It has been a late start to the day because my HQ spies told me Nevin Truesdale, CEO of Jockey Club Racecourses, would be on The Morning Line. I had to watch it because of the news this week and I was rather hoping to hear that it had galvanised something other than using the Racing Post as a public wall to paste your leaflets on.
This week, new figures revealed a fall in online betting turnover on horseracing of more than 25% in real terms, the equivalent of a £3 billion black hole. Much of the blame for the fall has been laid at the door of affordability checks, which several senior executives of the various industry bodies and companies have blamed on an "unaccountable and out of control" Gambling Commission.
Martin Cruddace had written letter in the Racing Post and then the Gambling Commission made a reply and there was lots of heat. I was rather hoping that Truesdale would reveal some strategy, discussion, plan - anything - that would show a united front fighting for racing rather than their own self-interest.
Everything is so much more transparent now - not. Those of you still abed will hardly be accursed that they were not here because the wise men on the box might as well have been talking in ancient Sanskrit. Of course, the hacks get it, but they are ever mindful of their buttered bread, so there is no real level of interrogation or even impetus.
Owner-breeder and Betfair co-founder Andrew Black, one of racing’s most intelligent minds, fears "more is to come" as the spiralling impact of falling betting turnover on the sport hits British racing. In his view, operators will offer a less attractive product as turnovers fall, creating a vicious circle.
“Ultimately, if online operators are feeling the pinch, then the punter is going to feel the pinch because the value is going to leave, you'll find over-rounds going up, you'll find offers disappearing as they have to tighten their belts and that gets passed on to the punters. Again, it is all part of a spiral. We don't know when it comes to an end and how it's going to play out but what we do know is there is more to come.”
Many of those in charge keep tip-toeing around the core issue: the bookies have conflated casinos, bingo, virtual racecourses, digital scratch cards, slots and whatever else they can get away with and the sport of horseracing. Go to any online bookmakers and count the instant opportunities to lose money - based on selections that are entirely random at one level but also guaranteed to have a more significant built-in profit margin than the average 16-runner handicap at Wetherby. That’s where the problem gambling lies.
They were trying to discuss it in the studio, but separating racing and gambling should be the central strategy of everything we do. As Andrew Black knows, racing needs to make the case to the government that it requires protection from its own Quango, which is lumping racing with football and all sports betting with Casinos. Not in order to create a safer gambling environment, which is the Gambling Commission’s remit, but to stamp it out altogether.
“The drum that I bang the most is the argument to put to the government to say that racing is cultural and needs to be treated differently to other forms of gambling that don't have that cultural and social aspect. We need to be separated from other forms of gambling, two flies on a wall, casino-type gambling.”
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