British Racing: No Strategy, No Leadership, No Future—But At Least There’s a Diversity Policy

Jon Hughes, the well-known owner and syndicate manager, recently summed up the state of British racing with the kind of brutal honesty rarely found in the carefully worded press releases from the sport’s governing bodies. “No ownership strategy, no sustainable funding model, no leadership, no plan… but at least we’ve got a diversity and inclusion pathway!”

And there it is—British racing in 2025: a sport that can’t keep its best horses, can’t attract enough owners, can’t reform its outdated funding model, and can’t even appoint a permanent CEO… but by God, it can host a workshop on unconscious bias.

Because while everything else crumbles—betting turnover, prize money, horse numbers, attendances—the sport’s administrators have found time to launch a People Strategy and fine-tune a Diversity and Inclusion Pathway. Because nothing says “we have a vision for the future” quite like focusing on HR initiatives while the entire industry burns to the ground.

If the goal is to make the sport truly inclusive, they’re succeeding—because soon, no one will be excluded from ownership or participation, since there won’t be a sport left to participate in.

Every year, British racing releases its Annual Report, and every year, it follows the same formula:

1. A long, meandering section about “learnings” and “trials.”

2. Some vague optimism about “green shoots” in the numbers.

3. A glaring refusal to admit that the sport is structurally broken.

And the 2024 Racing Report—a masterpiece of bureaucratic obfuscation—was no different.

Richard Wayman, the Director of Racing at the BHA, painstakingly detailed the Premierisation experiment, fixture list tinkering, and betting turnover trends, all while carefully sidestepping the sport’s actual problems.

• No ownership strategy, despite £1.3m of funding.

• No sustainable funding model.

• No levy reform, despite endless discussions since 2017.

• No permanent CEOs at the BHA or the Jockey Club.

• No proper control or transparency over media rights.

• No customer-driven plan for fixtures and race programming.

• No plan for shared ownership growth.

• No strategy for dealing with affordability checks.

And yet, we’re expected to believe that a Diversity Pathway is what will save the sport. Because, you see, racing has never struggled because of a lack of inclusion—it has struggled because it has been run by a rotating cast of clueless administrators who wouldn’t know a viable funding model if it bit them on the backside.

Premierisation: The Masterplan That Wasn’t

The big initiative of the year was Premierisation, which was sold to us as the future of racing—a sleek, elite-tier model designed to attract new audiences, boost revenues, and revitalise the sport.

The result?

• Betting turnover down 6.8% year-on-year and 16.5% over two years.

• Attendances down despite desperate efforts to hype up Premier fixtures.

• Sunday evening racing—a key experiment—abandoned after a 3.6% betting increase (well short of the 15-20% target).

• Betting turnover at Premier fixtures actually fell more than at regular meetings.

If Premierisation were a horse, it would be pulled up before the first fence. But no, in classic British fashion, we’ve decided to give it more time because "learning from trials" sounds a lot better than "we got it spectacularly wrong."

A Sport Without Leadership

If a sport is only as strong as its leadership, then British racing is currently being run with the organisational skill of a car boot sale on a windy day.

Consider this:

• The British Horseracing Authority (BHA), the supposed governing body of the sport, has no permanent CEO.

• The Jockey Club, which controls some of Britain’s biggest courses, is also without a permanent CEO.

Julie Harrington, a CEO widely regarded as ineffective, gave more than six months’ notice of her departure. And yet, here we are, staring down the likelihood that it will take at least 15 months to appoint her successor—meaning that, during one of the sport’s greatest crises, its governing body is effectively headless.

What value does the People Strategy add when the recruitment of the most important position in the organisation looks like a HR shitshow? How can anyone expect stability and long-term planning when it takes over a year to find someone to lead the organisation?

At a time when racing desperately needs leadership, vision, and direction, it has instead been left to drift like a rudderless boat, occasionally colliding with an iceberg of its own making.

Affordability Checks: The Self-Inflicted Wound

Ah, affordability checks. The government’s noble but spectacularly misguided attempt to prevent problem gambling, which has instead driven thousands of punters away from regulated bookmakers and into the black market.

• Punters are being asked for bank statements and proof of income just to place a bet.

• Bookmakers are bleeding customers.

• Racing’s share of betting revenue is collapsing.

The result? Less money for racing, and more money for unregulated offshore gambling sites.

And what’s the BHA’s grand response?

"We are monitoring the situation."

Translation: "We have no plan whatsoever."

The Levy Fiasco: Eight Years, No Progress

For eight years, we’ve been promised levy reform—the financial model that ensures racing gets a share of betting profits. In that time:

• France and Ireland have increased their racing budgets.

• British prize money has stagnated.

• Top horses and owners have left the country.

And yet, here we are in 2025, still talking about discussions, consultations, and “progress behind the scenes.” At this rate, we’ll get levy reform sometime in the 2040s, just in time for the first AI-generated racehorses to debut.

Conclusion: Racing Is Running Out of Time

There’s no more time for excuses, trials, and consultations. Racing needs actual leadership, actual strategy, and actual action.

Otherwise, this grand old sport will become just another piece of British heritage consigned to history books—fondly remembered, but no longer relevant.

Still, at least we’ve got a Diversity and Inclusion Pathway.