Thoughts from the Global Racing Symposium

British racing has an insatiable desire for introspection, accentuated by a business model wholly fixed on wagering, and a sense of injustice that when terms were set on the legalization of betting shops back in 1963, the sport was robbed of its future.

I’ve been 7,000 miles away this past week at the Global Racing Symposium, a gloriously understated title for the annual 2 day get-together for American racing, across both North and Southern continents. The Symposium, now over 50 years young, is the brainchild of the University of Arizona, and its Race Track Industry Program, whose alumni are well represented in careers at every level in US horseracing.

US racing is a curate’s egg. The main events, reported in Britain’s Racing Post, paint a picture of a sport overflowing with money. The reality is somewhat different, and depends on which state you’re in. Kentucky and Wyoming have very supportive state legislatures, ensuring that horses like Wimbledon Hawkeye could visit from Newmarket and win a $3m purse. Yet in other states, prize money is dire.

This year's topics covered AI's impact on racing, technological innovation in wagering to capture a new generation of fans, the biomechanics of the horse as the athlete at the centre of the sport, and the mental wellbeing of the humans within the sport too.

Listening to leading US owner Mike Repole, who has invested millions in the sport stateside, I had to remind myself that he was talking about US horseracing, and not the British equivalent! Phrases like Collaboration, Working together, reducing factional interests, improving the commercialization of the sport peppered his interview with Christina Blacker, analyst for Fanduel TV, as one element of the annual Global Racing Symposium, which attracts a remarkable 600 delegates from across the racing divide.

The US model appears on the face of it, to have little in common with racing in Europe's varied jurisdictions. For starters, National Hunt racing is an aside to mainstream dirt and turf racing on the flat, whereas it's an integral part of the three principal European jurisdictions. But most European tracks face similar problems to many marginal US racetracks: a rising cost base; difficulty maintaining purses; challenges in winning customers to attend the sport on a regular basis.

It might surprise administrators and fans alike of our European venues that many provincial US racetracks are facing exactly the same issues. Often, one man and a dog are attending the races, and neither pays an admission fee. A majority of US and all Canadian racetracks don’t charge at all for admission, anticipating higher on-spend from fans who get in for free. The reality of this is not, as you might imagine, packed grandstands, but empty ones. After all, if admission doesn’t merit a charge, it can’t be worth watching can it?

The number of horseracing cards today in Ireland, Britain or France has little to do with consumer demand to attend the social atmosphere of the races. Rather, it’s about maintaining a presence in betting shops and online amongst a global wagering audience, and the Americans are doing the same, through racetrack-owned betting offices in their own locality and simulcasting.

British and German tracks can take pride in their active pursuit of spectators for each event, encouraging parties and individuals alike to experience live sport at our impressive range of eclectic venues. Racecourses know a great deal more about their fan base than their US equivalents. This is not always the case in France, where confidence in the reliance placed upon the distribution of wealth from France Galop has taken a hit recently, as lower returns from the PMU in the face of a cost of living crisis has led to lower prize funds. I am always amazed at how nonchalant the French provincial tracks remain about diversifying their racing income streams.

Repole was postulating about a lack of central direction for the sport in the US, which sounds very familiar. Yet the sport on both sides of the Atlantic is made up of businesses of different sizes, ethos, and ambitions, some diametrically opposed to other factions within the sport. If the path to the sunlit uplands of the future were that clear, we all would have taken that route by now.

Mike Repole, leading US owner, is not one to hide his opinions.

Our future, just like the US and many other jurisdictions, will be better through collaborative discussion, and a willingness to bring the small independent racecourses along for the ride, as part of the wider social appeal of racing. We should consider ourselves lucky; speaking to Zurich Racecourse, which stages two days of mixed cards each year, there is no return from betting other than through their own on-course tote. So the future could become much darker without a collective approach. And as we know, Jump racing has all but expired in Sweden, where bettors are turned off by any use of the whip other than for steering.

Entrenched positions are difficult to unravel. After all, they require give and take, and the givers are often those in the strongest position, least willing to offer something up. They have to be shown that surrendering control of assets like the fixture list has a medium term upside. And when the short term is one of not quite enough money to go round, the medium term seems a panacea too unrealistic to reach.