Forget 30p Off Guinness — The Jockey Club and BHA Are Helping Kill Off the People Who Keep Racing Alive

Cheltenham’s 30p Gesture and Racing’s £3bn Delusion

The British racing industry loves a gesture. It’s addicted to the token act — the cosmetic tweak that is presented as bold reform while the deeper problems are quietly ignored. This week we saw two fine examples: Cheltenham cutting the price of Guinness by 30p, and Labour floating the idea of raising £3bn from gambling taxes to abolish the two-child benefit cap.

Both are hailed as transformational. Both are, in truth, trivial. Neither addresses the actual problems facing racing or the people who fund it.

The Cheltenham Discount: 30p That Misses the Point

Cheltenham’s new chief executive, Guy Lavender, has wasted no time in “responding to critics.” His flagship announcement? The Guinness price will be pegged at £7.50 — the same as 2022, and a princely 30p cheaper than last season.

It’s well-meaning, but it misses the point. Racegoers didn’t fall out of love with Cheltenham because Guinness went up by 30p. They fell out of love because the festival experience had become an expensive ordeal: overcrowded enclosures, impossible parking, grotesque hotel prices, and a sense that the racecourse was treating its customers like wallets on legs.

£7.50 Guinness still feels like a rip-off. Cutting it by 30p won’t change that. It’s the festival equivalent of sticking a plaster on a broken leg.

The Wider Backdrop: Punters Are Already Being Driven Out

The bigger problem is this: Cheltenham and the Jockey Club are presiding over a customer base that is being actively driven away.

Affordability checks are stripping loyal punters from the game. People who have bet responsibly for decades, without so much as a bounced cheque, are suddenly asked to hand over bank statements and payslips to faceless risk departments at Entain or Flutter. Refuse, and you’re shut down. Comply, and you’re treated as a liability.

And the Jockey Club, along with the BHA, stands by silently. Racing’s governing institutions have become collaborators in their own decline — Stockholm syndrome associates, nodding along while their most loyal customers are culled.

It is madness to offer 30p off Guinness as a gesture of goodwill, while in the same breath tolerating the mass removal of punters who have kept the sport afloat for decades.

The Political Mirage: £3bn From Gambling Taxes

Meanwhile, Lucy Powell, Gordon Brown and assorted think-tanks are talking up the idea of hammering the gambling industry with more tax to pay for social policy. The numbers are ambitious: up to £3bn raised on top of the £2.5bn already paid. The methods range from doubling Remote Gaming Duty to 42% (Lib Dem policy) to slapping 50% on online slots.

This, too, is theatre. Yes, it sounds politically neat: tax the villains, save the children. But anyone who knows the industry can tell you the reality. Push taxes that high and the result isn’t a stable £3bn windfall. It’s companies relocating offshore, punters migrating to the black market, and a betting ecosystem that gets smaller, weaker and less profitable for racing.

Racing Is Caught in the Crossfire

And this is where racing’s silence is so dangerous. While politicians salivate over gambling taxes, racing depends on betting revenue for its very survival. Every time the government squeezes harder, racing’s share shrinks. The levy doesn’t rise in proportion to tax hikes; it falls as margins tighten and firms look elsewhere.

Yet the BHA, the Jockey Club and other stakeholders have failed to make the case loudly enough. Instead of challenging the political narrative, they quietly hope to ride on whatever scraps are left. It’s a strategy of appeasement — and it’s killing the game.

Cheltenham’s Reality Problem

Against that backdrop, Cheltenham’s gestures look increasingly absurd. Capacity caps, refurbished bars, drainage in the car park — all sensible, all fine. But none address the structural reality:

• The betting industry that funds racing is under siege.

• Loyal customers are being alienated by intrusive affordability checks.

• Political consensus is hardening around the idea that gambling is a sin to be taxed out of existence.

• Younger generations aren’t coming into the sport in sufficient numbers to replace those leaving.

When you stack those challenges up, 30p off a pint looks like fiddling while Rome burns.

The Fix Racing Actually Needs

What racing needs isn’t cosmetic tweaks; it needs courage.

• On affordability: It needs to stand up to government and the Gambling Commission, insisting that lifetime punters are not criminals, and that privacy matters.

• On funding: It needs to fight for a fair levy system that protects the sport from the knock-on effects of punitive gambling taxes.

• On festivals: It needs to stop insulting its customers with tiny gestures and start offering real value — from ticket prices to accommodation partnerships.

• On politics: It needs to shed its Stockholm syndrome and say plainly: without punters, there is no racing.

The Bottom Line

So will 30p off Guinness save Cheltenham? No. Will £3bn from gambling taxes save child poverty? No.

What both reveal is Britain’s addiction to token gestures — decimal-point politics for Westminster, token-price cuts for racecourses. And while the gestures keep coming, the customers keep leaving.

If racing wants a future, it needs less theatre, less appeasement, and less of this Stockholm syndrome with regulators and politicians. Because without punters, without betting, without loyalty, there won’t be a festival worth saving.