British horsemen’s group minimum prize money tariffs

swedish chef

swedish chef

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GODOLPHIN SUPPORTS BRITISH HORSEMEN’S GROUP MINIMUM PRIZE MONEY TARIFFS
23 March 2011

Godolphin horses will not run in British races which have prize money below the minimum tariff recommended by the Horsemen’s Group.
　
Simon Crisford, the Godolphin racing manager, revealed this policy at Godolphin’s annual media morning at Al Quoz Stables in Dubai on Wednesday, March 23.
　
He explained: "We will be supporting the tariffs and will not be running horses in any below-tariff races.
　
"Basically this is all about stable staff – it’s about trainers being able to pay a reasonable wage and people being potentially made redundant. Of course owners need prize money but the whole thing is about lots and lots of stable staff in Britain being made redundant if this whole matter is not sorted out.
　
"People will take their business overseas if British racing cannot do what is necessary. Every other country seems able to do so.
　
"Some owners don’t need prize money as much as others and we are obvious candidates.
　
"But we have got to remember that the prize money is not just for the owners - it filters all the way down through the industry to every single member of stable staff and all the others who are the backbone of the British horseracing industry.
　
"That is the point - it is about the cogs in the wheels that make the British horseracing industry turn.
　
"Godolphin is definitely supporting the tariffs and I know that all the other Maktoum ownership entities like Darley and Rabbah will be supporting them as well.
　
"We will still be based in England for the summer but you might see even more of our horses racing overseas. We like Newmarket as a summer base - all our facilities are there - but if England, has not got suitable races we will go and find them elsewhere.
　
"You will find that a lot of our good horses are running elsewhere, such as Poet’s Voice and Rewilding here in Dubai - these are obvious horses to race back in England but they might not if the races aren’t there for them.
　
"You have the new Champions’ Day and other British races that we will be looking at. It is our responsibility to do the best we can for our horses.
　
"We won’t be entering in below-tariff races and we will find other races instead. In this day and age of efficient travel, it is not so difficult."
 
I don't think there was ever the slightest chance they'd run even the family pet pony in a below-tariff race, to be honest. God's horses only turn up at somewhere like Lingfield, for example, to hoover up the Listed Class ones, and this year they even swerved the Anne of Cleves (Class 1, Listed) Stakes.

They don't need the money, as they say, but they do need prestige. If they can race where they can get both - even if it means running mostly in their own back yard and basically winning their own money, then so be it. We'll still see them in our Classics, which is where we'd expect them to be - not trundling round for £1,500 at Wolverhampton.
 
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But there are a number of Group 1's that fall below the tariffs. Races like the Lockinge, Queen Anne, Gold Cup do, as do the Hardwicke and Coventry and some other races at Royal Ascot.

This is a massive story if Godolphin elect not to run their horses in such races and something that British racing (whoever that is!) should be massively concerned about.
 
True, and there have been pointers to this going back some time.

The strength in depth of UK flat racing is being gradually eroded.
 
As long as whoever in charge of British racing wastes time supporting all the gaff and AW tracks, and refuse to revolutionise betting and income from betting, then you would hope the likes of Godolphin relocate to France, and British racing gets what it deserves.
 
Someone will know more than I on the subject, but as I understand, the tariff suggests recommended minimum prize money levels dependent on the grade of race. For a Group 1 it seems to be £256,034 but the Queen Anne and St James's Palace are worth only £250,000. The tariff recommended for races like the Coventry is £96,013, but the total prize fund currently is only £85,000.
 
How does 'whoever is in charge of British racing' waste time 'supporting all the gaff and AW tracks', Hamm? You're talking about the British Horseracing Association, under the arch of the Horsemen's Group, which set the tariff in the first place, but it's up to racecourses whether they go with it or not - it's a guideline, not a mandate to comply or die.

Gaff tracks cover most of the NH courses in that 'gaff' means 'small country track', not 'rubbish'.

DJ: didn't realise that some top races fall below what's been suggested as an RRP, thanks for the addendum.
 
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Godolphin having a runner in the Queen Anne is serious negative.
 
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krizon said:
How does 'whoever is in charge of British racing' waste time 'supporting all the gaff and AW tracks', Hamm? You're talking about the British Horseracing Association, under the arch of the Horsemen's Group, which set the tariff in the first place, but it's up to racecourses whether they go with it or not - it's a guideline, not a mandate to comply or die.

Gaff tracks cover most of the NH courses in that 'gaff' means 'small country track', not 'rubbish'.

DJ: didn't realise that some top races fall below what's been suggested as an RRP, thanks for the addendum.
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My point being that the levy should be used to fund the best racing, at the best courses, not the amount of courses there currently are in the UK, which is way too many, and the money is hence spread much too evenly. Their duty is to ensure horseracing as a sport is best supported; I believe they should not support racing at tracks which feature poor quality racing - this does nothing for racing as a sport, and plenty for those who would bet on 2 flies running up a wall! :)
 
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davidjohnson said:
Someone will know more than I on the subject, but as I understand, the tariff suggests recommended minimum prize money levels dependent on the grade of race. For a Group 1 it seems to be £256,034 but the Queen Anne and St James's Palace are worth only £250,000. The tariff recommended for races like the Coventry is £96,013, but the total prize fund currently is only £85,000.
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That seems awfully high for a 2yo Group 2 race.

Prize fund of the Coventry is equivalent to €110k. The Futurity is €100k
 
Ah, I get what you're saying now, Hamm (I think): the Levy Board's now much-reduced input should be spread around the tracks offering the better prize monies? However, the Horsemen's Group/BHA has not addressed racecourses' intransigence in ponying up out of their own coffers. Considering that the majority of races' prize money comes from sponsors, there is still a chunk chucked in by the Levy (albeit, as we know, shrunken due to bookies going offshore and being no longer liable for tax), racecourses, receiving at least £4K per race from SIS, don't throw in anything unless they have to.

I'd have liked the government to have got a grip on offshore income earned by onshore racing, tbh. Racing at its lower levels provides for a very high turnover in betting money, whether you find any pleasure in the prospect of most AW cards being Class 5 and 6. But more of that money's gone offshore and puts nothing back into racing. I don't know what the Irish govt. does to try and claw back money from offshore bookies' havens - I'd always assumed that offshore meant 'out of reach' to any government attempting to tax those profiting by millions from onshore products.

It's not really about the quality of racing - that's another issue. It's about tax dodging and its effect upon racing in the UK, if not Ireland (which, going by the size of its fields, isn't feeling the pinch so badly).
 
I can see this escalating

Champion Flat trainer Richard Hannon has thrown his weight behind the move to boycott race meetings where prize-money falls below the recommended Horsemen's Group tariff.

Godolphin. Sheikh Mohammed's powerful worldwide operation, have declared they will not patronise British races where tariffs were below the minimum, and now Hannon has added his support.

With race tariffs to be introduced in Britain on Saturday week, Hannon will recommend his owners swerve these tracks, beginning with a meeting 48 hours later at Windsor where he has been so successful.

"I am not one to get involved in racing politics, but the time has come to make a stand and I fully agree with the Godolphin team that radical action is required," the Wiltshire handler told his official website, www.richardhannonracing.tv.

"It costs on average between £16,000-£17,000 a year for an owner to have a horse in training, and with these cuts, the powers that be are simply driving them out of the sport.

"Windsor is one of my favourite tracks and I don't miss many Monday nights there, but unless my owners insist on me entering their horse I will be opting out of the first meeting there and, if things don't change, we could continue to be absentees.

"Windsor has been a lucky course for us and I have not taken this decision lightly, but we are getting the rough end of the stick and sometimes you have to say, 'Enough is enough'."
 
Why can't they just take the money they give to the AW and say 15/20 other tracks with the poorest racing away, re-distribute it amongst tracks with better racing - surely this would be a help of sorts?
 
Because bookmakers make lots of lovely dough out of the poorest racing, too, Hamm! Look at the betting - not the crowd - at Dundalk, for starters. You don't think any of them would survive on the tiny number of tracks which put on 'better' racing with just 22-24 fixtures each, do you?

Aha, that'd be the Richard Hannon running APACHE GLORY for Malih Basti (owner and breeder) at Lingfield in a Class 5 (rated 65) on March 18, would it? First prize: £1608 (pie and chips money for Mr Hannon Jr.). What's he going to say to all those owners with low-rated nags currently boosting his monthly fees? Bugger off, your horses ain't 'igh class enough for us?

Just before everyone assumes a pozzie of indignation and calls for AW and 'poor' tracks to be further disadvantaged - there are certainly thousands of horses in training. But take out your top half-dozen trainers of high-rated nags, and that'd be thousands of jobs gone at a time when there aren't a lot of alternatives to being a trainer, work rider, trainer's secretary, yard man, horsebox driver, transporter, farrier, saddler, jockey, jockeys' valets, let alone all racecourse staff ... you get the picture. And as if breeders need even more damage done to them!

Yes, prize money needs to rise. Everyone knows that. But that doesn't mean that you cull racecourses which currently host hundreds of horses and thousands of betting opportunities every month, taking with them their dependents. Richard Hannon's a lucky boy - he took over from a highly-successful Daddy with a readymade operation. He can perhaps afford to be a bit smug about where he deigns to send his string. Hundreds of other trainers in the lower ranks: John Jenkins, Roger Ingram, John Gallagher, and those on the way up like George Baker, David Simcock (still growing their reputations and building up their ownership lists) don't come ready armed with gleaming bright little 2 y.o.'s by the dozen. They tend to fill the Class 6 and 5 races more than others because their horses are lowly-rated. Yet their owners still want to keep paying for their horses to run, which is their prerogative - and because they're not paying £100,000 and up to buy them! The appeal of the lower-rated horse is its low initial cost and the chance that, at its level, it will win occasionally. You would wipe out whole swathes of the horse population, taking with them their owners and the people they in turn support, if you took all monies off the courses putting on lower-class racing.

You would put hundreds of trainers out of business and thousands of attendants out of work if you took your suggestion to its logical conclusion, Hamm.
 
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I am not being heartless, but no-one has a right to work in racing as a trainer. The thing is, the model in the UK is flawed. There are too many races, too many horses and too many courses. Divide up the pie as many times as racing in the UK does, and you end up with crumbs. Radical action is needed (and in other areas around betting) and the sport itself must be the priority.
 
You don't usually start training with only Group horses, Hamm - most trainers begin as apprentice pupils or sometimes inherit a going concern if they're lucky, but most have to start with modest horses and small strings. While perhaps no-one has a 'right' to any work, many trainers are trying to move upward armed with what their owners can afford. Next argument will be that no-one 'needs' to own a racehorse, which is true, but then if we roll out that to its absurdest conclusion, there would be no racing at all on account of it not being a necessary adjunct to being alive!

But it isn't the amount of racing that's buggered things up, Hamm, it's the drop (and it's a significant one) in the contribution by the Levy Board from tax from bookmakers. As the big guns continue to depart for sunnier, tax-free shores, things can only worsen. That's why the government needs to look hard at why the nation provides the product off which they feed, but return nothing. You breed the horses in the UK, you stable them at considerable cost, you have British (and other nationals) jockeys riding them, but British bookmakers can rake in the money made out of all of these outgoings by other people, and give nothing back in tax. The Levy can't tax what isn't there to be taxed and it's made its point that it won't raise the contribution it's already making.

Stalemate - but cutting off the left hand because the right hand isn't working too well doesn't seem to me the best way forward to gaining better mobility!
 
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Confused...

I must admit I'm also confused by Richard Hannon's position on this. He's given himself a let-out by saying "if the Owners insist on running".

I do wonder if we will see another concerted attempt at a boycott of sorts by Trainers perhaps around Easter.
 
Amanda Perrett

You will have seen that the Horsemen’s Group has issued a tariff to racecourses regarding minimum levels of prize money. Trainers are in full support of the tariff and I am very much hope you will back them with your support also. We have seen levy income to the industry falling dramatically with BHA’s official minimum values being reduced as a result. (From January 2011, many BHA minimum values have been withdrawn completely.) At the same time, we know racecourses’ media rights income has increased and in 2011 some racecourses have announced increased income from attendance and other activity. The Tariff has been calculated to include a fair proportion (35%) of racecourses’ UK media rights income, which combined with the other sources of prize money, should provide a total prize fund of £100m. It is arguable that horsemen should demand a greater percentage but we accept that racecourses need to utilise media rights to meet the general operating costs. The Horsemen's Group has allocated 68% of this total as minimum values to be distributed amongst each class of race according to the BHA’s official scale. For the first time, these minimum values will vary according to the day of the week, in acknowledgment of the racecourses’ ability to generate differing amounts of income across their fixture list. These figures have been carefully calculated over recent months and are a fair reflection of what racecourses can afford and what horsemen need to produce the horses. Using the Horsemen's tariff, owners and trainers now have an accurate picture of what racecourses are able to pay as minimum prize money and to take decisions about where to run based on these figures. Improved prize money is crucial to all of us and this is one way owners and trainers working together can help to shape the future. I strongly urge you to add your support to the tariff and confirm that from the date it is to take effect, you will support me to enter your horse/horses only in those races that meet of exceed the tariff. Amanda Perrett
 
krizon said:
You don't usually start training with only Group horses, Hamm - most trainers begin as apprentice pupils or sometimes inherit a going concern if they're lucky, but most have to start with modest horses and small strings. While perhaps no-one has a 'right' to any work, many trainers are trying to move upward armed with what their owners can afford. Next argument will be that no-one 'needs' to own a racehorse, which is true, but then if we roll out that to its absurdest conclusion, there would be no racing at all on account of it not being a necessary adjunct to being alive!

But it isn't the amount of racing that's buggered things up, Hamm, it's the drop (and it's a significant one) in the contribution by the Levy Board from tax from bookmakers. As the big guns continue to depart for sunnier, tax-free shores, things can only worsen. That's why the government needs to look hard at why the nation provides the product off which they feed, but return nothing. You breed the horses in the UK, you stable them at considerable cost, you have British (and other nationals) jockeys riding them, but British bookmakers can rake in the money made out of all of these outgoings by other people, and give nothing back in tax. The Levy can't tax what isn't there to be taxed and it's made its point that it won't raise the contribution it's already making.

Stalemate - but cutting off the left hand because the right hand isn't working too well doesn't seem to me the best way forward to gaining better mobility!
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Simple solution let the Tote run racing and give all the other sports to bookmakers and licences to turn their shops into arcades.
 
It'll be interesting to see who might seriously pitch to buy it. There are supposedly all sorts of contenders, although some, like Simon and David Reuben who own Northern Racing and a large share of Arena Leisure, aren't really 'racing' people. Perhaps, seen as purely another investment opportunity, you don't need 'racing' people at the helm, though?
 
Glad to see it starting to come to a head. The bookies have to pay a fair price for the product they sell. If they do that the Sport/ Industry will thrive.
 
Who's fault is this? The bookies, the authorities, the trainers or does the punter have something to answer for? If people didn;t bet on the gaff track racing it wouldn't happen....

I haven't had a bet on the all weather for about two years but people clearly do and whilst they do it's here to stay and if it is the prize money will always be diluted.
 
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