LORD ALLEN RIDES IN: CAN HE SAVE RACING BEFORE IT'S TAXED INTO OBLIVION?

Let’s not pretend Lord Charles Allen has just walked into a thriving empire of silks and champagne. No. He’s inherited a sport that’s less Royal Ascot and more open-casket viewing, with betting revenues plummeting, audiences ageing like a forgotten pork pie in the boot of a Vauxhall Astra, and politicians treating racing like a crusty relic from the empire they never actually read about in school.

But Allen’s here now, fresh from enough stakeholder meetings to qualify as a full-time union rep. The man’s probably still shaking off the smell of stable yard coffee and hearing phrases like “grassroots viability” and “levy distribution model” in his sleep.

So, what can he realistically achieve? And what should be on his real agenda—beyond the press releases, the virtue-signalling welfare pledges, and the “modernisation” waffle that usually means “a new logo and a TikTok intern”?

1. The First Order of Business: Don’t Let Rachel Reeves Murder the Sport

There is no way of dressing this up: if the Treasury’s tax harmonisation plan goes through, British horseracing isn’t just in trouble—it’s in a wooden box being loaded into the back of a hearse. A 21% flat rate means £66 million lost before you’ve even accounted for anyone’s inflated consultancy invoice. Stretch that to 30%, and you’ve basically nationalised the decline.

And what’s the logic from HMRC? “Fairness,” apparently. Because obviously the exact same tax rate should apply to a slot machine in Gibraltar siphoning child benefit through Candy Crush and a bloke in Ripon betting £10 on a gelding called Jeremy’s Folly.

Allen’s first job, then, is to go full Rottweiler on this nonsense. Not politely. Not behind closed doors. But loudly, bluntly, and with the rhetorical subtlety of a Cheltenham bouncer after closing time.

2. Less “Yes Minister”, More “Dragons’ Den”

Here’s the problem with the BHA: it’s spent the last decade acting like the Department of Transport during a rail strike—lots of memos, zero trains moving. Endless bureaucracy, endless committees, endless “consultations” where everyone nods sagely and nothing actually happens.

Allen needs to drag racing out of this Whitehall farce. The BHA must stop being Yes Minister—polite mandarins covering their arses with briefing papers—and start being Dragons’ Den: brutal, commercial, and utterly unforgiving of bad ideas.

If a racecourse can’t modernise? Bin it.
If a policy doesn’t bring in younger fans or serious cash? Torch it.
If someone says “we’ve always done it this way”? Fire them.

The sport doesn’t need tinkering. It doesn’t need “evolution”. It needs a revolution—a wholesale demolition job followed by something bold, noisy and unapologetically relevant. Right now, racing feels like a pathetic shadow of its former self—living off borrowed prestige and ceremonial hats while the bookies and politicians eat its lunch.

3. Stop Begging: Build a New Financial Model

For decades, racing has survived by rattling the tin at racecourses and bookmakers like a drunk busker outside a kebab shop. But that model is finished. Bookmakers aren’t loyal patrons of the turf anymore—they’re global gambling conglomerates moving their business offshore faster than you can say “tax haven” and pumping their real money into slot machines, casino apps, and anything with flashing lights and zero horses.

Allen’s got to face this: begging Paddy Power for a slightly bigger cheque each year isn’t a strategy—it’s a hospice plan. Racing needs a completely new financial model, one that doesn’t rely on the kindness of bookies or the nostalgia of rural MPs.

That means restructuring how betting revenue is shared, dragging money from all gambling products, and forcing operators to contribute if they want a licence to take British bets. If people are going to blow their wages on blackjack in Gibraltar, fine—but a chunk of it should still fund the stables in Beverley and the jobs in Doncaster. Otherwise racing will be left as a glorified heritage attraction: a museum with hats and horses.

4. Remember the Punters and the Owners

Here’s the dirty secret no one in the “racing civil service” likes to admit: the people who actually fuel the sport—the punters who keep the tills ringing and the owners who keep the horses in training—have been neglected for years.

Punters are treated like walking wallets, squeezed with higher prices, worse value, and soulless race-day experiences that feel more like a branch of Wetherspoons with a parade ring. Owners, meanwhile, fork out small fortunes for the privilege of losing money faster than a pensioner on the penny slots, all while being treated as background extras in the BHA’s never-ending box set of bureaucracy.

If Allen wants to save racing, he needs to make the punters feel like fans again, not cattle. And he needs to make owners feel like investors, not mugs. Without them, there is no sport. Just empty grandstands and a lot of unpaid feed bills.

Here’s the heresy that no one at the top table dares to speak: racing has treated its two most important groups—punters and owners—with utter contempt for a generation.

Punters are seen as inconvenient ATMs. We’re subjected to ruinous affordability checks just to have a tenner on the nose, forced to pay exorbitant prices for bad food, and offered a betting product with ever-worsening value. Owners are treated even worse. They pump hundreds of millions into the sport, paying training fees that would make a Premier League footballer blush, for the chance to win prize money that barely covers the cost of the horsebox fuel. They are the sport’s greatest patrons, treated like irritating amateurs who are getting in the way.

Make the punter feel valued. Make the owner feel like their investment isn’t an act of charity. Without these two, there is no sport. Just a very expensive, very green field.

5. Audience Revival: Less "Tradition", More Testosterone (and Data)

If Allen wants to make racing relevant again, he needs to realise something brutally obvious: racing doesn’t have a Netflix problem; it has a testosterone problem.

The modern under-40 male, the one who used to be the racing fan, is now too busy buying crypto coins named after dogs or watching Jake Paul pretend to box. Racing needs adrenaline, danger, personality—and not in the form of another documentary narrated by Stephen Fry.

He should be courting Fight Night fans, football fanatics, gaming streamers—anyone whose heart rate doesn’t flatline during a “fillies-only novice handicap over 1m2f on good to soft”.

And he’ll need to unleash the data. Make racing bettable the way people bet on eSports and NFL—deep analytics, form guides, predictive tools, fantasy racing. Give people something to care about. Right now, trying to get into racing as a new fan is like trying to understand the Church of England’s tax returns—esoteric, impenetrable, and mostly in Latin.

6. Back the #AxeTheRacingTax Protest Like It's 1984, Not 2004

This 10 September protest? It had better not be a dignified silence.

No one remembers dignified protests. They remember chaos. They remember milk thrown at Treasury doors and outraged Tory donors calling the Chancellor to say “what the hell is this?”.

If racing wants to survive, it must abandon its tweedy politeness and embrace full-on populist fury. This is a sport that employs thousands, spans entire regional economies, and underpins billions in economic activity.

It should be bellowing this from every available rooftop, and Allen—yes, the respectable Lord Allen—should be at the front with a loudhailer and a half-smoked cigar, not issuing statements from a leather chair like a Bond villain with a PR degree.

7. Welfare is Important—But Stop Using It as a Security Blanket

Yes, equine welfare matters. Of course it does. But racing’s leadership has hidden behind “look how well we treat the horses” for too long, using it as a distraction from the fact that they’re bleeding money and relevance like a Game of Thrones extra.

Allen needs to protect welfare without using it as a PR crutch. Racing doesn’t just need to be humane. It needs to be thrilling again.

Lord Allen has a pedigree. But so did The Queen’s Horse—and it still finished fourth at Windsor. The truth is this: if he plays it safe, racing dies slowly. If he’s bold, offensive, and unapologetically populist, he just might force a political rethink and ignite a cultural revival.

But the time for stakeholder roundtables is over. It’s now time for trench warfare.
Less “Yes Minister”. More “Dragons’ Den”.
A new financial model, not a begging bowl.
And above all—remember the punters and the owners.

Because without them, the “sport of kings” becomes just another footnote in the Treasury’s ledger.