A diverse day at The Horseracing Industry Conference 2022

THE day’s conference was entitled “A healthy balance: balancing economic, environmental and social health to ensure a sustainable racing industry”.

The wide variety of speakers did well to cover such diverse topics in one day of talks and discussions for the Horseracing Industry Conference 2022, held this year at Newbury racecourse.

Hosted by ITV racing’s Oli Bell, Joe Saumarez-Smith, the new chair of the British Horseracing Authority, kicked off proceedings with a keynote speech. He opened his speech with apologies that he would over-use the word “data”, and he was true to his word -expressing throughout his talk how important collection and appropriate use and understanding of data is for racing’s future.

The rest of the morning was dedicated to an understanding of the industry’s economics – Peter Hawkings, Strategy Consultant at Portas Consulting, concluded his talk on the “Finances Of British Racing” with an outline of the five differing paths that the sport could take to grow its income, while the University of Liverpool’s Professor of Economics David Forrest reported on his enlightening research project “How People Bet on Horseracing and the Implications for the Sport.”

Forrest’s data was collected from 140,000 online betting accounts and revealed just how male dominated online betting is – 94 per cent of all online betting is generated by men, a figure which only drops slightly to 92 per cent when looking at horserace betting only. Of this the largest sector by age is the older and senior gambler, younger people are gambling mainly on sport, predominantly football and via accumulator betting.

His talk provided much food for thought as to the future funding of the sport from betting and the Levy.

He was followed by a panel discussion which focused on the upcoming government gambling review white paper and the proposed affordability checks. It was warned that it will be naive for horseracing to think that it will be able to stand aside as a more “sophisticated” form of betting as compared to slots and casino games. It was discussed that the affordability checks could be more unobtrusive than first expected and could be carried out via third party credit checks.

The afternoon session was headed up by “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in British Racing: Making Progress of Ticking Boxes” reported as  a fast-changing space that racing needs to place “front and centre”.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Consultant and the session’s speaker Louise Tideswell identified how much stronger businesses perform with a mixed team both from a male/ female perspective as well as if ethnically diverse.

Equine Welfare was discussed with an update on progress of the Horse Welfare Board, followed by Katie Walker who outlined her research into stride length and use of the whip.

The final talk on the packed day was on the environmental sustainability of British racing and was given by Ruth Dance, director at White Griffin. She stressed the importance of a cross and whole industry approach, the importance of putting strategies in place as the country moves toward its net zero goal in 2050. The environment is a key concern for the younger generation – for the sport to appeal it has to be seen to be acting now.

The day concluded with discussion from a leadership panel made up of the NTF’s Paul Johnson, the BHA’s director of integrity and regulation Tim Naylor, Charlie Liverton, CEO of the ROA, Claire Sheppard, CEO of the TBA, and David Armstrong, CEO of the RCA.

It was announced that a new governance structure will be revealed over  the next few weeks, which all felt will enable a more collaborative model for working. It also identified the importance of working for the younger generation, creating entry points for those to come to the sport and then continue in the sport as either racegoers, bettors, owners or working within the industry.

As was recognised, while the sport and industry might be good at working together on a micro level, it is time for a macro-scale strategy to be put in place. It is believed that the new governance framework in place will allow this to happen