MY LATEST GOOD IDEA.

​How to increase racing’s popularity? How to entice more people to tune into I.T.V.’s The Morning Show? How to attract a greater diversity of owners into the sport? According to Julian Wray, of course, the sport is run-down, banal and living in the past, with the answer to all racing’s problems a phoney-baloney concept that will give the impression to any new customers that racing is awash with prize money and multi-billionaire owners. I disagree with his pessimism. Horse racing is vibrant, exciting, a mystery to be solved on a daily basis. As Gerald Mosse recently said in an interview in The Racing Post, in comparison to France, British racecourses have a buzz about them.
By the way, and I apologise for harping on about CHR, to promote his idea Julian Wray or someone will have to go on television and radio and explain to people what is wrong with racing and why it needs CHR to save the sport. That will go down well, won’t it?
Back to my point. I.T.V. regularly run competitions with the winners receiving a large cash reward and an all-expenses paid trip to one of the world’s iconic horseraces. This is all fine and dandy but I believe they are going about the promotional side of their obligations the wrong way. For free, I offer this, my latest good idea.
We need to look outside the narrow parameters of ‘The Morning Show’ viewership and extend the search for better terrestrial viewing figures, larger racecourse attendances and more racehorse ownership, to other I.T.V. programmes such as ‘This Morning’, ‘Loose Women’ and even ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, as well as general advertising, all of which will link-in to I.T.V. racing and specifically ‘The Morning Show’.
Four times a year, I suggest, the first prize in a competition should be free ownership of a racehorse, with all the added attractions and interest that comes with owning a racehorse, and with the added bonus of the horse being sold after twelve months and the lucky prize winner able to scoop the sales price. There could be other competitions where the prize might be ownership of a horse in a big race like the Grand National, the Lincoln or Royal Hunt Cup, or shares in a horse for a set time period. The quarterly competition could feature in I.T.V. programmes through the week, though to enter viewers would have to tune in to ‘The Morning Show’.
Although every winner of a racehorse will not remain a racehorse owner after the twelve months of the competition prize, if one in four each year continue to own or have shares in racehorses into the future, the sport can only benefit.
Sending a lucky winner to the Melbourne Cup does not benefit the sport. My idea, if the sport could finance it, will, if nothing else, give people perhaps outside of the general run of things an insight into the mysterious world of horse racing. And who would supply these horses? Trainers. I doubt if there are many trainers who do not have horses in need of owners and syndicates in need of members.
If horse racing has a problem it is not at the top end of the sport but down amongst its foundation. Every ‘good’ idea and innovation is concerned with bettering prize money at a level most owners cannot even aspire to, with nobody, seemingly, wanting to engage with the nitty-gritty problem of attracting new people into ownership. My idea goes a small way to doing just that. If the idea is put into practise it might also help trainers shift a few horses, clear a few debts and gain a new owner.