ex-Hills chief Ralph Topping shows distain bookies have for racing

From egr:

I’ve been dumbfounded lately by the British horseracing industry’s attitude towards bookmakers, especially its sponsorship threats. The reality is that there’s not exactly a long queue of businesses wishing to sponsor racing in 2015 – long gone are Whitbreads, Mackesons and Massey Fergusons.

With the exception of bookmakers, there has been a real scarcity of sponsors bookmakers for a long, long time and that reality should be the initial starting point for the British Horseracing Authority (BHA). It should be showing bookmakers more love and not encouraging them to quit racing sponsorship.
Take the Ayr Gold Cup as an example. It’s a popular sprint race which usually gets a fair amount of publicity in the racing press but not much coverage anywhere else in the media, especially on TV and after the event itself. One problem is that the spectacle is over relatively quickly - one minute and 10 seconds to be precise.
The amount of sponsorship money involved, which is very substantial, could, and perhaps should, be invested in perimeter board advertising at televised football games where more brand exposure is available and replays of highlights guaranteed in the aftermath of the matches. Extensive representation at four or five matches would be available for the price of sponsoring the Ayr race.

It’s the same situation for bookmakers that have sponsorship deals in place at the Cheltenham Festival. If Ladbrokes and Betfred didn’t sponsor there would it affect their business in any meaningful way? Of course not, so I’m not entirely sure what the BHA and the other horseracing bodies are trying to achieve.

It appears that Nick Rust – the former bookmaker and ex-inhabitant of the very real world of running a mainstream betting business – has had his memory wiped when crossing the threshold of the BHA's offices. He has forgotten how expensive the racing product is to bookmakers and how much racing already gets from betting: £250m and rising.

The bookmaking industry wants a good relationship with racing but would it really be worried about losing sponsorships? William Hill signed horseracing sponsorship deals because we wanted to have a balanced marketing portfolio, but realistically I wouldn’t have minded it being totally skewed to products where there are far higher margins and more media exposure.

Will we see Microsoft, Apple and all those huge companies with big marketing dollars suddenly pumping that money into racing? The odds against are high. Maybe the BHA has actually had phone calls from rich businessmen like Bill Gates, Carlos Slim and Warren Buffet, promising him zillions of sponsorship investment if the bookies don't stump up. I'll keep watching Channel 4 Racing and wait for an announcement from Nick. It may be a long winter.

Sadly, the racing industry still forgets who has the principal relationship with the customer. Where does the customer go to bet? They don’t go to the BHA or the Jockey Club. Racing is again trying to bite the hand that feeds it and the bookmakers’ polite response to those who trust in Rust should be “thanks but no thanks”.

If bookmakers continue to be pressed incessantly for more money from racing it will be no surprise if horseracing punters are asked to pay a small levy on their bets to pay the big levy, or minimum staking levels are enforced on low margin horse racing bets. Bookmakers cannot continue to absorb the ever rising costs of a declining product. Maybe Rust has inadvertently come up with part of the answer – save money on sponsoring races.