Figures paint stark future

IN TERMS of eyesight, 20/20 vision is pretty much perfect but on the back of yesterday’s statistics for 2009, any long-term vision for how horse racing might fare in the year 2020 is blurry in the extreme.

What had been a mostly positive decade for Ireland’s most successful international sport has finished up with racing in Ireland looking as vulnerable to economic uncertainty as at any time in its 220-year history.

Figures for betting turnover, attendances, horse sales and levels of ownership have been on the slide from admittedly record levels but that slide is now threatening to become a roller-coaster ride travelling in only one direction – down.

The contrary part of all this is that 2009 was a seminal year for Irish racing out on the track. Not just here, but around the world, it will be remembered as the season of Sea The Stars, clearly the best racehorse on the globe, with the nearest rivals in his generation also based in this country.

And yet that increasingly looks like it could be the dying kick of racing’s Celtic Tiger years. Certainly the unfettered optimism of the “noughties” is a thing of the past. It can be nothing else based on the figures produced by Horse Racing Ireland yesterday.

In an industry and sport so dependant on the general economic vibe out there, they make for depressing reading. An attendance drop of 11 per cent and a 62 per cent collapse in bloodstock sales from 2007 are disturbing in themselves.

But the uncertainty in racing right now is really summed up in a 20 per cent decrease in total on-course betting, a statistic that points to how the face of the sport in Ireland may have changed completely by the end of this decade.

On-course bookmakers have been an integral part of the racing experience for generations but plenty of them admit that if things continue the way they are, it will be financially unsustainable for them to continue.

At many meetings now, midweek and otherwise, it is possible to see the size of the betting shrinking, and those that are there are often as not more tuned into their laptops than they are to punters in front of them. It’s hard to blame them. Races that on-course are producing a relative pittance in turnover can generate millions on-line.

That only reflects the reality that most betting now is done away from the racecourse, with many punters even forsaking off-course betting shops for gambling on-line and over the phone to offshore-based companies that contribute little or nothing towards the product that is generating billions.

For Horse Racing Ireland, whose budgets have been slashed by Government in the last 18 months, and whose financial stability is essentially dependant on the grace and favour of politicians, it is a nightmare situation that they recognise only too clearly.

“It is essential for racing to be self-financing. This can be done with a meaningful levy on betting, including all offshore internet and telephone betting, which has wrongly escaped the tax net,” its chief executive Brian Kavanagh said yesterday.

“In 2002 the Irish betting industry was turning over €1 billion and generating tax of €68 million. Seven years later the betting has increased to €5.5 billion and the tax take has declined to €30 million,” he added.

That is a conundrum facing governments in Britain, France and throughout Europe, as well as here, but for a country in which racing employs over 15,000 people, and generates international success at a rate unequalled in any other sport, it is an issue central to any future recovery. The Department of Justice is currently trying to tease out the legislative complexities of an issue that the high-powered bookmaking chains are likely to fight in every court available to them.

HRI’s only consolation is that their position is clear. The current financial standing of Irish racing is unsustainable if the game is to continue to excel. Racing’s ruling body estimates that up to 1,500 jobs have been lost in racing during the current economic crisis and more are inevitable from funding cuts already announced for this year.

It is how government negotiates the funding structures that will determine racing’s future.

Currently racegoers are voting with their feet in terms of attendances and potential owners are doing the same with bloodstock sales and numbers of horses in training.

“I would still be positive about the future because the basic product is so good. But we have to secure funding,” Brian Kavanagh said yesterday.

Horse Racing Ireland 2009 Statistics

Attendances:Down 11%, 1,392,134 to 1,225,511.

Total Betting:Down 21.3%, €231m to €181.8m. Prizemoney:Down 12%, €60.4m to €52.9m.

Bloodstock Sales:Down 32%, €99.5m to €67.5m. Runners:Down 3.9%, 34,591 to 33,240.

Horses in Training:Down 4%, 12,119 to 11,638.

New Owners:Down 28%, 1,237 to 894.

Sponsorship:Down 13.8%, €8.7m to €7.5m.

Fixtures:Up 0.9%, from 342 to 345.

On-Course Bookmaker Betting:Down 27.1%, €167.2m to €121.9m.

Tote Betting:Down 13.2%, €55.1m to €47.8m.

On-Course Betting Shops:Down 18.2%, €14.8m to €12.1m.