Racing’s Strategy: A 19th-Century Club With 21st-Century Buzzwords

A Gentlemen’s Club With the Curtains Nailed Shut

The British Horseracing Authority bangs on about transparency so often you’d think their boardroom was made of glass. In reality, it’s more like a Victorian gentlemen’s club: the curtains nailed shut, the gin flowing freely, and a discreet sign outside that reads: "Dont rock our Boat"

Reports arrive late. Board minutes are sanitised into polite bullet points. The real details? Shared with a chosen few — the well-connected, the bloodstock barons, the racecourse grandees including Arena Racing. Everyone else is told to sit tight, pay their invoices, and stop asking awkward questions.

It’s no wonder owners feel alienated and punters feel ignored. Because they are.

The Bookmaker Tax and Lord Allen’s Independent Board: A Fairy Tale in Two Acts

Meanwhile, the sport is staring down the barrel of a new bookmaker tax — the Gambling Commission and Treasury gleefully circling racing’s last reliable funding stream like vultures at a motorway service station. Into this mess strides Lord Allen’s so-called Independent Board, billed as the saviour of governance. Independent? Only in the sense that a pub landlord is “independent” of the brewery. It’s another committee, another chairmanship, another set of expenses — a rearranging of deckchairs while the ship sails straight for the iceberg of affordability checks and falling levy.

The Board Minutes: A Masterclass in Saying Nothing

Take the May and June 2025 BHA Board minutes. These aren’t records of governance. They’re shopping lists written by a civil servant in biro.

• “APPROVED: Premier Racedays 2026.”

• “ENDORSED: Equine Welfare recommendations.”

• “NOTED: Gambling Tax consultation.”

Everything neat. Nothing controversial. Not a hint of debate, dissent, or panic.

Nowhere do we read: “Half the room thought the fixture list was insane.” Or: “Directors argued whether Racing Digital is a bottomless pit for consultants’ invoices.” Or: “Punters might walk away in droves if we keep letting bookmakers interrogate them like they’re applying for a mortgage just to have a tenner on the 3:15 at Catterick.”

No, none of that. Just a tidy “APPROVED,” as if running a sport is no more difficult than approving a new tea urn for the staff canteen. Wheres Richard Waymans data, it look an abandoned project, like derelict Folkstone.

The Register of Interests: Poacher, Meet Gamekeeper

And then there’s the BHA’s Register of Directors’ Interests (April 2025), not updated. It reads less like a declaration of independence and more like a Christmas round-robin:

• One owns horses with Nicky Henderson.

• Another is neck-deep in bloodstock companies.

• Others sit on the boards of Weatherbys, the Racecourse Association, Retraining of Racehorses, even West Ham United for good measure.

These are the people supposed to be regulating the sport. Yet they’re also players in it — owning, breeding, trading, jockeying for position. It’s like asking a gang of MPs who own bookies to write the Gambling Act. Which, come to think of it, might explain a lot. Lets hope they do better with the "independent" board.

Bloated Bureaucracy: Four Bodies, No Brains

And here’s the absurdity: in 2025 we still have four separate bodies doing overlapping jobs:

• The BHA (regulation, governance).

• The Levy Board (funding).

• The Jockey Club (racecourses, land, influence).

• Weatherbys (registrations, bloodstock services).

All with their own boards, directors, emoluments, PR teams. It’s like having four post offices on the same street, all selling stamps, none open on Saturdays.

Every other industry since 1990 has rationalised: merged, centralised, slimmed down. Racing? No. The fixtures haven’t been rationalised, the calendar hasn’t been rationalised, and neither have the administrators.

But the pay cheques are doing just fine.

The Strategy Document: Corporate Nonsense Meets Existential Crisis

Enter the Industry Strategy Framework (Summer 2025 update). It’s meant to be racing’s great survival plan. In practice, it’s a bingo card of corporate buzzwords:

• “Inspiring fans.”

• “Enhancing sustainability.”

• “Delivering value.”

• “World-class product.”

All noble enough. But then you hit Strategic Objective 3:

“We need to grow our income from betting, doing so responsibly and sustainably.”

This is where fantasy meets farce. Because at the exact same time, the Gambling Commission is forcing bookmakers to run affordability checks, then there are those self managed to cull any thought of winning by Entain and Co. Punters are being asked for bank statements, payslips, even council tax bills just to get a bet on.

So the BHA’s survival plan depends on punters betting more… while regulators and bookmakers are forcing them to bet less. It’s like trying to fund the NHS by selling more fags, while at the same time banning corner shops from selling cigarettes.

The Difficulties Nobody Wants to Admit

The sport’s challenges are screamingly obvious:

• Owners walking away – costs up, prize money stagnant, governance opaque, no retention plan.

• Punters drifting off – younger audiences don’t want gambling, older audiences don’t want to be frisked like smugglers or pushed off the cliff for winning.

• International competition – Ireland, France, the Middle East offering prize pots that make Britain’s look like raffle money.

• Public perception – one or two welfare scandals away from a political crackdown.

• Fixtures fatigue – too many races, too few runners, too little coherence.

Yet the leadership behaves as though “approving papers” is the same as solving problems.

What Needs To Happen (But Won’t)

If racing is serious about survival, here’s what it would do tomorrow:

1. Publish real minutes — not sanitised bullet points, but the actual debates and dissent.

2. Deliver reports on time — with data that matters, not just pretty PDFs for the insiders.

3. Rationalise governance — one body, one board, one set of directors accountable to the sport, not four fiefdoms.

4. Give owners and punters a real voice — seats at the table, not after-the-fact “consultation.”

5. Link pay to performance — executive emoluments tied to field sizes, prize money growth, owner retention, and fan numbers.

6. Actually Be transparent and consult and involve owners and punters

The Final Furlong: Racing Needs a Revolution, Not a Framework

British racing faces its greatest difficulties in decades. Yet its governors act like country squires, presiding over a sport they still treat as their private estate. Reports arrive late, minutes are bowdlerised, strategy is written in buzzword bingo, and the people making the decisions are the very same people benefitting from them.

The truth is simple: the sport needs democracy, sunlight, and radical rationalisation. Instead it has patronage, secrecy, and bureaucratic bloat. When the CEO and Chair talk about transparency, lets start evidencing and measuring it.

Unless that changes, the future of British racing is clear. The crowds will thin, the owners will quit, the punters will give up, and the only people still winning will be the directors drawing their stipends.

And when it finally collapses, at least the Board can say it was all APPROVED.