Racing’s Managed Decline: How the Bookmakers Wrote the Rules and Racing turned a Blind Eye"

The latest editorial from Racing Post editor Tom Kerr should have been a rallying cry for radical action to save horseracing from its spiraling decline. Instead, it’s a familiar cocktail of belated observations, timid critiques, and overly polite suggestions wrapped in vague appeals for “skillful” and “visionary” leadership. The sport doesn’t need more generalities or verbal arguments. It needs bold, specific action—and it needed it two years ago.

Kerr’s editorial follows a now-familiar pattern: no naming names, no radical solutions, and no real pressure on the powers that be. It’s the kind of narrative that could have been written 18 months ago, when the warning signs were already glaringly obvious to anyone paying attention. But here we are, in a racing crisis, with a call for “collaboration” that reads more like a whimper than a war cry.

Meanwhile, punters continue to endure the dystopian absurdity of bookmaker-driven affordability checks. Under the guise of “responsible gambling,” bookmakers have turned what should be a regulatory safeguard into a Kafkaesque maze of unreasonable terms and conditions, where they make the rules, enforce the rules, and rewrite the rules as they go. Fancy a punt? Sure—but first, how about a copy of your bank statements, a letter from your gran, and a nice photo of yourself standing outside your house to prove you’re not a secret oligarch? Unibet, the racing post vblog sponsor. After all its about collecting valuable data for bookmakers to utlise and eventually sell, with little attention to data security.

Bookmakers: Ally or Exploiter?

Kerr’s suggestion that racing should partner with bookmakers ignores the glaring fact that bookmakers aren’t exactly showing themselves to be trustworthy allies. Over the past few years, they’ve done more to alienate punters than any anti-gambling lobbyist could dream of.

• Delayed Withdrawals: You’ve hit a winner, but accessing your money feels like applying for a mortgage, minus the free coffee.

• Account Restrictions and Closures: Have the audacity to place a few smart bets? Say goodbye to your account or get used to wagering a 50p at a time. They keep the account in the hope you will be enticed onto the casinos.

• Invasive Affordability Checks: As if the endless red tape wasn’t bad enough, punters are now subject to demands for intrusive personal information, as if placing a bet on the 3:30 at Chepstow is a covert money-laundering scheme. Money laundering checks after you money has come from a UK bank account, total nonsensical logic.

These aren’t the actions of a sector interested in racing’s survival. They’re the actions of multinational giants determined to maximize profits while tossing racing whatever crumbs they can spare. Kerr’s polite call for “collaboration” ignores this fundamental truth: racing isn’t dealing with benevolent partners. It’s dealing with predators. The truth is the multinationals dont really need UK racing, there are bigger margins on casinos elsewhere.

Breaking the Power of Veto: Promises Unfulfilled

One of Kerr’s proposals—breaking the power of veto that hampers decision-making in racing—has already been agreed upon in principle. But like so many of racing’s reforms, its implementation has faltered. The failure now seems largely attributable to a sport riddled with dysfunction and fragmentation:

• A Regulator That Cannot Regulate: The BHA, hamstrung by its dependence on the racecourses and horsemen who effectively own it, has proven powerless to enforce meaningful change.

• An Estate Manager Influenced by Racecourses: The Jockey Club, supposedly a steward of the sport, appears increasingly beholden to the interests of racecourses rather than the long-term health of racing.

• A Levy Board in the Dark: The Horserace Betting Levy Board seems clueless about where the levy will be in 12 months’ time, let alone how it can provide stability and growth for the sport.

And yet, Kerr’s editorial offers no critique of these failures. Instead, it opts for vague platitudes about governance reform, as if politely suggesting that “something must be done” will magically solve the problem.

Using the Opponent’s Playbook

If racing wants to make a comeback, it needs to adopt the same tools used by the Gambling Commission and anti-gambling lobbyists: a coordinated, evidence-based media campaign that puts relentless pressure on bookmakers, regulators, and government officials. The anti-gambling lobby has masterfully dominated the narrative, painting bookmakers as villains and racing as complicit. Racing, meanwhile, has been content to mutter from the sidelines, offering no compelling counterargument.

Where is racing’s white paper? Where is the comprehensive, data-driven case for the economic and cultural importance of the sport, together with effective measures to deal with problem gambling? Why hasn’t racing mobilised its extensive network to deliver a better argument than the Gambling Commission’s patchwork approach? Rather than just moan about affordability checks, racing should be dismantling the bookmaker-driven system that uses these checks as a tool to restrict and control punters, all under the guise of “responsibility.”

The Three Tepid Solutions

Kerr’s editorial proposes three solutions to stop racing’s decline, but they amount to little more than timid half-measures:

1. Frictionless Financial Checks
   The idea of seamless and unobtrusive financial checks is a noble one, but it’s also pure fantasy. Bookmakers aren’t interested in making these checks painless—they’re using them to curate their customer base, restricting high-staking punters while welcoming the casual crowd. Kerr’s call for a frictionless system fails to address this underlying reality.

2. A New Deal Between Racing and Betting
   The idea of a “new deal” is admirable in theory but laughable in practice. What leverage does racing have to negotiate such a deal? Bookmakers see racing as a dwindling product—expensive to carry, low-margin, and increasingly irrelevant compared to football and casino gaming. Without significant power shifts, any “new deal” is likely to favour bookmakers, not racing.

3. Reforming Racing’s Governance
   Breaking veto powers and reforming governance are essential but hardly groundbreaking ideas. These reforms have been on the table for years, yet racing’s fractured leadership continues to undermine progress. Kerr’s editorial offers no insight into how these structural issues can actually be resolved.

Conclusion: Racing Post Timidity in Full Flow

Tom Kerr’s editorial isn’t just a missed opportunity—it’s a masterclass in timid journalism. Rather than confronting the real issues head-on, it tiptoes around them, offering vague suggestions that could have been written 18 months ago. Racing need a daily with balls not platitudes, it has no more direction or strategy that the sport itself. Can someone get a grip of it rather than inflate its price with zero innovation?

The sport doesn’t need another polite editorial. It needs bold ideas, disruptive action, and a willingness to challenge the forces that are holding it back. Where is the Racing Post’s outrage at bookmaker practices? Where is the call for racing to take control of its narrative and fight back against an anti-gambling lobby that has left it reeling?

Until racing’s leaders—and its media allies—step up, the sport will continue to decline. And the Racing Post, with its carefully crafted generalities, will have done little more than watch from the sidelines, unwilling to disturb the status quo.