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Racing Economics' Focus on Equine
Sports
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Harness Racing
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| At present harness racing in the
United Kingdom is primarily an amateur social sport run largely
by fervent devotees with different stakeholder groups having
differing sets of rules and regulations. There existed a similar
situation in the USA in the early 20th century. However, in
1939 a US Trotting Association was formed that brought together
a number of disparate groups. The key mandate of this
association was to establish a set of rules that would govern
the conduct of harness racing in the United States. In the
United Kingdom, we are seeing a concerted effort to elevate
Harness Racing from a low profile amateur sport to a higher
profile professional medium with 'integrity'. At present the
key associations and stakeholders are discussing the signing of
a 'historic agreement' that will allow these governing
stakeholders to come together and work with a unified set of
rules and regulations, a single performance database and a
single horse registration database. If successful, this will
enable harness racing not only to survive beyond its current
relatively grassroots level but also to commercially prosper.
Clearly the agreement will be a pre-requisite for the sector
achieving observable integrity and transparency. These form
part of the necessary enablers that will permit the sport to
provide the ranks of punters with the essential confidence,
thus generating more gambling revenue and thus more income for
the sport.
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Eventing
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| The latest forecasts from British
Eventing are very clear that the UK needs more eventing, in
particular opportunities of premier standard of CCI** and above.
Racing Economics' research supports this contention. The demand
for new eventing opportunities is both from pent-up demand and
new demand. Over 4% of entries were balloted out of events in
2004 and there are extant owners/riders who do not enter horses
due to the lack of opportunity, creating pent-up demand. The
number of participants in Eventing is continuing to grow as the
sport attracts new entrants, either new owners or additional new
horses for existing owners. This is creating new demand for
eventing opportunities and the British Eventing membership has
grown by more than 6% in the last five years. Current demand
estimates indicate that an additional 44% of Eventing
opportunities are required for Grades I & II, similarly 26%
for Grades III & IV.
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Racing Economics, PO Box 25,
West Molesey KT8 2WW, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8873 0513 <>
Mobile: +44 (0) 7952 562 646
email: info@racingeconomics.com
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