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I was wondering if anyone could detail the finer points of racing’s current relationships with Weatherbys, breeders and auction houses?
Obviously Weatherbys deal with the administrative side of day-to-day racing, but at what cost to the sport? Do they receive financial remuneration for their contributions, or do they simply profit from the ‘ownership’ of racecard and historical data? Are they even an independent body in the modern day?
And breeders/auction houses; what links them to the racing industry? Do they exist within racing but as separate entities? Are they required to make a monetary contribution to racing for providing the arena in which their products ultimately do battle?
Any help will be very much appreciated.
I wouldn’t see why sales companies should be in any way
obliged
to support racing financially. However it is clearly in their interest for racing to be functioning healthily.
There’s plenty of info about what Weatherbys do on their website:
http://www.weatherbys.co.uk/divisional_briefs
That page has a series of links on the left side for each area of their business.
As a registered owner, I’m required to have an account with Weatherbys Bank to pay entry fess and jockey fees. Weatherbys charge an admin fee for every entry made.
As far as breeders are concerned, they have the option of registering their sires with the European Breeders Fund to which they then pay a percentage – not sure if that’s of the stud fee or the price obtained at auction, or both. The EBF recycles the money into prize funds for races that are only open to EBF registered horses.
Tattersalls so far as I’m aware are an entirely independent company – like many others they sponsor races and provide the support for the valuable sales races (mostly funded by entry fees), but I don’t know of any other contribution to racing. If you’ve been to their sales complex at Newmarket, you’ll have seen that it covers a very large area to provide many hundreds of stables for horses awaiting sale and clearly it must cost a lot to maintain.
AP
Obviously Weatherbys deal with the administrative side of day-to-day racing, but at what cost to the sport? Do they receive financial remuneration for their contributions, or do they simply profit from the ‘ownership’ of racecard and historical data? Are they even an independent body in the modern day?
Weatherbys administrate the necessary day-to-day operations required for racing to function under contract to the BHA. There is a financial remuneration involved, since Weatherbys is a company not a charity, and things such as staff salaries, computer development, overheads etc all cost money.
I find this part of the question slightly odd, to be honest, particularly the "at what cost" aspect. I know its fashionable to knock Weatherbys, but they deal with every stage of racing from registrations – breeding stock, foals, names, owners, colours (silks) – recording horses in training; taking & checking entries & decs, weight adding; recording race results; preparing & typesetting racecards for 58 race courses; pedigree research for sales catalogues; recording owners’, trainers’ and jockeys’ sponsorship agreements; advising owners on VAT claims; process the payment of prize money, riding fees, breeders’ prizes… I could go on.
I would argue that the Weatherbys staff’s "contributions"
far outweighs any "cost".- Total Posts 17716
The term ‘at what cost to racing’ simply means ‘how much does it cost’. I can understand outsourcing marketing, for instance, because it’s a very specific task, but I remain bemused as to why the BHA isn’t responsible for its own administration; especially when the contract is apparently worth in excess of £5m a year.
far outweighs any "cost".- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.