The article by Rolf Johnson highlights the contradiction in British racing`s 2025 attendance topping five million while the sport remains in deep trouble. The headline figure masks declining quality, shrinking media coverage, weak prize money, and falling public engagement. Many criticisms voiced twenty years ago by broadcaster Julian “Mr Angry” Wilson remain relevant: an overload of low-grade racing, the rise of all-weather tracks, costly travel for poor rewards, and bookmaker-driven programming. Betting exchanges have drained liquidity without sustaining racing financially. Ownership is increasingly elitist, foal crops are shrinking, and leadership changes bring little reform. Optimistic predictions for the future sound repetitive, leaving followers weary of recycled solutions. Read on …

Racing attendance in the UK topped five million in 2025, for the first time in five years. A bald fact which is a bit if a toupee (false hairpiece) stuck on other figures that paint a bleaker picture. But eh, it allows the administration to repeat the mantra that racing is Britain`s second-highest attended sport.

Why then is racing here in such turmoil, some say decline? When editors have empty space to fill where once they had racecards and results and a permanent racing correspondent (or two) they turn to stock fillers - ‘Ten Best` flat/jumps racehorses, or jockeys or racecourses – any old rubbish rather than pay for top class reporting and opinion.

Twenty years ago the Racing Post gave a leading light in British racing broadcasting, under the title ‘Mr Angry`, a whole page to release his spleen about the state of affairs - the late Julian Wilson could have been dismissed as an old, not to say privileged, fogey. But some of his points resonate and are, remarkably, unfortunately, as relevant twenty years on.

Some of his ‘arrows` missed their mark or needed sharpening. He objected to the introduction of 48-hour declarations which are now the norm. On the other hand, his disdain for all-weather racing, since its inception in 1989, has plenty of supporters. The five artificial surface tracks, originally a backstop for inclement winter weather, do little to enhance the sport. They add little to the sport`s lustre - other than churning money through betting and media rights.

Nor did Wilson care for racing from morning, early starts at 11am, to nights under lights at 9pm, or the introduction of Sunday racing. Perhaps such fixtures allow the dross of the sport their moments in the limelight but, given rising costs in all areas, these ‘concoctions` have a fast-approaching ‘sell by date`. (Saying all of which the first race, of twelve, on Japan Cup day in Tokyo was 9am! And in front of a bigger crowd than Royal Ascot!).

Another of his gripes was logical – the cost of transporting runners two, three hundred miles from Newmarket and Lambourn to far flung Perth and Musselburgh and Ayr in Scotland for prizes that wouldn`t pay the transport costs and training fees back home. Indeed Ffos Las, the last turf course to open, in 2009, is located in furthest Wales, miles from anywhere. Its attendances are minimal.

Wilson complained about the glut of racing feeding an oversize Form Book – there isn`t one now! It`s all online. There used to be two publications of record for results – Raceform and Superform but, like all print journalism including the trade paper the Racing Post and national newspaper coverage, is living on borrowed time. Racing`s high days and holidays – Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival - are the only ones that receive publicity that used to be the daily diet of racing fans. Racing correspondents, The Scout, Newsboy, The Thunderer, Hotspur, Templegate, are a dying breed.

Halfway through his analysis Wilson complained about the lack of information which ought to be an obligation on behalf of punters – the relevant details fit to be published about a horse`s welfare such as wind operations etc but that omission has generally been dealt with by legislation. He was right to a degree; reporting is too often slapdash.

He has a point (number 13) castigating “bookmaker friendly programmes with the worst races, class 6 handicaps and classified stakes consisting of hopeless performers, being given chances in divided races to fill bookmaker`s satchels”. The Levy, the tax on bookmaker`s profits that sustains racing, takes its share but who is profiting? Surely not racing to any great extent because punters and racegoers turn their backs on such nondescript stuff. And the joy of a victory for the owners must be tempered by the fact they are paying heavily for the privilege of seeing their horse win – winning not even enough to cover a month`s training expenses.

Racing began as an elite pastime and that is direction it is hurtling towards today.

Wilson`s Point 14 touches on selling stock abroad – a lifeline for owners and trainers - those lucky enough to have a saleable commodity for the Gulf States where racing is burgeoning - even attracting some British trainers to relocate. Hong Kong, Australia and to a lesser extent, Europe and America also take our ‘surpluses`. Breeding stock has long replenished the Indian scene of course.

Some of Wilson`s beefs were disputable then and are redundant now: we`ve had new grandstands built and travel by road. on admittedly over crowded motorways, conveys most racegoers whereas in former times rail travel was the preferred mode of transport. (One of my proudest possessions is a striking poster for the racing express, Bombay-Poona, ticket Rs 12.00: servants only 3rd class Rs 3.00; dinner Rs 3.00). It`s interesting that the British racecourse under greatest threat of closure is Jockey Club-owned Kempton Park, with its own railway station! It is just eighteen miles from Piccadilly, the centre of London. It has a relatively new grandstand but it is associated more with one meeting, Boxing Day`s jump racing – than the glut of 80-plus racedays and evenings, on sand. The number of racing fans captivated by such fare is minimal; those actually attending for such dross, is paltry.

Wilson reveals his curmudgeon side when he excoriates ‘exotic` attractions such as Ladies Days, Family Fun days and Pop Group concerts bolted on to the racing. They are all money spinners, popular with a wider audience even though they are a source of annoyance to regular racegoers. Drugs, excessive alcohol consumption fuel aggressive behaviour and general lack of regard for the ageing minority of regular racegoers – inevitably of a different generation. To the disinterested newcomers the racing is incidental.

Towards the end of Wilson`s denunciation of what he saw as a league table of racing`s ills, was the role of the Tote. Even the advent of the Tote Worldpool has yet to make an impact which it never will as long as 100-1, 150-1 and even a record 300-1 are rewarded with identical odds on the Tote. The boast of matching starting price is wearing thin when someone is miraculously lucky to pick out a horse with that SP only to be told the dividend on the Tote is identical.

In his points 19 and 20 Wilson approaches what has become the heart of the matter - Betting Exchanges which regular bookmakers regard as ‘Charter for Cheats` – and yet the prices on their electric boards merely reflect the action on the Exchanges. Bookmaker`s prices are thus uniform leaving no ‘edge` for the discerning punter who has worked out a different ‘tissue` – his own odds for a particular race. Transactions on the Exchanges have created a market for everything from politics to darts to cricket – everything, bar flies crawling up a wall. And these novel betting attractions have taken liquidity away from traditional betting – on horses, and to a lesser extent, greyhounds. Betting exchanges, imitated in 2001, were according to Wilson “the worst things to have happened to racing in my lifetime” (1940-2014). But they have proved so popular their influence is now all consuming. Punters can operate them either as bettors or layers. Wilson was close to intimating the Exchanges would be the death of racing. They haven`t, yet, but they certainly haven`t been its saviour: they have opened up so many seductive alternatives to the ‘Sport of Kings`. The ‘liquidity` – the amount bet into the Exchanges horseracing markets continues to diminish in face of the competition.

The former BBC man Wilson concludes with “Lack of respect” (Point 20) by which he appears to mean the lack of ‘deference` to the Turf`s Lords, Ladies, Sheikhs, and gentlemen. Yet at the same time as he displays his spleen as a lapsed racehorse owner, his contention suggests a measure of jealousy. For example, he maintains: “No problem owning a racehorse providing a) you are mega-rich b) own a helicopter c) have a private box d) possess a thick-skin. And yet in another apparent about face he concludes with “Thank heaven for the Sheikhs and Coolmore”. I suppose you can`t afford to antagonize those two combative giants of the racing game, even when their overwhelming financial firepower has muscled you out of it.

Well. whoever said that racing`s movers and shakers were really interested in other than their privileged position? Outrage doesn`t usually get you very far in this sport – hard to get your voice heard when there`s such a cacophony of competing interests. Wilson`s page of gripes didn`t leave much impression. And yet the applause that greeted the ‘success` of the ‘Axe the Tax` protest – a one-day strike - against the Chancellor of Exchequer`s planned gambling tax increases (to Indian levels) in her Budget last November, was misplaced. Increases and restrictions on other forms of gambling will rebound on racing and Mr Angry`s successors, just as impotent, will have their say but not their day.

Never-ending changes of personnel in the higher echelons of racing, grossly overpaid, have not come close to resolving endemic problems, including those identified by Mr Angry two decades ago. There just isn`t enough money to go round yet over the past couple of decades` cash has been poured into racing`s putative promoters, notably Great British Racing. It has largely gone down the drain. Had Mr Angry still been around he would have been apoplectic.

At the start of this year the Racing Post gave twenty-five racing professionals one shot apiece at 2026 predictions – the object of the exercise being that their enlightened views would be meaningful.

Number 1 was the new kid on the block, controversial football agent Kia Joorabchian - the next Mr Angry? Joorabchian, who bought Sir Michael Stoute`s Freemason Lodge stable in Newmarket on the retirement of the great trainer, changes his own trainers as often as he changes socks) all the while spending millions at the Sales; volumes that makes even a sheikh blink. Joorabchian saw a shift in ownership to syndicates. This has been going on for years, Highclere leading the way, but he is right – the cost of ownership is getting out of hand for the individual owner – who isn`t a multi-millionaire.

Joorabchian, Coolmore, the Gulf Arabs, Juddmonte are still to the forefront in the spending stakes. And there are other aspiring set-ups that keep the market, at the top end, on the boil. But everybody is anticipating a coming ‘correction`.

Sardonic former champion jump jockey and racing pundit John Francome was next up, pointing to the new head of racing, Lord Allen, and saying he would “collect a massive salary…and absolutely nothing of any significance will change”. How many times have we heard that comment on a succession of CEO`s and Chairpersons at the BHA – and most other racing bodies? The last BHA boss came and went without trace – well not quite, she took away a big six-figure pay-off. For what? Francome has a point.

I`ve lost count of the number of CEO`s and Chairpersons since the British Horseracing Authority was founded in 2007, all remunerated and kept in the style to which they quickly became accustomed. Racing itself had to become accustomed to no change – not for the better anyway.

The head of the Trainer`s Federation thought that in face of crisis “Racing`s leadership will come together” – a remark contradicted as soon as it was made. The company that controls sixteen of the fifty-nine British racecourses, ARC, said, in virtually the same breath, it isn`t going to play ball over media rights to their televised meetings.

Even Champion jumps trainer elect Dan Skelton, streaking ahead in title race, wanted fewer races to increase diminishing field sizes, especially in his game-. Wholly laudable – but feasible when foal crops are declining and owners quitting?

A Racing Post senior writer saw hope in Lord Allen`s choice of direction by “forcing through agreement on industry governance change” – combining the various parties under one authority. Good luck with that one. However smart an operator Allen is reputed to be in the commercial world, his lack of racing knowledge made him a figure of derision from day one, a notion he will struggle to overcome. Good luck to him.

The departing head of the Racecourse Association expects attendances to continue their upward trend in 2026 – but then he would say that wouldn`t he? And the evidence in these economically restricted times?

The Chief Executive of everybody`s favourite racetrack, York, was entitled to believe his course would prosper and that the increased prize money for the nation`s top Group Ones, the Derby, July Cup, King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the Sussex Stakes and his own Juddmonte International would make them magnets for international competition. He`s surely correct though the Juddmonte has only once been won, British-owned (Arabian Queen 50-1) this century.

Ascot`s Director of Racing ducked out citing, “Predictions and wishes can be uncomfortable bedfellows when it comes to industry matters” so he confined himself to racing result forecasts – as did the new Epsom General Manager who asked us to believe he could bring the Derby (23,000 spectators last year – about the same as a second tier football match - back to life in his first season.

A leading bloodstock agent saw only “smaller fields due to lack of people breeding middle-distance horses and standing average sprinters…who would once have been sold abroad…we have been drifting away from the horses we were famous for.” That forecast could have been made by many less informed.

An award-winning Irish writer was another who pointed to foal numbers plummeting (sounds familiar in India?) and, consequently, field sizes shrinking. He saw the opening of another Irish all-weather track in Tipperary meaning “Battle lines are likely to be drawn” - competing forces fight for a shrinking pie; bald men fighting over a comb.

A leading trainer bemoaned the fact that owner`s names don`t accompany those of winning trainers and jockeys on screen (not everyone tried to be profound). And another award winning writer insisted, “So much breadth, colour and variety has been lost over the past thirty years undermining the sports public appeal”.

The French correspondent who was questioned suggested rising prize money – £8m was attached to the Japan Cup - “will continue to change the way the best horses are campaigned internationally”. Horses winging their way around the world on the same flight paths as international jockeys means the latter could ride on different continents on the same day – but they aren`t allowed to ride at two racecourses in Britain on the same day!

Only the Japanese fans, in numbers, follow their horses around the world.

These diverse points of view, none revolutionary, tempt one to question the whole point of the Racing Post`s enterprise – just another space filler? I haven`t included the observations of those who had ‘nothing to say`. From the others, yes we got the stock answers, nothing revolutionary. One fact is incontrovertible: people are tired of listening to the same dog-eared answers.