British Horseracing Authority sending out mixed messages

I found it most interesting to see the public outrage last week over Man City's technical breaches of a rule.

The football club inflated their sponsorship figures over a number of years in order to get around a financial cap on the purchasing of players.

The passion and upset this has generated among ordinary football fans is amazing.

In horse racing the fans accept downright cheating on a regular basis, even when it costs them money.

Some horse or other with a string of zeros will be backed off the boards to win and the general consensus from fans will be ‘fair dues to them.'

The doping of horses is another aspect of the sport that rarely manages to ignite the same passion that we see from football supporters.

Dozens of winning horses are disqualified each year for failing drug tests, but the majority of racing fans remain blissfully unaware because the disqualifications happen months or even years after the races took place.

What Man City did is in a way rather similar to what has been going on in Irish racing for years, yet nobody in this space bats an eyelid.

The Government funding of Irish horse racing is based on the notion that the industry is worth €2.46 billion to the economy annually and supports 30,350 jobs.

Those figures don't stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny, but all our Government politicians and industry stakeholders accept them as gospel and reference them constantly.

Officially, there are in fact 9,400 jobs directly involved in the horse racing and breeding industry in Ireland and the amount of revenue directly attributable to those people is reckoned to be €1.22 billion.

However, in order for the industry to justify the annual Government grant of €70 million a myriad of other people and money that have loose associations with horse racing and breeding are brought in to swell the numbers.

Even Manchester City's accountants might consider that is stretching things just a little too far.

Switching topics, the new Chair of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), Simon Cox, made his first public statement last week.

Cox outlined his vision for his new role and included a nice soundbite regarding the direction he wants to take horse racing in the UK - “focusing our efforts on growth, not just managing decline.”

Simon Cox is aware that the sport faces challenges in a number of areas and mentioned the foal crop, betting, ownership and revenue streams as all under pressure, but he has picked out one green shoot - an increase in racecourse attendances over the last year and a half - to focus on.

It is certainly positive to see that attendance levels have started to creep back in the right direction after a number of years of decline.

The average attendance at a UK race meeting in 2025 was 3,524. The equivalent number in Ireland last year was 3,374.

It is understandable that the head of the BHA would want to bring some positivity to his new role, but his vision to ‘focus our efforts on growth' doesn't appear to have filtered down to the rest of the organisation just yet.

A day after Cox's rallying cry the organisation's director of communications & corporate affairs, Greg Swift, was still very much in ‘managing decline' mode as he issued a “stark warning” to the British Government in advance of their upcoming budget.

This BHA warning was issued on foot of new analysis carried out by the Regulus Partner which concluded that if taxes on bookmaker profits from Machine Gaming were doubled by the British Government in the budget it would result in a loss of revenue for horse racing of £92 million a year.

That is approximately one third of the annual revenue horse racing in Britain receives from the gambling sector through Media Rights deals, Race Sponsorships and the statutory Horserace Betting Levy.

Horse racing in Britain currently receives £100 million annually via the betting Levy and this money funds the regulatory functions of the BHA and also accounts for 32% of all UK prize money.

Any drop in this revenue stream would have an impact across the sport, but that impact would be most pronounced at the BHA, which relies on this money to function.

Some of those working at the BHA may take quite a bit of convincing to focus their efforts on growth when there is a major threat to their very livelihoods looming.

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that a total of 46 remote betting brands are currently listed on the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI) website as holding licenses to operate in Ireland.

The GRAI began issuing licenses to betting operators that meet their strict criteria from the beginning of July this year.

Over three months later, one brand still not listed as holding an official licence to accept bets from Irish customers is 1xBet.ie.

On the brand's own website it states that it is “licensed by the Irish Revenue Commissioners under Remote Bookmaker's license 1019276.”

According to GRAI “Revenue-issued remote bookmaking licences expired on 30 June 2026, and the GRAI licensing for remote betting operators commenced on 1 July 2026. Any Revenue-issued licence for remote bookmaking is no longer valid.”

The brand 1xBet has a chequered history in a number of jurisdictions and has been without a gambling licence in the UK since 2019.

Three races at the Curragh on Sunday were sponsored by 1xBet. Not a great look for the home of Irish flat racing to be promoting a betting operator that is currently without a valid licence in Ireland.