National Hunt racing is dying on its RRRRs…..
I've been a racehorse owner for 25 years and, with the national hunt season just round the corner, I'd like to share some thoughts on the forthcoming season.
Being an owner of a racehorse is an honour, you must have some rose tinted spectacles, but it is always about enjoying the journey. I see it as a bit like a TV series say Line of Duty, every season you get lots of fun, intrigue and a few disappointments but you are there for the ride. I had horses about 20 years ago and in truth fell out of love with the game and my available cash waned to the point it had become a chore and a cost I did not need. I still went racing and would chat with many of the racing contacts I had made over the years, they would often ask me about owning a horse again, my reply would be something along the lines of dwindling prize money and no real desire that I thought my time as an owner were done.
2020 – the first week of Covid and I found myself about to lose a kidney to cancer, many things changed with that. I am still here for a start, and the thought of enjoying racing as an owner grew. I took a ¼ share in a Fame and Glory colt and off I went again. Getting back into racing you start seeing things as they are, how hard the smaller stables work (Donald Whillans/Callum Whillans are brilliant by the way) to get the best out of your horse, how little money there is floating about at the lower end for an owner, how split into silos the racing community actually is and how so many organisations and businesses are on the grift purely for themselves. The common theme and problem is money.
If you own a horse then you need circa 15-20k a year to keep it in training, in extremes it will be nearer 30k. To take a horse to the races, enter the race, pay the jockey, pay the groom, blacksmith is roughly £400-£600 per run. Prize money is provided by the racetracks which they pay for from a levy award that the bookmakers provide based on their turnover. This levy pays circa £115-145k per race meeting to racetracks who seem to give about 55% back as prizemoney. If you own a NH horse in the North then you will be racing in the main (for a horse rated 90-115) for about £3 to 5k (minus 19% deductions per race) to the winner, with prize money down to 4th or 5th. We won a class 4 (now a C 0-125) race in 2002 which was added value 12k – today it would be 8k 22 years on! Basic maths tells you that there has been a massive decline in what an owner gets out of owning a horse, breakeven is impossible in most cases.
The biggest problem is that NH horses cannot run every week, they often need certain ground or tracks, so they are often limited to about 4/5/6 runs a season. A flat horse can run more often, on two types of surfaces (grass/all-weather) can run 12/14 times a year as they have less wear and tear and can often run on lots more types of ground. A flat horse from the yard won three times over a mile in one month last year and ran a total of three miles and won £18k, a 110 rated hurdler from the yard ran once in the same month and won 4.5k – needing 5 weeks after that run to run again. Having a NH horse as an owner is a much harder sell and you need a deep passion for NH racing to be involved, needless to say many NH owners are moving away either entirely or moving to own smaller shares or being solely based on the flat. This decline if not halted could be terminal for many NH stables and the actual volume of races that will have enough runners will surely suffer even further. Less horses = less levy, less bookmakers, less tracks, less sponsorship, less available prize money.
Can NH racing survive in the North?
I have spoken to a few trainers, owners, bookies and even stewards (barstewards as well ) who think that NH racing in the North will be done in 5/10 years as their will be no owners or horses to run. It seems that NH has become the very poor relation, without more prize money owners will just continue to drift away.
I am going to concentrate on dual purpose tracks in the North here, in my experience the single use tracks fight like bucking broncos to survive. So a simple question, should dual purpose racecourses be giving back more of the fixture levy/media rites for NH racing? Yes of course they should! But why would they? The argument will be fought from the courses that it costs a lot to put on a race meeting in the first place, so that levy per meeting will contribute to that cost as it is unlikely that the “gate” figures will cover the cost of some mid-week meetings. If you look at fixtures singularly that is a very valid case, but many dual purpose tracks also get premier fixtures and days that fill the balance sheet across the year. These fixtures are awarded annually and as such the courses take the rough with the smooth. Is it as simple as Flat v NH? From the outside and based on a couple of conversations, as costs spiral for any event some dual purpose racecourses are happier to put on flat meetings, often as many as they can. They cost less to run, can be 6x class 5/6 races , put on in the summer months they just churn them out and they run all winter on the all-weather if that surface is available. I get it – Flat racing is a cash cow – NH racing isn’t . The flat therefore is maximised by racetracks, the Ladies Day once a year fixture can generate even smaller courses massive income from the gate receipts, booze, food sold and sponsorship, in some cases they will take over a £1 million in gate receipts alone. These days will sell out, courses like Chester, York, Musselburgh and even AW Newcastle will be packed to the rafters and justify their existence and success. Evening racing, Ice cream days and Oasis tribute acts back these bigger fixtures up, they sell well (often despite excessive entrance fees) and justify the modus operandi.
I ran an advertising business, and we would have multiple accounts with certain partner agencies, some of these would be far more labour intensive than others, some would have time sheets that were filled with extensive support, and some would be far easier to run. Those partnerships would be run on flat rates, we had to take a holistic view of all the business we got through those partnerships and decide what were worth keeping. I would suggest that some dual purpose tracks will run on a similar business model seeing the Flat as their maximum go to income and the NH as a product that you just do enough with to survive. A good example would be comparing Newcastle AW winter prize money including the ARC Millions bonuses to the similar standard jump racing through the winter. Last year Newcastle was putting on AW cards with multiple 10k added value total races for class 6 horses and the same week putting on Class 5 NH Hurdles worth an added value total of 6k. I am not sure where they currently sit with NH racing but the previous year they guaranteed every NH race for a period (Oct to March?) would be worth 10k added, please, please do that again ARC.
My fear is that if the simple question were asked to some dual-purpose tracks - “If you could just have flat meetings, keeping all your current flat fixtures only would you?” Many would say yes and they would also offer to keep the 3 or 4 premier NH weekend fixtures.
If the BHA/NH racing does not start pushing for better investment in jump racing in the North and give tracks like the excellently run Kelso, Hexham and Perth more fixtures where appropriate, National Hunt racing is in big trouble north of Haydock and Wetherby.
My final thought, I will continue to be an owner of a National Hunt horse if I can afford it whatever the return, it is a wonderful place full of tremendous characters and good friends. I am not everybody though, many wont.
Thanks to Andy for being such a good bookie and a far better writer than me!
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