Horse racing’s relationship with betting is hardly unfamiliar territory to those involved in either industry, but it has faced increasing pressure over recent years.
Until recently, horse racing was the most wagered on sport in the UK but, in 2019, it was overtaken by football. Racing is also facing attendance problems, and is very reliant on media rights, sponsorship and levy payments from bookmakers.
The Arena Racing Company (ARC), an operator of multiple racecourses, is one of the key stakeholders working on revamping racing’s image for a modern era. The firm’s Managing Director of Media and International, Brendan Parnell, explained to Insider Sport at the SBC Summit in Lisbon that its goal is “getting racing as a betting product right”.
Notable areas of interest for ARC include field sizes and the introduction of competitions such as the team-based Racing League and the All-Weather Championships – which culminate in a Finals Day every Good Friday, featuring £1m in prize money.
“There’s a range of things that we’re working on,” Parnell said. “The predominant revenue source for us is still UK betting but we’re now on turnover deals with bookmakers and that gives us access to data we’ve never had before.
“We can share with bookmakers market share performance on things like self-service and overall retail and we can demonstrate where some bookmakers might be underperforming compared to others and help them find ways to present racing in a better way.
“Another example is we’re using artificial intelligence tools to drive revenue growth and we’re doing that to reorder races within a fixture. The early trials have demonstrated a positive uplift for bookmakers so we’re looking to roll out that race reordering more broadly to our fixtures.”
Parnell also discussed the creation of Racing1, a media rights alliance between ARC, Australian betting market leader Tabcorp, the Racecourse Media Group (RMG), and content and media technology firm 1/ST Content.
“The Racing1 Rights Alliance is bringing the best of British, American and Australasian racing together which will then go and pioneer new territories,” he said.
“Instead of racing being complicated, and a bit analogue in the terminology we use, it gives us a chance to offer customers in those markets a much easier to integrate package of racing which is 24/7.”
To hear insights from Parnell on what racing stakeholders are doing to secure the future of the sport, watch the video above.
