Does the Jockey Club still act for the good of racing - or out of self-interest?
Racing writer of the year Lee Mottershead shines a light on a racing powerhouse
It was a decision greeted with disbelief.
At a time when British racing was attempting to persuade Boris Johnson's government that betting and gaming should be treated as separate entities in the upcoming gambling white paper, it was announced the Jockey Club had signed a five-year agreement that would lead to its races and racecourses being used in online casino, poker, virtual sports and bingo games.
How, people asked, could it possibly be helpful to racing that the Jockey Club had authorised gambling technology company Playtech to develop gaming products named after some of racing's most prestigious brands? At face value it seemed like an astonishing step for any racing organisation to take, let alone one that by royal charter is instructed to act for the long-term good of British racing in everything it does.
Yet this was not the first time racing stakeholders and fans had questioned the Jockey Club's actions.
Prior to the ill-fated tenure of former chief executive Delia Bushell, predecessor Simon Bazalgette led an organisation that unveiled proposals to sell Kempton, home of the King George VI Chase.
Following the departure of Bushell – who left office following claims she bullied staff and acted inappropriately – successor Nevin Truesdale has revived talk of creating a potentially controversial all-weather track in Newmarket. Plenty will question whether that is the right move for racing. Even more will challenge the idea of a fifth day for the Cheltenham Festival, about which a public consultation is expected to be confirmed in the near future.
Cheltenham is central to everything the Jockey Club does and is able to do. Britain's premier jumps track is much the biggest source of income for a body that has in its portfolio 15 racecourses, whose other crown jewels include the Grand National and Derby. Through Jockey Club Estates it manages 5,000 acres of land, predominantly made up of training grounds in Newmarket, Lambourn and Epsom. Since 2008 it has owned the historic National Stud and through Racing Welfare it supports the industry's workforce.
The Jockey Club has many strings to its bow but it does not govern and regulate racing, both of which were once its responsibility. From being founded in 1750 by a group of men united by their class, affluence and a shared passion for racing, the Jockey Club became the sport's ruler. Power rested in its hands until the creation of the British Horseracing Board in 1993, while it voluntarily handed over all regulatory responsibilities in 2006, mindful that a self-elected private members' club should not be in control of a major sport's propriety.
Those dispersals of power have left the Jockey Club doing what it does now. In light of recent decisions and announcements, how well is it doing?
For whose good, exactly?
The Jockey Club has members (currently 168 elected and 24 honorary) but not shareholders. As such, its profits are ploughed back into racing, largely the parts of racing owned by the Jockey Club.
Therein lies what some see as a flaw in the argument that the Jockey Club works for the good of the sport. Although critics tend to prefer to stay nameless, they argue the Jockey Club does what is best for the Jockey Club and describe as wholly disingenuous the notion that, ipso facto, this means the same thing as what is best for racing.
Truesdale, who reports to a seven-person board of six men and one woman led by senior steward Sandy Dudgeon, is quick to agree opinions can differ over what is in racing's best interests.
"It's subjective, of course it is," says Truesdale. "Most of the time, what's good for the Jockey Club and what's good for racing are congruent. We know we won't always get it right and people will disagree with us. I believe we always come from a good place in terms of saying, 'What do we think is best for the sport in the long term?', but the reality is you can measure that in so many different ways."
Outlining how fixtures provide evidence of the Jockey Club considering the bigger picture, Truesdale says: "We make a profit from every raceday. If we start adding fixtures into the mix now it might be good for us in the short term, but we also know that has significant ramifications for the sport. We are therefore not in any way advocating an expansion of the fixture list. If anything, a reduction in fixtures in the short to medium term may be the right thing to do."
Owner-breeder Philip Freedman, who for over seven years was one of the industry's most prominent political figures as chairman of the Horsemen's Group, has been a Jockey Club member for a quarter of a century. He concurs with those who believe lines can be blurred.
"I think Simon Bazalgette perhaps pushed the view that because something is good for the Jockey Club it is, per se, good for racing," says Freedman. "I personally don't think that is the case. If something the Jockey Club does is detrimental to other tracks, it doesn't follow that it's good for racing."
Asked about the Playtech deal, Freedman believes it was not necessarily wrong in principle but adds: "I hope no-one would disagree the timing was unfortunate."
Others have responded more strongly, not least a prominent industry figure who asked to remain anonymous. "I think the Playtech deal was a bit of a mistake," the individual says. "It's potentially a very clever deal, as it unlocks a previously unlocked property or asset, but it's a deal that was done at the wrong time, given the sensitivity of the gambling review."
So sensitive, perhaps, that while in the Playtech press release it was revealed the partnership's first new content would be launched "in time for this year's Cheltenham Festival", no such launch took place – or if it did, it was an extremely quiet one.
"I do think, to a degree, that particular deal and decision has been a little misunderstood," argues Truesdale.
"These games are very safe and they've been around for years, with close links to racing. For us, it's about saying, if this is already happening using brands closely associated with our own, and if we're in a position to make some money out of it, shouldn't we be involved? We had to make a judgement call, mindful that it's also about trying to engage a new audience."
How, though, does Truesdale react when the Jockey Club's deal is juxtaposed with rival racecourse group Arena Racing Company no longer allowing casino products to feature in race titles?
"I think that's totally different to the Playtech deal," insists Truesdale. "It was an industry decision and we've done the same – I just chose not to make a big song and dance about it."
On the subject of relations with Arc, Truesdale adds: "There's a view that we don't get along with Arc, but that's not the case. There are things we might disagree on philosophically but there's so much that [Arc chief executive] Martin Cruddace and I cooperate on. We're not a soft touch but we are a conciliatory organisation that people can work with."
Expanding on how past plans for Kempton – whose racing future is now safe – could have been seen as both good and bad for the sport, Truesdale says: "If considering only the financial case, it was an absolute no-brainer, but I fully acknowledge the arguments against closing Kempton. All we were really doing was keeping our options open. That said, it's an undeniable fact our position at the time was, having considered all the judgements, it was better to utilise that windfall for racing."
Some housing development remains possible at Kempton and also on Jockey Club land in Newmarket, should a green light be given to a major project that would include an all-weather racecourse and new training facilities. It would, however, have fierce critics. Some would say the Jockey Club should not be engaged in commercial house-building, while others will have concerns about what a new racecourse would mean for a sport already arguably overpopulated with fixtures and struggling to achieve respectable field sizes.
"Any all-weather track at Newmarket is at least four or five years away, so you can't look at it in the context of the current fixtures debate," says Truesdale. "It's another example of us having to think about how something would affect not just our business but the whole sport. We have people with enough experience, knowhow and diversity of opinion to take that wider view."
Daniel Kubler, who trains alongside wife Claire in Lambourn, highlights the superb training facilities provided by the Jockey Club, yet adds: "I do think the Jockey Club tries its best to work for the good of the sport, but, in my opinion, the Jockey Club falls down from thinking too much about generating relatively short-term profit as opposed to focusing on the long-term good of the sport. It's easy to measure monetary performance. It's perhaps not so easy to measure some other things that are important.
"A racecourse manager might be rewarded according to how much profit can be made at an individual racecourse. The problem is, what happens to the sport if the way to achieve profits is by staging concert nights that can push away those people who go racing for the racing?"
Crunching the numbers
Racecourse Association chief executive David Armstrong and his former chair Maggie Carver agree the Jockey Club fulfils its job spec in working for the good of British racing – but they do so with slight caveats.
"Any profit made by the Jockey Club is reinvested, which sticks to its mandate," says Armstrong. "They put their profits back into the sport but they put it back into their own element of the sport. They obviously have things like Racing Welfare but, in general, they aren't participating across the wider sport as a whole. They don't help other racecourses – and nor would I expect them to, either."
Carver would quite like them to.
"The Jockey Club has a unique perspective through its broad spectrum of racecourses and other businesses," she says. "That gives them a unique understanding of the industry and also a unique voice. I think it's a very effective organisation that employs a lot of talented people. However, one thing I would like to see is more cooperation with other racecourses.
"I would also argue all racecourses operate for the good of racing. The Jockey Club is not alone in investing all profits back into the sport. Those who do not do that have very small dividends."
The Jockey Club does not pay dividends but it does do big numbers, with turnover of £216.5 million in the final pre-pandemic year of 2019. It was predictably hit hard by Covid but has bounced back, reporting its 2022 prize-money to be £5m ahead of 2019 figures. However, both before and since the pandemic there have been questions asked about the Jockey Club's debt levels.
In its most recent full-year financial report, the Jockey Club stated it had reduced net debt to £89.9m from £95.5m. Given normal annual profits of roughly £20m, that still leaves the Jockey Club far north of what is normally considered the business ideal for well-established companies of debt totalling no more than two and a half times profit.
"Our borrowing ratio never bothered me the whole time I was finance director because ultimately that's how we finance our business," says Truesdale. "We have assets and collateral against that debt that have ongoing use value of five, six or seven times against the level of borrowings. That puts us in a very comfortable position."
Is it not the case, though, that any comfort in that position comes from the cash cow that is Cheltenham?
Truesdale says: "The extent to which people feel Cheltenham subsidises everything else is slightly overblown but it's no secret a substantial part of our profits are made at Cheltenham, Aintree and some of the bigger Newmarket meetings. It's also true we pool cash across the group and don't ringfence cash.
"We are conscious that as part of our wider mission for the sport we must ensure people keep wanting to come to the smaller venues. Without them, the sport would be in a much poorer place."
What is it and what is it for?
The Jockey Club is nothing like the organisation created in 1750. It is also nothing like the organisation that preceded the wholesale changes of 1993 and 2006.
As well as dispensing with responsibility for racing's governance and integrity, the Jockey Club has also changed from within. Whereas once racecourse chairs had enormous power, now some liken racecourse boards to parish councils. Decision-making, although overseen by Dudgeon and his board, rests with the Truesdale-led executive.
"You could say regulation was a liability and racecourses are an asset," suggests Freedman. "To get rid of the liability and work the asset was therefore a brilliant commercial move. The problem is, I'm not sure everyone would agree racing as a whole has benefited.
"Plenty of professionals wish the Jockey Club was still the regulator, not because they don't want it to be a racecourse group, but because they feel it perhaps had a greater understanding of the industry than the BHA does, given it's formed of horsemen.
"I was personally always frustrated the Jockey Club didn't take a particularly active role in the RCA. It certainly has to be more than just a racecourse and property-owning group. If that's all it is – and I actually think it is more than that – you would wonder what's the point of the Jockey Club?"
Freedman believes the Jockey Club is well positioned to provide moral leadership to the sport – yet until its membership more accurately reflects the sport as a whole, not just the peak of racing's pyramid, such leadership would be in danger of being ridiculed.
"There is still that club element to the Jockey Club," says Freedman. "It is probably less obvious than was once the case, but if you look at the profile of new members, they aren't vastly different to the sort of people who would have been made members 40 years ago."
That is hardly something to trumpet, yet reputationally it was a single individual who was central to surely the most sensational Jockey Club story of recent years.
Late in the summer of 2020, Delia Bushell resigned having served as chief executive for less than a year. She left her post after an independent barrister upheld allegations centred around the bullying of colleagues, the use of racist comments and sharing offensive material. In response, Bushell launched a stinging attack on the Jockey Club and its ethics, lamenting the "toxicity" of her working environment and claiming she had been "subjected to unmerited, dishonourable, bullying behaviour by people I previously held in high regard and trusted". Truesdale was the man selected to oversee the rebuilding process.
"There is no question that through some of the Covid decisions we had to take, and also the Delia Bushell episode, we were in the spotlight both internally and externally," he says.
"We have done a substantial amount of work internally to set new values and a new culture. We've taken some of the lessons, responded and changed things. When you look at some of the people we've been able to bring in, I think it shows our reputation as an employer has not been damaged at all."
Truesdale also had to mend some external relations, not least with ITV, whose attitude to the Jockey Club was damaged as a result of Bushell's strained relationship with the broadcaster's director of sport Niall Sloane. Bushell believed ITV was making too much money out of its racing deal relative to how much it was paying. Sloane was exasperated at Bushell's attitude and lack of enthusiasm for an ITV contract renewal Bazalgette had, in effect, already approved in principle.
"There was a tough time in our relationship with ITV," says Truesdale. "We got ourselves into a well-documented position where there were difficulties and tensions. I would like to think I've set a new tone there.
"The truth is I tend not to think too much about those days because it's about looking forward. Yes, we did take a knock, but part of my job was moving everybody on from that and rebuilding.
"I like to think of myself as a conciliatory figure. What Covid showed us is we're much stronger as an industry when we work together. I think part of my role is to make sure that happens."
