£700m A Year Bill For Retired Racehorses’ Welfare

[Steeplechasing]

On Thursday at Royal Ascot, owner and breeder Philippa Cooper prefixed a plea for funding the care of racehorses after they retire by saying, ‘A lot of people won’t like me saying this …’

It’s a regular subject when racehorse welfare is discussed. Nobody is against it, but nobody wants to face the realities of tackling it. As far as I know, such a project has never been costed. I typed the following into Google’s AI engine Gemini Pro:

It’s probably an impossible task to get an accurate figure, but see what you can do. The key challenge is to provide financial lifetime cover for all horses bred to race in the UK who need to be supported after their ability to earn money ends: so, ex racers who go to stud continue earning, some for many years, ex-UK racers are often sold abroad to race, so would need to be effectively ignored in the calculations in that they become the responsibility of another jurisdiction.

Some horses go eventing or to dressage, though I suspect there is very little prize money in such ventures. Anyway, see what you can do.

Gemini Response:

Let’s be honest—this might be an impossible task. But it’s an important one. What would it cost to provide financial lifetime cover for every horse bred to race in the UK that no longer earns money through racing, breeding, or export?

Not every ex-racehorse retires into obscurity. Some go on to second careers in breeding or are sold abroad, often to continue racing or stand at stud. But the rest—those who stay in the UK and transition to roles in eventing, dressage, or as companion animals—require long-term care without a commercial return.

Let’s try to put a number on that responsibility.

Step 1: Key Assumptions and Data Points

To create a working estimate, we need a clear set of baseline assumptions:

Annual number of horses leaving British racing: 7,500
Average lifespan of a Thoroughbred: 25 years
Average retirement age: 6 years
Years of post-racing care: 19 years (25 – 6)
Average annual cost of care: £7,500 per horse
This gives us the framework to begin building a model.

Step 2: Filtering the Cohort

Not every one of those 7,500 horses requires lifetime financial support:

Exclude horses entering breeding: ~30% = 2,250
Exclude horses exported abroad: ~5% = 375
This leaves us with around 4,875 horses per year needing care. For simplicity, we’ll round that to 4,900.

These are the horses that:

Retire into non-commercial second careers like eventing or leisure riding
Live as companions
Depend on individuals, families, or charities for support
Step 3: Lifetime Cost of Care Per Horse

Multiply the number of years each horse needs care (19) by the average annual cost (£7,500), and we get:

£142,500 per horse

That’s the financial responsibility someone takes on when rehoming a retired racehorse for its full lifespan.

Step 4: Total Liability for a Single Year’s Retirees

Now let’s scale that up to cover one year’s cohort of 4,900 horses:

4,900 × £142,500 = £698,250,000

In other words, around £700 million is the estimated lifetime cost for just one year’s group of non-commercial retirees.

The National Picture: Ongoing Responsibility

Let’s take this even further. If every year’s cohort lives an average of 19 years post-retirement, that means the UK is supporting approximately:

4,900 horses × 19 years = 93,100 living ex-racehorses

Maintaining that population each year would cost:

93,100 horses × £7,500 = £698,250,000 annually

So whether we look at the lifetime liability of a single cohort or the ongoing national cost, the answer is the same:

£700 million per year

Summary: A Realistic, Sobering Estimate

Metric | Value
-———|———
Lifetime cost per horse | ~£142,500
Lifetime cost of a year’s retirees | ~£700 million
Annual cost to care for all living retired racehorses | ~£700 million

Important Caveats

This is a model. It’s based on reasonable, middle-of-the-road assumptions—but reality can vary:

Emergency vet bills are not included and could drive costs higher.
Inflation will increase costs over a 19-year timeline.
Livery types vary: some horses are kept cheaply at home, others are stabled at professional yards.
Lifespan is an average—some horses die young, others live well into their 30s.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t just a mathematical exercise. It’s a moral one. If we take responsibility for breeding horses for sport, we must also consider the full cost of their care when the spotlight fades.The challenge is real. But understanding the scale of it is the first step toward solutions that honour the horses whose lives have served our entertainment, industry, and passion.

Excluding 2025, the total annual income of the Levy Board for the past 7 years is £693m. Racing’s pie is full of fingers right up to the crust. The sport cannot claim a welfare structure that is ethically acceptable to most until this problem is solved. I doubt even Sisyphus could be recruited to face the task.

[cormack15]

That is a staggering amount SC. And put into perspective by that Levy figure.

If owners were liable for the lifetime cost of funding retirement for an ex-racehorse (£142k average total cost estimate according to this) most of the sales could shut up shop as nobody would be buying anything.

[griff11]

The responsibility and funding should lie with all benefiting from the sport. The burden shouldn’t be solely with the owner.

[Helcatmudwrestler]

There will be a huge number that finish breeding and have plenty of years ahead of them , do they fall back on racing to look after or breeders . A retired stallion will cost a bit more than old gelding .
There will also be a number each year that are not suitable for anything after racing as they are dangerous or have long term injuries .
A diary cows primary purpose is to produce milk , when they cannot do that anymore should the diary industry provide huge fields and look after them into old age .
A lot of places put a levy on prizemoney each race to go to racehorse retirement but is that sustainable the levels raced for in UK .Some of the midweek stakes are peanuts without deductions .

[LD73]

Maybe there is a way that an automatic Pension Fund type of deduction could be taken from the various bodies of the participants of horse racing (trainers, owners, jockeys etc).

The combined decution of all those participants could then be matched by Racing (Levy) to provide an overall Fund to pay those costs or at least offset a large percentage of the cost to ease the burden from the new owner of said horse(s) having to foot the whole yearly bill.

[Marlingford]

There’s some information on how Retraining of Racehorses is funded at present at the link below. Owners pay a small levy on each entry fee, currently £3 per entry.

https://www.ror.org.uk/about-us/funding

Without wishing to diminish the excellent efforts and generous contributions made by some, there is still colossal room for improvement in this area. I agree with the previous comments that all parties who benefit from the sport should be making a significant contribution.

[Helcatmudwrestler]

Randwick has a very average 7 race card tomorrow , nearly 10k AUD into horse welfare from stakes .
10 races of a weekend in winter will be 3 X that , when real racing starts again at end Sept it ramps right up .
Jockey welfare fund also comes out of each race too .

[LD73]

If the prize money situation below the top flight here was much more robust then I think that would also be a good avenue to explore but there are complaints about how winning prize money doesn’t even cover the actual expenses to get to the race…..maybe the G1 races could have a deduction taken but I would imagine in general terms it would be a complete total non-starter.

[Author]

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