i doubt if many of us will care for 'the new norm'.

​There is a spat going on at the moment between The Horseman’s Group and the Racecourse Association over prize money distribution. This is not the first time the two stakeholders have fallen out over prize money and doubtless it will not be the last. It is all about, apparently, not that the semantics of the argument mean a lot to me, the unilateral decision by the Racecourse Association to cease racecourse executive contributions to prize money, which according to the Horseman’s Group is ‘unlawful and anti-competitive behaviour’.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the spat, the situation at present was caused wholly by the imposition, which may yet be declared ‘unlawful’ in the courts, of the ‘state of emergency’ and the Lockdown that will undoubtedly wreak havoc with lives for many years to come. At this most testing time for society since the outbreak of the 2nd World War, it is beholden on racing’s ‘stakeholders’ to work together to limit the damage to the industry, not to take to ‘handbags at dawn’. Our present system of government has overtones of the Kremlin about it, with the ruling bodies of sport desperate to be seen as ‘towing the line’ so as not to upset the overlords who possess the unprecedented powers to bankrupt any sport to stray from the ‘official narrative’. This is why the vast open spaces of Newmarket last week was reminiscent of a timorous bank robbers get together.
What I find petty about this present dispute between the Horseman’s Group and the Racecourse Association is the aura of the inevitable that suggests that what we have is the only method available to us for funding our sport. Let’s not get twitchy about it, prize-money is key to maintaining and building the sport. Although our sport bridges the divide in the social classes and provides any man or woman from the council housing estate opportunity to work for or alongside the richest people in the world, without those with the money to invest in bloodstock, who quite reasonably expect to at the very least break even each season, our sport will have no long-term future. Just imagine the hole that would be left if Sheikh Mohammed and his family decided to sell their horses, studs and racing stables? I would argue that the sport is more in need of minimum prize levels to be 5-times higher than at present than to have 1-million-pound plus races but we do require prize money at a level that gives all owners a hope of limiting their losses.
The present system does not achieve that aim. It never has, and quite likely never will. The answer to the equation, and it is the elephant in the room every single time the subject is debated, is what used to be described as a Tote monopoly, where all profits from betting is returned to the sport.
This maverick idea is the business plan for every other country except Ireland and Great Britain. We dig our heels in and shed bucket-loads of expletives and tears whenever the Tote monopoly thing is aired. How could we survive without the betting jungle, the opposition cry in unison? There would be no atmosphere without the betting ring. And so on and so on.
The present ‘oh so brilliant system’ for funding horse racing relies on monies coming from here and there, media rights, television deals and so on and so on. Bits here, bits from there. And this money would, I hope, still be available if a betting monopoly was created to fund the sport. Let’s face the cold facts: betting shops are in decline, government saw to that, and there are less and less bookmakers trading at racecourses. Now is the time to make that big leap of faith and at the very least conduct a table-top exercise (similar to Event 201 financed by Bill Gates last October – Google Event 201 – the scales will fall from your eyes) to establish the pitfalls and rewards of a betting monopoly. I have always argued that betting companies no longer rely on horse racing for its profits as sports betting in general is now big business for them. William Hill, Ladbrokes, Betfair, etc, would not be put out of business, they might even prosper.
Talking of ‘putting out of business’, as chilling as the phrase bandied about by government ministers is, the Orwellian term, ‘The New Normal’, it is nothing, as far as I am concerned, as the suggestion, usually said or reported as if it is inevitable, that ‘not everyone or everything in racing’ will survive this period inflicted on us by the Bill Gates sponsored Global Health Emergency. Surely, we should be horrified by the thought that more of our precious country racecourses might not reopen? Shouldn’t we start a fund or a crowdfunding page to help those jockeys, trainers and racecourse staff who might not survive this undemocratic laceration to their finances? All Together! It is more akin to only the strong will survive.