From Alan Lee, The Times.
Racing has donned blinkers in a recession and the result could be calamitous. Its key revenue stream is in freefall, horse numbers are falling, trainers are imperilled and still more owners are soon to be driven away by promised cuts in prize money. The response of the industry? Put on yet more racing.
The 2010 fixture list was published yesterday and you couldn't make it up. Instead of prudent trimming against the imminent effects of financial meltdown, racing presented an increase of 13 in a dizzying schedule of 1,503 meetings. Yet they did so despite saying they knew it was wrong.
Ruth Quinn, racing director of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), admitted: “We have grave reservations that this number of fixtures is not sustainable and we'll have to keep very close attention on developments.” Before, presumably, slamming that stable door when all the horses have long since bolted.
Some sympathy is due to Quinn and the BHA. Staggeringly, at least to the outside world, fixture lists are moulded by the leading bookmakers. They have systematically held racing to ransom through the iniquitous Levy process, demanding that meetings are held to a volume and schedule that satisfies their betting shops, rather than racecourses and racegoers.
The idea that racing and betting work together is risible. Bookmaker motives increasingly involve attracting customers to play their wretched fairground machines, rather than creating a fixture list that helps racing thrive. Now, with efforts to find a replacement for the Levy apparently stuck in the slow lane, racing is more than ever obliged to operate against its own best interests.
It shames many significant racing figures that they clung to the discredited Levy even when commercial alternatives were being sought. They are now reaping the whirlwind of a craven misjudgment. “The relationship between horse racing and betting through the Levy is badly broken,” Quinn confessed.
The 2010 Levy is forecast to produce £94 million, a crash of more than £20 million in a year. Prize money cuts of at least 5 per cent are mooted. And this at a time when owners are going bankrupt and trainers seeing numbers fall. Latest official figures show the racehorse population has dropped 2 per cent - and that was before the recession imposed itself.
Racing may be hamstrung in some areas but it has been weak in others. The collapse of Great Leighs offered an easy economy, yet instead scores of expendable fixtures were offered elsewhere.
Good Friday racing - one increase with obvious benefits - has been deferred again, yet winter evening and twilight meetings on the all-weather remain, a bookmaker demand with no discernible return for the sport. Bank holidays look better, Sundays not so.
The overall impression, though, is of naivety. In a recession, the accepted wisdom is that industries cut back. Airlines trim their flights, car factories reduce their output, simply because demand will fall and costs must be cut.
For racing to survey its already swollen programme, and decide to add still more, defies business logic. No good can come of it.
Racing has donned blinkers in a recession and the result could be calamitous. Its key revenue stream is in freefall, horse numbers are falling, trainers are imperilled and still more owners are soon to be driven away by promised cuts in prize money. The response of the industry? Put on yet more racing.
The 2010 fixture list was published yesterday and you couldn't make it up. Instead of prudent trimming against the imminent effects of financial meltdown, racing presented an increase of 13 in a dizzying schedule of 1,503 meetings. Yet they did so despite saying they knew it was wrong.
Ruth Quinn, racing director of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), admitted: “We have grave reservations that this number of fixtures is not sustainable and we'll have to keep very close attention on developments.” Before, presumably, slamming that stable door when all the horses have long since bolted.
Some sympathy is due to Quinn and the BHA. Staggeringly, at least to the outside world, fixture lists are moulded by the leading bookmakers. They have systematically held racing to ransom through the iniquitous Levy process, demanding that meetings are held to a volume and schedule that satisfies their betting shops, rather than racecourses and racegoers.
The idea that racing and betting work together is risible. Bookmaker motives increasingly involve attracting customers to play their wretched fairground machines, rather than creating a fixture list that helps racing thrive. Now, with efforts to find a replacement for the Levy apparently stuck in the slow lane, racing is more than ever obliged to operate against its own best interests.
It shames many significant racing figures that they clung to the discredited Levy even when commercial alternatives were being sought. They are now reaping the whirlwind of a craven misjudgment. “The relationship between horse racing and betting through the Levy is badly broken,” Quinn confessed.
The 2010 Levy is forecast to produce £94 million, a crash of more than £20 million in a year. Prize money cuts of at least 5 per cent are mooted. And this at a time when owners are going bankrupt and trainers seeing numbers fall. Latest official figures show the racehorse population has dropped 2 per cent - and that was before the recession imposed itself.
Racing may be hamstrung in some areas but it has been weak in others. The collapse of Great Leighs offered an easy economy, yet instead scores of expendable fixtures were offered elsewhere.
Good Friday racing - one increase with obvious benefits - has been deferred again, yet winter evening and twilight meetings on the all-weather remain, a bookmaker demand with no discernible return for the sport. Bank holidays look better, Sundays not so.
The overall impression, though, is of naivety. In a recession, the accepted wisdom is that industries cut back. Airlines trim their flights, car factories reduce their output, simply because demand will fall and costs must be cut.
For racing to survey its already swollen programme, and decide to add still more, defies business logic. No good can come of it.
