it's one thing to criticise 'premierisation' .....

​As someone who has reached the age where the importance of bannister rails has become all too clear, I believe my opinions on many of the problems blighting the sport should be, if not valued, appreciated. I do not automatically believe the past was glorious and the present dire; I do, though, believe a review of racing in the decades gone by might prove beneficial to the implementation of new ideas or any radical reappraisal of the future. (Incidentally, I will write about the future of British horse racing in the coming week and my conclusions are far from rosy).
The B.H.A.’s 2-year trial of ‘Premierisation’, the golden 2-hours between 2.pm and 4pm every Saturday, when the top racecourses with the most valuable races will be given priority over racecourses the B.H.A. consider of less importance and unworthy of its protective arm, has both the potential to secure the sport’s future and the potential to destroy its core base. I actually suspect there are outside forces that have plans for Premierisation to achieve the latter without supporting the former. But that is a nut to be cracked another day.
That something needed to be done is without debate and it is one thing to criticise Premierisation, as I continue to do, it is another thing to come up with alternative solutions to problems that are either real and dynamic or are illusory and merely parroted due to a lack of study. 
Let me dwell a moment on attendance at racecourses and settee attendance. Pre-television, attendances at an F.A. Cup Final would be 100,000, whereas today it would 25,000 less, though the television audience would be in the millions. Pre-television, attendance at the Epsom Derby might be 250,000, today it is but a fraction of that number, though the television audience will number many millions. I do not believe racecourse attendance is a good vector to judge the appeal or support for horse racing, yet journalists bang-on about the falling numbers without making parallel comparisons with the audience I.T.V. or satellite broadcasters are achieving. Add all the figures together and I would suggest the situation is less dire than reported. 
That should not imply the sport should sit on its hands or that the golden 120-minutes of Saturday viewing is the golden egg. For Premierisation to work for the whole industry, I have come to believe it needs to encompass both Saturday and Sunday, with the smaller racecourses that will be made financially poorer by having to race either through a period of late morning and early afternoon or after 4pm, given the premier slots on the Sunday, along with terrestrial coverage. I do not believe the B.H.A. have given enough consideration for the potential long-term damage to the sport if its grassroot base is eroded by plans for gifting the top-end an easier ride than those racecourses that have s done sterling work improving prize-money, racecourse facilities and keeping the show on the road Monday through Friday.
Competitiveness in actual races is another matter in need of addressing. I am not a fan of every race being restricted to horses of a similar rating as in many instances this in itself will restrict the number of runners. The purists might say that a 3 or 4-runner Group I race is okay if all three runners are of a suitable quality, yet I have seen some very uncompetitive Group races at the top meetings this season, the Eclipse coming easily to mind.
Less Group 2 and 3 races would filter more horses into Group 1’s, though I would advocate a reduction throughout Europe in races at the highest level to reflect the smaller pool of Group class horses in training. Most listed races I would convert into limited handicaps. Flat racing in this country might be nowadays a nursery for countries with greater prize-money, yet I would argue it has always been a nursery for breeders to make fortunes. How much of that 2-million paid for the Frankel colt by Coolmore comes the way of British racing. Why isn’t there a levy or tax on the sale of racehorses at auction to go to bolstering prize-money in the country of the auction house. Don’t tell me the major auction houses are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. 1% might save our sport and yet do minor damage to the breeding industry.
I have long argued that the Lincoln Handicap should be returned to the race it was long ago, when it was considered as appealing as the Grand National, when it was one of the most sought-after races in the calendar. Now, it is reduced to being an ordinary handicap like so many others. It could be a Grand National for the flat, a 40-runner race, started from a barrier, as in its glory days. A reflection of the sport as it once was, as the Grand National is similarly. The Lincoln, these days, is a like a walk around the old Folkestone racecourse. It isn’t what it once was.
Less race meetings, no more than six or seven races per meeting until the future looks brighter, a reduction in Group races, more variation in race conditions, some form of regionalisation of race-meeting so that jockeys and trainers have less travelling, with the added saving on fuel costs, the Premierisation of both Saturday and Sunday, more non-flat and non-jumping days and a sales tax on the public auction of racehorses to go toward increasing prize-money throughout the racing calendar. Premierisation alone might butter the bread at Ascot, Newmarket, York, etc, but what is needed is a plan that will add jam to the butter whilst buttering the bread of all of our British racecourses.