Dr Jim Walker: Cash concerns put two groups under pressure

How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.” From Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.

In early December we held the 43rd Racehorse Owners Association Horseracing Awards at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London. It was a truly memorable evening where we celebrated the owners of racing’s best racehorses in 2025.

It was my first event as Chair of the ROA and, being an economist, I decided to talk ‘jargon’ in my speech. Economists are justifiably criticised for using language that is impenetrable to ordinary people. But we are not alone. It is the safety blanket of the professional class: economists, doctors, football managers, horse trainers and vets use phrases and vocabulary that excludes the amateur and makes us feel important. It’s called self-delusion.

My target on this occasion was the training profession. Trainers are in a world of their own when it comes to describing how our horses are progressing, their wellbeing, and how they managed to come last in a race you thought they might win.

I think the light-hearted ribbing was taken as intended.

Yet there was a serious message: please don’t treat us like children. None of us expect a trainer to tell us that our horse will win a specific race – he or she can’t know how the strong the competition is let alone the effects of the draw, the ground and so on – but just tell us how the horse is and what happened in plain English.

Which brings me to the Budget. According to some industry representatives, racing dodged a bullet. The 25 per cent tax on racehorse betting (distributed ten per cent to the levy and fifteen per cent to the government) was left unaltered. Online gaming saw taxes rise to forty per cent. As an economist, and in plain English, this was not a win for racing.

Few seemed to care that the bookies were the big losers. Their profits will be hit hard, to the tune of more than £1 billion according to the Chancellor.

The levy brings in just over £100 million in betting duty and around 70 per cent of that goes into prize-money. But that is less than half the contribution made by the betting industry in the form of media rights, sponsorships and promotions. Do we really think the sponsorship funds, which are their direct costs, will be unscathed? I very much doubt it. And that is bad news for us.

There are two groups of people at the heart of horseracing in this country who rarely feature on Racing TV, Sky Sports or ITV Racing: owners and punters (and they are far from mutually  exclusive). The professionals are the centre of attention, while the amateurs are among the also-rans. Yet if either owners or punters were forced out of the sport, there would be no one to pay the bills. Already, many big punters have moved from being levy contributors to tax avoiders – often because they have been unable to place decent-sized bets, as the tax structure pushed bookmakers to retain losing punters and get rid of the astute gamblers. That is unwelcome news for prize-money.

Meanwhile, owners are subject to ever increasing costs, soaring bloodstock prices and stagnant prize-money at the lower end, where most of the horse population ends up.

Increasing prize-money, lowering costs and improving the raceday experience are the core objectives of the Racehorse Owners Association. But they should be the core concerns of the regulator, the trainers, the jockeys, the racecourses and even government, too. If everybody thinks clearly about it, the focus must shift to keeping owners and punters happy. We at the ROA are here to help and work with everyone that wants to advance the sport.

The message to the professionals in racing, in plain English again, is very simple – owners are your best friends. Moreover, owners are your only hope of survival. Do not be complacent because they have kept turning up for the last few decades at the sales to buy the next Highfield Princess, Mr Vango or even, dare I say it, Subjectivist, because, like Mike Campbell in The Sun Also Rises, we are currently going bankrupt slowly. And as seems to be developing in the breeding ranks, especially in National Hunt foal crops, the ‘suddenly’ might just be around the corner. All the sooner if the bookmakers' sponsorship funding takes a nosedive.

From a Scottish, Presbyterian, economist – Happy New Year!