There's a lot of sense in both Stamp and Will's posts, but how Savill can come out of the woodwork and make lofty pronouncements (must be on a flying visit from his Caribe home) when Plumpton's run on a shoestring, looks like a load of potting sheds and still can't handle the crowds when it's wet, because there's nowhere to park (unless you want to be tractored in, then tractored out - or come in a 4x4), doesn't even supply its staff with foul-weather gear or any sort of uniform - pshaw! I don't think he knows where his pockets are, let alone be willing to put his hands in them to fund a modern racecourse, so his words in particular are hypocritical.
But of course there's hardly any incentive to own racehorses, given the shocking prize monies on offer, and the serious pro rata drop over the years. All costs concomitant to ownership (and breeding) have risen - all rewards for helping to keep British racing going have diminished.
It's nothing to do with 'bad' racing - it's to do with there being no money apart from Grade to Classic levels. Even Listed races haven't kept pace, pro rata, so just think how crap regular handicaps' prizes (the backbone of racing) are now.
Racing for Change is trying to address getting people to GO racing, though, Will, rather than sit at home peering into their screens or mobiles for just the betting experience. They want crowds to enjoy seeing real horses, in the flesh, rather than one-inch high pictures of them, in the hope that they'll be so impressed by their day's experience that they'll be drawn to ownership. The best way forward for that, as things stand, is to join a racecourse's or trainer's racing club and enjoy the fun of ownership without any of the pressures of sole or dual owning.
Of course, you'll get bookies/exchanges saying that they do support racing handsomely, by sponsoring entire cards: Laddies, Betdaq, Betfair, Blue Square, William Hill, etc., etc. To which yes, they do - but the cost of sponsoring an average race is perhaps £500-£1000, peanuts by their standards, and mostly done for advertising purposes (hence race titles complete with full e-mail addresses and phone numbers). But the prize money connected to those races is not even peanuts, it's so low.
