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If you have some kind of involvement you are more likely to form a bond with a sport. Horse racing can’t provide that for the price of a football can it.
I suppose the ‘involvement’ is your bet but, as has been noted, that aspect of it is harder to include in the ‘sales pitch’ these days and of course not applicable to children who probably don’t even get an illicit pound on the National any more.
CAS – True but then where would football (and many other sports for that matter) be without the likes of Sky Sports/TNT Sports media money paying for the domestic rights for the Premier League (the latest deal is £6.7b for 2025/26 season).
Even when these sports were only on terrestial tv (BBC/ITV) the money they got from selling the rights package pretty much ran the sport top to bottom…….the only real differences now is the insane figures that are being paid for the rights and the new technology being used.
I know, Yeats.
But the anti-PMU mob keep saying that they want the choice offered by having multiple bookmakers… even though variation in prices barely exists these days.
And even with a PMU system, the going might not be so good:
It’s a problem facing horse racing everywhere: there are now so many other things that people can gamble on.
The Sky/TNT money has nothing to do with betting. Football gets some money through bookmaker sponsorship etc but that must be a minuscule part of its overall finances.
No doubt a PMU type system would be better for racing’s finances but I think it is too late to introduce that now. Punters like the idea of beating the SP or getting on at a nice price antepost. That would be all gone with PMU. This forum would be a lot quieter!
There is also the issue of the size of the take out from the pool. Punters are fleeced by a lot of pool betting systems.
CAS – the point I was making is that Football relies just as much on the Sky/TNT money as Racing does on Bookmaker money – both are symbiotic relationships in that way.
Quite frankly I wouldn’t have a clue as to how much (if any) of the money that is taken on Football bets makes its way back into the game at any level.
Hard to say if there is any other way (outside of betting turnover/levy) that Racing could be funded by another source, even though it is the 2nd most attended sport after Football it can’t generate the same kind of revenue that Football can (but then most other sports can’t either).
At least the video showed horses a bit more than the Jenas effort did.
Amongst all the breathless excitement, no one mentioned choosing a horse and winning money on it – which is the main thing lots of racegoers get excited about. But we can’t mention betting, can we?
“Amongst all the breathless excitement, no one mentioned choosing a horse and winning money on it – which is the main thing lots of racegoers get excited about. But we can’t mention betting, can we?”
Yes it was cringily obvious how they’d avoided even the suggestion of <shudder, whispers> gambling
As long as the kids have a day out and love it and the girls get to dance in their heels and have a sing song, who needs betting?
No wonder racing’s authorities don’t want to mention betting when the BBC in all seriousness once concluded an article about racing by saying “The Melbourne Cup is worth A$8m and is often called ‘the race that stops a nation’. But in recent years it has attracted demonstrations over the welfare of animals and its links to gambling.”
Which is clearly meant to be A Very Bad Thing in BBC Land.
A horse race. And people bet on it! I expect the poor BBC intern needed counselling.
And yet the BBC have the National Lottery on their screen which is betting based on no actual skill being involved (you have to be lucky enough to have the numbers you pick come up). Yet it is always classed as playing the Natiuonal Lottery when it is still betting in its purest form.
It is estimated that roughly 70% of the population that are 18+ bet on the National Lottery, which is around 45 million people gambling and it is also estimated that 50% of the overall population bets on it more than once a month.
Crickets from the BBC on that front though!
Does the BBC still show the Lottery? It used to be part of the Saturday night schedule with some sort of quiz or entertainment show to string it out but I thought those sort of shows stopped a few years ago?
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