MORE ABOUT PRIZE MONEY.

​Prize Money is and during my life-time always has been a source of embarrassment to the sport when compared to the purses on offer in other leading horse racing countries. The top-end of the sport is, as you would expect, well-served, with all the most prestigious races having prize money commensurate with similar races abroad. Of course, the simplest method of boosting prize money at the opposite end of the scale would be to siphon off 10% from every race worth over fifty-thousand pounds. The powers-that-be aren’t keen to take that road for fear of the major owners taking their large strings of horses to France where the sport has a very sound method of achieving appropriate levels of prize money for all sectors of the sport.
As no one, seemingly, in high places has any truck with treading a similar path to the French, and with the present system of funding made unsustainable in the long-term due to the nasty Government, no doubt in their ignorance, turning off the tap of unlimited funds coming our way via the Fixed Odd Terminal jobbies – though to my innocent eyes this did seem a close relation to living off immoral earnings. In my precious piece I suggested alternative avenues might be tried to source extra funding for our sport, as well as to raise money for equine charities.
I freely admit that my proposal for an industry supported ‘Big Bet’ on the lines of the Scoop 6 is not entirely the answer as the B.H.A. cannot be expected to fund the sport when they have no clear notion of how much money such a bet would generate over a 12-month period. Yet I do not propose the ‘Big Bet’ should be expected to fund the sport on its own. I see no reason why the present system cannot continue to be the foundation stone of funding, with the ‘Big Bet’ in existence to bolster the prize fund pot. Other ideas should also be welcomed to this end. Individual racecourse Totes seem a workable idea to me. And to my knowledge lotteries and scratch cards have not yet been considered to bring extra revenue to individual racecourses. Also, in this electronic age why hasn’t the powers-that-be considered some kind of on-line Tote?
The sport is crying-out for some ‘blue sky thinking’, an entrepreneur with a deep-seated love and understanding of the sport.
As was pointed out in today’s Racing Post, the situation at the moment is exacerbated by ARC owning too many racecourses, having 40%, apparently, share of the race programme. But that does not necessarily make ARC the true baddy in this debate. It can be argued that without Arc many more racecourses would have gone the way of Wye, Stockton and Folkestone (Shame on you ARC). If ARC do not turn a profit, they will no doubt sell their main assets to developers, selling unprofitable land being the safety-net of their investment in the sport. I refer you again to Folkestone.
Trainers, too, must make their businesses profitable. And owners must be given a chance of breaking even. Unlike some, though, I do not believe it is important for owners to make money out of our sport. If they choose to spend six-figure amounts of money on a horse they cannot expect any sort of a guarantee that they will win their outlay back in prize money. And the public will pour scorn on us if we use ‘the plight of the money-to-spare owner’ as a way of winning their sympathy and backing when it comes to boycotts and internal strife. To the public-at-large a boycott by racehorse trainers will be portrayed in newspapers like the Daily Mail as ‘rich boys throwing the toys from the pram because they can no longer afford the best champagne and cavier’.
It is not only the ARC board who need Arc to thrive. Racing as a whole needs Arc to thrive. And ARC equally needs racehorse trainers to thrive. As of this month a sticking plaster has been applied to the open wound that is prize money. But a sticking plaster will not heal either the division between ARC and racing professionals or what is, sadly, the self-inflicted injury of inadequate and longstanding funding of our sport.
Everyone directly involved in this dispute, which is anyone who cares about the future of our sport, must now get together on a regular basis and thrash out a long-term solution. The present system of funding must be shored-up and made fit for purpose but alternative ways to increase the funding-pool must also be established. Otherwise, and I do hope this is just scaremongering and not a vision of the future, the small-field cards that the boycotts have produced of late might be standard fare some time in the near future.