shareholder return, but a focused reinvestment in modernisation.
This is standard capital recycling in any asset-intensive business that has under invested in its core product for a generation.
Racecourses sitting on valuable land while struggling to fund prize-money represent a misallocation of capital a properly structured commercial body can address.
5: Set the targets and hold the system to them
Customers: meet the fans you forgot existed
The most damning observation in the entire Racing Innovation Group report: betting operators understand racing’s customers better than racing does.
Not marginally better. Substantially better. The intelligence advantage that ought to reside with the sport, the entity generating the product, sits instead with the businesses taking money from the people who consume it.
Fan data is scattered across multiple separate bodies, there is no unified owner identification.
Racing Digital delayed beyond the point where explaining the delay requires more words than describing the platform. No consumer-facing digital product of any scale.
The solution?
British Racing data consortium, integrating customer data from across the sport – bettors, raceday attendees, owners, TV viewers
One racing portal: Unified interface across all relationships
Owner smart cards: Unique owner identification enabling differentiated racecourse experience based on verified investment
Measurable targets
£45m+ new data revenue
25 per cent increase in identifiable fan database by end 2028
18-34 cohort as primary demographic (currently <20 per cent of racing’s audience vs 45 per cent for comparable sports)
The Gaming Gap: Building tomorrow’s fans today
Formula 1: 73 per cent growth in female support via Netflix series
FIFA: 325 million gaming audience driving £1bn+ turnover
NBA: Systematically targeted China, built global fanbase
Premier League: Global broadcasting strategy turned English league into planetary product
British Racing has no mainstream, globally relevant racing game franchise. No streaming narrative, and no immersive digital experience through which a 23-year-old discovers this sport is for them.
Racing asks that 23-year-old to navigate a racecard formatted for a different generation, on a platform delivered with technology from a different decade, then wonders why they choose FIFA or F1 instead.
A racing gaming initiative would develop high-quality racing games to commercial standards competitive with the market where younger audiences spend their digital leisure time. This is not marketing. This is construction of the customer pipeline that does not currently exist.
Without it, the 18-34 gap widens, the audience ages, and the market makes the decisions for racing that racing declined to make for itself.
The Bargain: What we give, what we get
British racing secured exemption from the November 2025 Remote Betting Rate increase through the Axe the Racing Tax campaign, it was a tactical success.
That same unity must now be directed at structural reform, formalised into a government alliance with sustained professional lobbying and partnership with Pitch to Post.
The political bargain will allow both sides to get what they need.
Racing commits to:
Equine welfare:
Full lifecycle tracking from foaling through retirement. Dedicated Levy percentage for aftercare.
Workforce development:
Racing Academy transformation. Guaranteed career pathways.
Environmental responsibility: Carbon offsets tied to breeding. Regional fixture clustering to reduce transport.
Diversity & inclusion:
Inner-city pathway programmes with measurable targets. Governance diversity mandates.
Government supports:
Levy reform
Duty harmonisation
Modernised funding arrangements
Both sides deliver or neither side gets what it needs. That’s how political bargains work, and this one has more substance than most.
Welfare and diversity are commercial rocket fuel as 76 per cent of under-35s express welfare concerns about horseracing before they’ve been persuaded to engage [Racing Innovation Group survey data, consistent with BHA Project Beacon].
Three-quarters of the demographic racing urgently needs carry a welfare concern as a precondition.
A full lifecycle programme addresses reality and perception, and produces, as commercial by-product, the verifiable welfare commitment that makes the political bargain credible to government.
Non-white participation is less than eight per cent in racing as against 30 per cent+ in comparable sports. Racing recruits more staff from India than from British inner cities.
These are not moral observations dressed as statistics. They are commercial constraints on the social licence that underpins racing’s relationship with government and the audiences the sport needs to reach.
Address them and the social licence strengthens. Ignore them and the political bargain falls apart.
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