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Good morning all. I would very much appreciate it if someone could post a copy of today's Ruby Walsh article in the RP. Many thanks.
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Does Ruby have an article in today's paper? I can't see it.
iirc Ruby is their star Saturday columnist. He writes very well (as does Patrick Mullins) so is either a credit to the Irish schools system or to his AI ghostwriter.
On Saturday he basically said racing sold its soul to the bookies.
iirc Ruby is their star Saturday columnist. He writes very well (as does Patrick Mullins) so is either a credit to the Irish schools system or to his AI ghostwriter.
On Saturday he basically said racing sold its soul to the bookies.
....................Mr Walsh has made plenty out of the largesse of the bookies and exchanges pumping money into this industry, ....(admittedly in their own interests )..........I assume that without any betting, racing would be almost an irrelevance..... ..a poacher turned gamekeeper springs to mind !
He still takes front rank on the paddypower podcast,tipping loser after loser...at least Rory Delargy tries..
Sorry all. I misread the item his article was a couple of days ago but if some kind person has a copy it would be appreciated.
Irishmen love taking the English money according to father Ted…..
Racing gorged on the gambling boom for 25 years - now the reckoning is here and the sport has nowhere to hide
author image
Ruby Walsh
Racing Post columnist
Flutter Entertainment: to cut jobs in Britain and Ireland
Gambling giant Flutter announced massive job cuts this week which will have a massive impact on racing
Credit: Cheng Xin (Getty Images)
Racing enjoyed the good times but as bookmakers retreat, it is facing an uncomfortable reckoning
Fixture lists ballooned, attendances dwindled and profits flowed – but who is left to pay the price?
Tax rises are only part of the threat; increasingly complex regulation could push the sport’s lifeblood underground
For many people in this sport, 1,400 redundancies at Flutter will mean little. A global gambling giant is tightening its belt as complex compliance costs rise, revenue declines and taxes increase. Some people will see this as justice for a pariah in society that has profited from punters' losses and earned millions.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but if you are going to read this with the mindset that Ruby Walsh is just defending Paddy Power, save yourself the five minutes and move on.
Globally, Flutter employs just over 34,000 people, but 25 per cent of that workforce is based in northern Europe, where most of the cuts are taking place. So that's 1,400 of 8,500, roughly 16 per cent, and that will affect horseracing.
Northern Europe is the hub for the major brands we know under the Flutter umbrella, the brands that are major racing sponsors, the brands that help drive turnover, and the brands that employ fans of the sport.
'The warnings could not be clearer' - Flutter axes up to 1,400 jobs as threat of budget tax rise is laid bare
The Treasury thought there was easy gold in squeezing betting - Flutter's 1,400 job cuts are the answer to that delusion
These are people who gamble on racing, attend the races, promote the sport and there are even some who I know are syndicate members. Lifetimes given to a sector that a lot of people within the sport can't see because it only indirectly affects them, but job losses on one side will mean a contraction on the other, and this week's news was not good for Horseracing Inc.
Tax increases and the threat of further ones in gaming carry most of the blame, but it’s a much bigger issue than that.
Compliance was required in the gambling industry. Who knows what was washed over counters in the decades gone by, and we will never know how many poor souls were chased for the last fiver they borrowed on top of borrowings to feed the addiction of not just winning it all back but the buzz from the adrenaline as they waited to see what they might lose.
Money laundering got harder and a leash was put on those chasing serial losers until they had nothing left to lose. The goal was rules, compliance, regulation and a safer environment. Still, somehow the quest to protect people has turned into a war on gambling that is starting to tear through an industry that holds the purse strings for the viability of far too many racecourses, and punters – both professional and casual – whose contributions are a major source of funding for the racecourses, are caught in the crossfire.
And the sport can’t look the other way here either; racing chased and embraced all the extra opportunities a surge in gambling provided.
The 6f handicap is watched by a group of racegoers who have set up on the beach
Laytown: still relies on its core fan base
Credit: Patrick McCann
Maybe someone in this industry decided Sunday racing wasn't for them, or that a Friday night in the depths of winter was a step too far, but I don’t know who they are and it certainly wasn’t me. Perhaps a racecourse on our islands (other than Laytown) stood its ground and put attendances ahead of betting turnover by racing selectively and building on the tradition of its core fan base, but that didn’t happen either. In Ireland, average daily attendance stood at 5,373 in 2000; by 2025, it had fallen to 3,376, but we all bought into the belief that expansion was progress because it was profitable.
Racecourses led the charge, chasing the golden goose as online gambling took off in the early 2000s. Betfair launched the day Love Divine won the Oaks in 2000 and opened up a whole new gambling world.
Still, by 2010 online had snowballed as every mobile phone became a personal casino, but the competition had grown too, and punters moved from racing to general sports and into the casino. Were they led there? Yes, but racing's answer to online demand was to keep chasing the goose.
The UK increased its fixture list by 326 meetings, from 1,132 to 1,458, between 2000 and 2026. Ireland followed suit, rising from 270 to 391. Exchanges boomed and a new model set the trend, but the low-cost efficiency of casino platforms jumped to the forefront of the major firms' attention and profit trumped product. Fixed odds betting terminals guaranteed profit and their low cost base fuelled the expansion of retail empires.
Games of chance were overtaking a game of skill, but sharper betting-oriented minds are better placed than I am to explain that.
What I can correlate, though, is that the massive growth in the gambling sector increased the money on offer for racing. Turnover grew, so the levy rose, and media rights payments did too. The catch is tough: media rights payments reflect the value of your gambling product because it's not about how many people watch it, but how many bet on it.
Therefore, compliance, while required, always had the potential to trump competition, and it has done so because of how complex it is. Affordability checks and deposit limits wiped out liquidity in exchange markets; **** is gone and Betfair is a shadow of the giant it once was. Highly engaged and frequent punters disappeared. You can believe compliance restricted them in the hope of helping those who needed it or you can look to the obvious alternative: the black market. Deposit limits forced punters to choose where and when to bet, and directly reduced turnover.
Online offerings had already hit the shops, but machine limits and tax increases turned profitable shops into losers, and unprofitable businesses had only one future.
We can argue until the cows come home about the good, bad or indifferent effect the big firms had on this sport, whether the sport got its fair share of the profits, or whether the courses put enough back into prize-money, but it was the model from which the game expanded – one that saw the bottom surge, the middle contract and the top move further away.
Attendance, hospitality and sponsorship are similar in all sports: the best attracts them, the lesser doesn't. But compliance with gambling laws and deposit limits also benefits the top and hits the bottom because, when forced to choose, punters sided with quality over quantity, which has resulted in a revenue shortfall on run-of-the-mill days.
Some people are obsessed with the idea that far away hills are greener, and some long for a Tote-based model. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work either. It does in Hong Kong, the world's only growing Tote-based market, but its compliance rules differ.
The HKJC warned of the ever-growing threat of black market betting despite record betting turnover in 2025-26
Racing at Happy Valley in Hong Kong, the only growing Tote-based market in the world
Credit: Edward Whitaker
Hong Kong residents have fewer opportunities to gamble, racing has less competition and it races only twice a week at two courses. France, by contrast, is under pressure. The PMU has a €45 million hole to plug and the French answer is effectively to close 24 courses in the coming years to balance the books.
Funding the bottom will be a major issue for racing; compliance and competition started the derailment, and taxation has just forced sharp business minds to look elsewhere.
In January 2024, Arena Racing Company's chief executive Martin Cruddace said: “I and other chief executive officers of racecourses have a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to protect their business.”
So do the CEOs at Flutter and Entain, etc, but Cruddace also told us that, of the 586 race meetings he ran in 2023, 486 lost money before media rights income was taken into account.
So, whether we like it or not, gambling was propping up around 83 per cent of those race meetings, but fighting the gaming tax increases alone will not suffice. Every politician wants to be re-elected and taxing bookmaker gaming profits is an easy political win, but politicians come and go. Those in the gambling reform authorities will be there much longer and any lobbying push needs to go directly down those corridors.
Compliance and the rules that come with it need to be right, and now they are the biggest fight for racing because this sport will always be associated with gambling and will always need funding from it.
Our gambling product is built on opinion, form, data and skill. It is not about bright lights and a game of chance that ultimately can’t be won. I know gambling will always have losers, but people need to lose where they can be monitored. It can’t become so compliant that it is driven out of sight and therefore out of mind.
The drug industry proves what a failing that is on society – a powerful black market rampaging out of control – and gambling can’t be allowed to follow it.
Whatever happens, though, this sport will get smaller. How much smaller it gets will depend not just on tax rises and what the sport itself does, but on how far the gambling commissions go.
author image
Ruby Walsh
Racing Post columnist
Flutter Entertainment: to cut jobs in Britain and Ireland
Gambling giant Flutter announced massive job cuts this week which will have a massive impact on racing
Credit: Cheng Xin (Getty Images)
Racing enjoyed the good times but as bookmakers retreat, it is facing an uncomfortable reckoning
Fixture lists ballooned, attendances dwindled and profits flowed – but who is left to pay the price?
Tax rises are only part of the threat; increasingly complex regulation could push the sport’s lifeblood underground
For many people in this sport, 1,400 redundancies at Flutter will mean little. A global gambling giant is tightening its belt as complex compliance costs rise, revenue declines and taxes increase. Some people will see this as justice for a pariah in society that has profited from punters' losses and earned millions.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but if you are going to read this with the mindset that Ruby Walsh is just defending Paddy Power, save yourself the five minutes and move on.
Globally, Flutter employs just over 34,000 people, but 25 per cent of that workforce is based in northern Europe, where most of the cuts are taking place. So that's 1,400 of 8,500, roughly 16 per cent, and that will affect horseracing.
Northern Europe is the hub for the major brands we know under the Flutter umbrella, the brands that are major racing sponsors, the brands that help drive turnover, and the brands that employ fans of the sport.
'The warnings could not be clearer' - Flutter axes up to 1,400 jobs as threat of budget tax rise is laid bare
The Treasury thought there was easy gold in squeezing betting - Flutter's 1,400 job cuts are the answer to that delusion
These are people who gamble on racing, attend the races, promote the sport and there are even some who I know are syndicate members. Lifetimes given to a sector that a lot of people within the sport can't see because it only indirectly affects them, but job losses on one side will mean a contraction on the other, and this week's news was not good for Horseracing Inc.
Tax increases and the threat of further ones in gaming carry most of the blame, but it’s a much bigger issue than that.
Compliance was required in the gambling industry. Who knows what was washed over counters in the decades gone by, and we will never know how many poor souls were chased for the last fiver they borrowed on top of borrowings to feed the addiction of not just winning it all back but the buzz from the adrenaline as they waited to see what they might lose.
Money laundering got harder and a leash was put on those chasing serial losers until they had nothing left to lose. The goal was rules, compliance, regulation and a safer environment. Still, somehow the quest to protect people has turned into a war on gambling that is starting to tear through an industry that holds the purse strings for the viability of far too many racecourses, and punters – both professional and casual – whose contributions are a major source of funding for the racecourses, are caught in the crossfire.
And the sport can’t look the other way here either; racing chased and embraced all the extra opportunities a surge in gambling provided.
The 6f handicap is watched by a group of racegoers who have set up on the beach
Laytown: still relies on its core fan base
Credit: Patrick McCann
Maybe someone in this industry decided Sunday racing wasn't for them, or that a Friday night in the depths of winter was a step too far, but I don’t know who they are and it certainly wasn’t me. Perhaps a racecourse on our islands (other than Laytown) stood its ground and put attendances ahead of betting turnover by racing selectively and building on the tradition of its core fan base, but that didn’t happen either. In Ireland, average daily attendance stood at 5,373 in 2000; by 2025, it had fallen to 3,376, but we all bought into the belief that expansion was progress because it was profitable.
Racecourses led the charge, chasing the golden goose as online gambling took off in the early 2000s. Betfair launched the day Love Divine won the Oaks in 2000 and opened up a whole new gambling world.
Still, by 2010 online had snowballed as every mobile phone became a personal casino, but the competition had grown too, and punters moved from racing to general sports and into the casino. Were they led there? Yes, but racing's answer to online demand was to keep chasing the goose.
The UK increased its fixture list by 326 meetings, from 1,132 to 1,458, between 2000 and 2026. Ireland followed suit, rising from 270 to 391. Exchanges boomed and a new model set the trend, but the low-cost efficiency of casino platforms jumped to the forefront of the major firms' attention and profit trumped product. Fixed odds betting terminals guaranteed profit and their low cost base fuelled the expansion of retail empires.
Games of chance were overtaking a game of skill, but sharper betting-oriented minds are better placed than I am to explain that.
What I can correlate, though, is that the massive growth in the gambling sector increased the money on offer for racing. Turnover grew, so the levy rose, and media rights payments did too. The catch is tough: media rights payments reflect the value of your gambling product because it's not about how many people watch it, but how many bet on it.
Therefore, compliance, while required, always had the potential to trump competition, and it has done so because of how complex it is. Affordability checks and deposit limits wiped out liquidity in exchange markets; **** is gone and Betfair is a shadow of the giant it once was. Highly engaged and frequent punters disappeared. You can believe compliance restricted them in the hope of helping those who needed it or you can look to the obvious alternative: the black market. Deposit limits forced punters to choose where and when to bet, and directly reduced turnover.
Online offerings had already hit the shops, but machine limits and tax increases turned profitable shops into losers, and unprofitable businesses had only one future.
We can argue until the cows come home about the good, bad or indifferent effect the big firms had on this sport, whether the sport got its fair share of the profits, or whether the courses put enough back into prize-money, but it was the model from which the game expanded – one that saw the bottom surge, the middle contract and the top move further away.
Attendance, hospitality and sponsorship are similar in all sports: the best attracts them, the lesser doesn't. But compliance with gambling laws and deposit limits also benefits the top and hits the bottom because, when forced to choose, punters sided with quality over quantity, which has resulted in a revenue shortfall on run-of-the-mill days.
Some people are obsessed with the idea that far away hills are greener, and some long for a Tote-based model. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work either. It does in Hong Kong, the world's only growing Tote-based market, but its compliance rules differ.
The HKJC warned of the ever-growing threat of black market betting despite record betting turnover in 2025-26
Racing at Happy Valley in Hong Kong, the only growing Tote-based market in the world
Credit: Edward Whitaker
Hong Kong residents have fewer opportunities to gamble, racing has less competition and it races only twice a week at two courses. France, by contrast, is under pressure. The PMU has a €45 million hole to plug and the French answer is effectively to close 24 courses in the coming years to balance the books.
Funding the bottom will be a major issue for racing; compliance and competition started the derailment, and taxation has just forced sharp business minds to look elsewhere.
In January 2024, Arena Racing Company's chief executive Martin Cruddace said: “I and other chief executive officers of racecourses have a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to protect their business.”
So do the CEOs at Flutter and Entain, etc, but Cruddace also told us that, of the 586 race meetings he ran in 2023, 486 lost money before media rights income was taken into account.
So, whether we like it or not, gambling was propping up around 83 per cent of those race meetings, but fighting the gaming tax increases alone will not suffice. Every politician wants to be re-elected and taxing bookmaker gaming profits is an easy political win, but politicians come and go. Those in the gambling reform authorities will be there much longer and any lobbying push needs to go directly down those corridors.
Compliance and the rules that come with it need to be right, and now they are the biggest fight for racing because this sport will always be associated with gambling and will always need funding from it.
Our gambling product is built on opinion, form, data and skill. It is not about bright lights and a game of chance that ultimately can’t be won. I know gambling will always have losers, but people need to lose where they can be monitored. It can’t become so compliant that it is driven out of sight and therefore out of mind.
The drug industry proves what a failing that is on society – a powerful black market rampaging out of control – and gambling can’t be allowed to follow it.
Whatever happens, though, this sport will get smaller. How much smaller it gets will depend not just on tax rises and what the sport itself does, but on how far the gambling commissions go.
Cruddace also told us that, of the 586 race meetings he ran in 2023, 486 lost money before media rights income was taken into account.
Sounds good to me. Lose the media rights, axe 486 ARC meetings, the form book becomes manageable, and horse racing once more becomes a special event to look forward to. And with fewer meetings everyone can revert to running races at 30-minute intervals. Going racing would become something to enjoy again, with six races in two-and-a-half hours, rather than something to endure with eight identical 14-runner handicaps over an interminable four-and-a-half hours.
Sounds good to me. Lose the media rights, axe 486 ARC meetings, the form book becomes manageable, and horse racing once more becomes a special event to look forward to. And with fewer meetings everyone can revert to running races at 30-minute intervals. Going racing would become something to enjoy again, with six races in two-and-a-half hours, rather than something to endure with eight identical 14-runner handicaps over an interminable four-and-a-half hours.
When are these media rights deals up for re_negotiation? Seems to me that with so many courses hanging on because of payments that the inevitable reductions in them will be the tipping point>
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