Blogger or Blagger: Social Media Tycoon

From Turf to TikTok: The Last Gallop of a Grand Old Sport

There was a time when horse racing had an air of tragic poetry about it. Leather boots, flat caps, boiled bacon rolls at 8am, and old men muttering about a gelding who let them down in 1983. Racing was glorious because it didn’t care. It was a place for characters, gamblers, stable lads, and the smell of actual horse. Now? It’s selfie sticks and influencers squinting into iPhones while explaining ground conditions like they’ve just discovered the concept of rain.

Stephen Power, the Racing Blogger, is the poster boy of this new age – part digital evangelist, part travelling salesman, part 24/7 hype machine. And yes, he’s made horse racing look exciting again, in the same way fireworks make a landfill look magical for three minutes. But let’s be clear about something: this isn’t a public service. It’s a business. And business, in Power’s world, is booming.

Because while he’s waxing lyrical about Longchamp and "world-class content", the uncomfortable truth is this: racing is doomed as we used to know it. The sport is dying – not because the young don’t care, but because we’ve stopped letting it be what it is. Which, inconveniently, is boring to outsiders and beautiful to the weirdos who understand it.

A Wet Wednesday at Haydock Will Never Trend

No amount of vlogging, vignettes or vertical video will ever replace standing in the rain at Haydock, five deep in puddles, watching a rank outsider nick a handicap hurdle. That’s real racing – damp, unforgiving, and occasionally transcendental. It doesn’t want to be glossy. It wants to be gritty. That’s the point.

And while Power is out there flogging mug punts with the zeal of a QVC presenter on deadline, actual racing folk – the ones who’ve spent decades living off oats and overdrafts – are quietly realising that the game they love is vanishing beneath them. Not evolving. Dissolving. Being digested into the same hyper-edited social media mulch as everything else.

The problem is, the Racing Blogger is very good at what he does. Too good. He’s turned the turf into a content farm. Arc de Triomphe one minute, sob story the next, with a neat little betting tip wrapped in "passion". But passion, in this context, is a marketing strategy. And behind every camera angle and “bang tweet done” moment, there’s a quiet truth no one wants to admit:

This is not a love letter to racing. It’s a love letter to engagement metrics.

Mug Punting as Performance Art

Let’s talk about the betting – or, more precisely, the celebration of failure dressed up as content. Power makes no secret of the fact he punts, loses, shrugs, and moves on. It’s part of the shtick. But for the thousands of punters watching him with hope and a tenner on the nose, it’s not a lifestyle – it’s a loss.

Because here’s the dirty little secret of this social media racing boom: most people have to lose. That’s how the system works. Bookmakers don’t fund all those lovely paddock presentations and branded mugs out of charity. They do it because people keep chasing the dream. And when your dream is being narrated by a man who’s just filmed himself sweating through a breakfast bap in Chantilly, it becomes a surreal kind of masochism.

We’re not educating new fans. We’re baptising them in the Church of the Big If. If it goes in. If the rain comes. If Frankie pulls it off. It’s not insight. It’s theatre. A drama where the happy ending is you being marginally less skint than last Saturday.

Racing for the Gram, Not for the Game

Power is honest about it, at least. He knows he’s chasing clicks, not Cheltenham glory. He’s not hiding behind tradition or pedigree. He’s flogging a modern vision of the sport – all colour, all noise, all access. And he’s doing it very well. But let’s not pretend this is a grassroots revival. It’s a one-man media circus, with a VIP pass and a bookie’s receipt in the back pocket.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. Racing desperately needs fresh blood, and if a bloke with an iPhone and a fast mouth can get one more person through the gates at Newbury, fine. But don’t confuse visibility with vitality. This is not racing reborn. It’s racing rebranded.

The institutions – crusty, bumbling, and wildly resistant to change – have let this happen. While Power zips between France and Ireland yelling into a camera, the BHA are still wondering whether someone’s installed the fax machine upside down. They couldn’t market a pint to a dehydrated Liverpudlian. So, naturally, a vacuum formed. And Power filled it.

Frankie Dettori as a Demigod, and Other Modern Parables

Of course, he still fawns over Frankie like he’s a cross between Sinatra and Saint Peter. And you know what? Fair play. We all love Frankie. He’s earned it. But when the Racing Blogger says “It’s Frankie’s world – we just live in it,” he’s also unintentionally describing the warped universe of racing media today – where a few charismatic figures hog the oxygen, and everything else, including the sport itself, becomes background noise.

Meanwhile, the average punter is stood freezing at Fontwell with a fiver on a 16/1 no-hoper and a rapidly numbing hand, wondering what happened to the sport they fell in love with. The paddocks are emptier. The prize money’s a joke. The fixtures come at us like spam emails. But at least someone’s filming it in 4K.

The Tragic Glory of the Ordinary

Racing, in its bones, is not glamorous. It’s men with red faces shouting into the wind. It’s women in mud-caked wellies wrestling two-year-olds. It’s the bloke who’s gone to the dogs – financially and emotionally – because the horse he bred turned out to be more donkey than dynamite.

What it isn’t, and never should be, is a backdrop for Instagram.

The Racing Blogger means well. He’s not evil. He’s just... inevitable. A digital symptom of a sport that lost its confidence and handed the keys to the loudest voice in the room. But TikTok will not save racing. Twitter will not revive the Levy Board. And no number of jump-cuts, slow-mo gallops or shouting from an Irish field will ever match the quiet, sodden magic of a wet Wednesday at Haydock.

That’s where the sport still lives. Quietly. Painfully. Beautifully.

And no one’s filming it.