Chairman's Blog: Meagre returns should worry top-tier traders

In the words of Oliver Twist, “Please Sir, I want some more”. Not that I am suggesting that Roger Devlin, the Chairman of the Horserace Betting Levy Board, is behaving like the workhouse master in Dickens’  famous  novel, it is just that the lower end of British horseracing is  in intensive care and if something isn’t done about it soon,  it may well wither away.

Is that putting it too strongly? Perhaps, but only just. On average, British racehorse owners recoup around 10% of their annual training costs each year. So far this year, I have covered precisely three weeks’ worth of training and stud-keep fees for my own team. But that is true of most owners. 

At the end of 2025, 64.6% of Flat horses in training were rated 75 or lower. In other words, they qualified, in the main, to run in Class 5 and 6 races. At the end of May 2025, jumps horses rated below 110  (Grades 4 and 5) amounted to 60.3% of the population. In the latest round of minimum value increases, the Levy Board increased the floor for Class 5 races by £1,500 to £7,500, Class 6 races by £1,000 to £6,000, Grade 4 jumps races by £1,500 to £8,800 for chasers and £8,000 for hurdlers, and Grade 5 races by £1,000 to £6,300 and £6,000 for chasers and hurdlers respectively. 

Most racecourses beat these minimum values, some by a substantial amount – Hexham is noteworthy in this respect among jumps tracks while Windsor takes the honours on the Flat – but if they were pushed towards these levels because of reduced flow in media rights, betting shop and bookmaker sponsorship income, or if their costs for maintenance, watering and services keep rising as a result of climate change and war, then the lot of the small, sole owner is going to become impossible to bear.

Meanwhile, Tattersalls’ October Book 1 Sale hit a median record of £230,000 per yearling and the Book 2 median rose to £85,000, a 12% increase over 2025. The top end of the sport, where the prize-money  increases are the greatest, is now reaching eye-watering levels in terms of bloodstock outlays. 

At the same time, the auction houses, large owner-breeding organisations and top courses continue to focus their sponsorship on Group and Class 1 prize-money, particularly at the major festivals. It is almost as if they have never heard of ‘enlightened self-interest’ and just keep assuming that the safety net will always be there. What do I mean by that?

Of the 1,587 entries in this year’s Autumn Horses-In-Training Sale at Tattersalls, 13% come from five top stables (some operations do not consign horses themselves, so it is difficult to track exact numbers). It is safe to say that these are the cast-offs from big yards and owners. 

In days gone by, there wasn’t a problem in this respect. Large owner-breeders might have taken their disappointments back to the farm, the point-to-points or hunting, but most of those owners are long gone. There were other, less palatable, alternatives that some owners turned to that no longer, thank goodness, exist as an exit route. 

Yet while Book 1 ‘royalty’ is selling for hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds as yearlings, we know that many of them – less so the fillies – will be rated below 75 by the end of their racing lives.

he belief behind these sales is that the royalty that turn out to be jokers will be bought by someone else who, as one racing grandee put it to me, “is only interested in a free lunch and a good day out”. 

Well, reality is going to bite hard if the top end of British racing doesn’t start working out how it can support the lower tiers more forcefully. I can’t be alone in the owners’ ranks in reducing my commitment to the sport this year (by 23%). Moreover, it can’t all be left to the British Horseracing Authority and the Levy Board to come up with the answers. 

Auction houses, large racecourses, large breeding operations and large owners need to start speaking to each other and develop a strategy to underwrite the uptake of horses in training that don’t make the grade as high-quality performers. 

Enlightened self-interest may be a new phrase in racing, but the movers and shakers had better embrace it fast given the current state of the economics at the bottom of the pyramid. If that end falls away, the entire structure of British racing is in jeopardy.