ONLY MONEY…

So here we go again, racing looks all set to shoot itself in the foot.

Jockey Club Racecourses are looking for a single sponsor for what they perceive as the three big chases of the season: The Betfair Chase, scheduled for Haydock this Saturday, the William Hill King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day, and the Betfred Cheltenham Gold Cup itself at the Festival in March.

Jockey Club Racecourses seem to have this slightly wonky idea that they can market the two preceding events as part of the route on the ‘road map’ to Cheltenham and chasing’s jewel in the crown. A light bulb seems to have flashed in someone’s head here. Doh! Had a great idea; let’s get a non-racing sponsor for our major jumping events. Let’s kick those bookmakers where it hurts – show them who is boss around here.

Oh dear! Or as Jeremy Paxman would say – yeees!  There are several issues Jockey Club Racecourses seem to have overlooked.

Firstly, racing is not the attractive pursuit to those that operate outside its confines that it is to those earning a living from within. Try applying for a position with a blue chip company and listing horseracing as one of your interests and see what reception you get.

Most people beyond the earshot of a grandstand tannoy, view racing as a somewhat grubby and corrupt pursuit; one where jockeys habitually stop and start horses at will, and a group of people (presumably affiliated to the Cosa Nostra) know most, if not all, the results in advance.

And even if they find racing vaguely interesting or exciting, it involves gambling, and therefore anyone interested in racing is likely to be more attracted to that seamy aspect of the sport rather than the sport itself. And employers don’t wish to employ people that are liable to be placing bets and then monitoring the progress of their wagers on company time.

That aside, racing, particularly jump racing, is a precarious sport for participants and followers alike. No one wants to sponsor a race and then incur the wrath of the teddy bear and sugar-plum brigade, especially if they form part of their potential market.

‘One-time Gold Cup Hero Dies In Horrific Toys ISUZ Chase Fall’ is not exactly good publicity. Okay, that is worse case scenario, but, let’s not kid ourselves, it happens.

Less dramatic, but more likely, is the possibility of a sponsor gearing itself and its advertising machine up to a major jumping event that is called off.

Such a possibility exists this Saturday as the Betfair Chase at Haydock is possibly no better than levels-you-devils to go ahead. That is if foreseen Arctic conditions materialise. And, already, with the thermometer plunging toward the red, that seems very likely. A couple of similar occasions can make a sponsor edgy. All that bubbly put literally on ice is not good business.

So the Jockey Club Racecourses dream of bypassing bookmakers – the one group within the industry that does actually understand the mechanics of the business – whilst beckoning to outsiders in a major and expensive one-off deal – seems to contain more smoke and mirrors than substance.

It is not my business to defend bookmakers. It is my contention that they have had too much say in the way racing is run for too long. The tail has wagged the dog for so long it is impossible to distinguish one from the other.

Bookmakers’ constant meddling with the fixture list, their insistence of racing virtually 24/7 – 363 days a year to the extent we now even face racing on Good Friday – should have been tempered long ago.

As should their assertion that increased turnover equals increased profits to racing. All bookmakers and gamblers know this to be a barefaced lie: decreased turnover (meaning punters have already done in their cash) is what signals increased profit.

What bookmakers have always strived to instigate is extra fixtures and more handicaps to bewilder those that spend their social security payments in their offices.

That is before the bursting of the bubble means their customers take a detour to the pub or off-licence. Theirs is, and always has been, a policy of bamboozling the punter with the sheer weight of racing on a Saturday (under most circumstances the day by which bookmakers’ accounting figures stand or fall) and of never breaking the habit of continual betting: that is to say, from one race to another, one day to another, one week, one month, and so on … The damage they have inflicted on racing was done a long time hence, and is unlikely to ever be reversed without a Tote monopoly.

We know the bookmakers for the crocodiles beneath the murky waters that they are. To be fair to them they are no worse than the energy suppliers or the rail companies – possibly better in some respects as at least we are not compelled to employ their services.

But all big companies have one driving force in common: that is the need to make money. They are never content to take a drop in profit. Increased profit is a given – it is sacrosanct. Forget wars, petulance, a sliding economy; their bellies need the constant replenishment only the green dollar or the crinkly purple twenty can supply. They possess insatiable appetites.

We know this. If we didn’t know it before the turn of the century, we do now.

But Jockey Club Racecourses have picked the wrong time and place for a battle with the old enemy. If there is one thing bookmakers are good for it is sponsorship.

They don’t much care for the semantics of it. A Derby, a Group 1, a Grade 1; hurdles, chases, the Flat, it is all the same to the grey men in the counting houses.

If the public wish to treasure the gold standard these races provide, bookmakers will chuck a few quid at races like the Eclipse, the Supreme Novices’ or the King George and Queen Elizabeth so long as they can trade with impunity on the first at Lucky Meadows and the last at Wolverhampton. Don’t look too deeply at their motives; just be grateful they pump cash into the system.

Jockey Club Racecourses’s comments that they would like a single sponsor for the pot of gold that is the Gold Cup and the two big chases that lead to it (what about the Charlie Hall, the Hennessy or the Aon; don’t they constitute major trails?) and that they would prefer it should this sponsor not be a bookmaker, is tantamount to requesting blood donors only have silver spoons in their mouths.

Racing is an insular industry. Bookmakers and punters are fully familiar with its rules – outsiders less so.

Outsiders will soon tire of what they will quickly perceive as racing’s irrationality.

They will fail to understand why two inspections have to be called before midday to determine racing can go ahead and then find, much to their chagrin when they arrive at the track, that it is sprinkled with a covering of frost straight from a Christmas card, and that their journey has indeed been wasted. Leaves on the line halting the 8.20 to Paddington ain’t nothing!

They will tire of the fact that a race can be delayed because the racecourse doctor is no longer present, or a horse is running loose. They will fail to understand why a stewards’ inquiry takes twenty minutes to ratify a race that has already been run. They will wonder why is should be necessary to fine the winning jockey; also that such an act can and often does attract more publicity than the race itself.

Bookmakers and punters take all the above and more in stride – just another day at the office!

So Jockey Club Racecourses have rubbed bookmakers the wrong way over the wrong issue. Already an offended William Hill is hinting at taking its business elsewhere.

Their public relations representative, Kate Miller, sounding as if she had smoked a hundred cigarettes the night before (she may not smoke, she just has a husky sexy voice that provokes speculation), expounded the company line by warning William Hill may be reviewing its sponsorship commitment. That is jargon for: we have a loaded gun and we are prepared to use it.

At Cheltenham on Sunday, she sounded genuinely aggrieved at the suggestion her firm should stand aside from its Kempton deal with the King George in order to be replaced by a top-tier sponsor.

Whilst conceding it would be beneficial for racing to attract sponsors from outside racing, thus potentially attracting wider audiences, she described the attitude shown toward bookmakers by Jockey Club Racecourses as disappointing.

That’s one way of putting it Kate. Downright bonkers is another! Even if Jockey Club Racecourses strike it lucky and lure a sponsor down the road to Cheltenham, keeping them may prove another matter.

Big firms are courted internationally. Competition is intense. It is fanciful to assume a major global company would wish to spend the kind of money needed to bolster the three events earmarked by Jockey Club Racecourses in order for its clients to shiver in a field in the depths of winter.

When it comes to sponsorship, bookmakers turn into racing’s friend, but even they do not have limitless pockets. The big layers do all have a flagship race. They are not Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, adopting a principal.

Jockey Club Racecourses’s Road To Cheltenham may be constructed of yellow brick as far as they are concerned; in the real world its compound is somewhat more down-to-earth.