Horse racing finding it hard to kick the betting habit

PLATFORM:Giving up on the betting industry's marketing budget is a luxury few sports can afford, writes RICHARD GILLIS

THERE IS always fun to be had when business consultants are hired to help a sport change its ways. The most recent example involves horse racing in Britain, and the results of the discussion deserve a broader audience.

The Harrison Fraser agency was hired by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) to advise on rebranding the sport.

Its findings included some management gobbledegook: horse racing “is of low saliency to most occasional participants”, and the public is deterred by the “complex nature of the product”.

The sport, according to Harrison Fraser, is an enjoyable day out but is “a peripheral activity in most leisure repertoires” and lacks the “hooks necessary to capture and maintain engagements”.

But it was the final judgment that really caught the eye: “Current casual participants are insufficiently interested in either the sport or in serious betting to make the required investment in understanding it.”

The conclusion was that, to grow, horse racing should distance itself from the betting industry, a point that is central to the BHA’s ongoing television contract negotiations with Channel 4.

The board wants Channel 4 to make betting a less high-profile part of its horse racing coverage, as it tries to position itself as something more akin to Formula One (the governing body effectively pays television to air the sport due to its sponsorship deal with Dubai Holding and money it receives from the Levy Board and the Tote).

The reasoning is simple: we watch cars going round in circles without feeling the need for a punt; why can’t we do the same with horses? Horse racing, particularly the flat season, it is said, lacks a “narrative” – a story with which to engage the general public.

This is nonsense to anyone who follows racing but, as is so often the case, they are not the people being targeted. Sport, like banks and mobile phone companies, has a habit of neglecting its regular customers while bending over backwards to accommodate new ones. This is not a new idea. I remember being presented with a similar plan 10 years ago involving Dubai oil money and a world series. It should be noted that, when a consultant is asked how a sport should evolve, the response is often to copy something already out there.

Formula One is admired in sports business circles mainly because it makes shedloads of money for Bernie Ecclestone and the team owners. This is the justification for using it as a model for horse racing, an approach that ignores the huge cultural differences between the two.

Likewise, it is knowing to suggest that a sport should change to be more like Twenty20 cricket, with golf, squash and horse jumping each toying with the idea of shortened versions of themselves, in an attempt to target the “MTV generation”, who, received wisdom suggests, are unable to concentrate for more than 90 minutes.

Gambling is to snooker, football and cricket what the drugs issue is to swimming, cycling and athletics: potentially ruinous. Yet, over the past five years, online gambling companies have been using sport to flog their wares, while events holders and teams turned a blind eye to the potential long-term damage to their reputation.

Boylesports (Sunderland), Bet24 (Blackburn), 32Red (Aston Villa), 888.com (Middlesbrough) and Mansion (Spurs) have each basked in the glow of the Premier League’s international audience at some stage.

But the stain of matchfixing is hard to remove once there’s a sniff of a story. Witness the media’s response to the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer when it was, wrongly, announced that he had been murdered in his hotel room the night after his team’s defeat by Ireland at the Cricket World Cup in Jamaica. Out poured millions of words across the world on betting cartels on the subcontinent.

Horse racing’s plan is interesting in terms of its timing. Turning its back on the betting industry may be a laudable aim: as a sector it tends to be bracketed with alcohol and tobacco as the bad guys of the sponsorship game. But right now, giving up on the betting industrys marketing budget is a luxury few can afford.

Take this month’s World Snooker Championships at the Crucible in Sheffield. The event, which gets hours of prime terrestrial coverage on the BBC, found it hard to get a sponsor and was being touted around town for a fraction – some say a third – of the price it received previously.

When Betfred came knocking, the event’s owners were in no position to make moral judgments. Horse racing is not the only sport finding it hard to kick the betting habit.