Summary

• Horse Racing’s 200 Million Fan Opportunity: Spotlight Sports Group’s new report finds horse racing’s current fanbase sits at 36 to 48 million, with an addressable opportunity of up to 200 million globally. The pyramid: 6-8M core fans, 30-40M casual, plus 60-80M big-event fans waiting to be pulled in through entertainment-led moments. This isn’t about a broken sport. It’s about untapped audience.
• Racing Has a Product Problem That Isn’t About the Product: Sam Houlding’s key insight from the report. Racing’s live product is extraordinary. The problem is that new fans arrive without context: complex terminology, no season-long story, and personality voids where jockeys, trainers and horses should be recognisable characters. The fix isn’t the sport. It’s how the sport tells itself.
• Where F1 Led, Horse Racing Could Follow: F1 grew from 500 million fans in 2017 to 830 million by 2025 (52% under 35, 47% female) by centralising digital rights and telling one unified narrative. Racing has the same raw ingredients: heritage, global scale, star athletes. What it needs is the same coordination and storytelling instinct.
• What Melbourne Cup and Smart View Are Getting Right: Melbourne Cup Carnival’s 49.5% attendance jump in the 18-29 bracket since 2019 came from repositioning racing as a carnival-led entertainment event. Spotlight’s Smart View racecard product delivered an 8% uplift in bets placed at BoyleSports by simplifying the data. Both prove: the market rewards accessibility.
• The Fandom Comes First, the Betting Follows: Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges of the Hong Kong Jockey Club in the report, when racing is presented as a sport first, around 70% of new fans eventually engage with wagering anyway. Racing’s data-rich product doesn’t need to lead with betting. It needs to lead with story. Betting is downstream of fandom, not the entry point.
• The Shared Conviction Racing Needs Next: Mark Renshaw’s foreword thesis, racing doesn’t need a single governing body to unlock its next era, but it does need shared conviction that a bigger, more global audience is good for every stakeholder. The report is grounded in opportunity, not fear. Racing has everything it needs to write its own version of the F1 story.

Shownotes

• The Horse Racing Audience Opportunity report⁠:
• ⁠Spotlight Sports Group⁠:
• ⁠Racing Post⁠
• ⁠Sam Houlding LinkedIn

Transcription

Ed (00:00.048)
The office, but but I try I try to just try and zone out like Yeah, yeah. Right, cool, okay then. Right. So I will do obviously we’ve got the introduction here that that Will did for us and then I’ll come to you and once I’ve introduced you and then obviously you’ve tell some about your background and away we go. Okay. Cool. Well let me just get the studio chat open. Yeah, cool. Okay, then here goes. Hello and welcome to the attention shift.

Sam Houlding (00:01.23)
Yeah, get the headphones in.

Sam Houlding (00:16.312)
Perfect, sounds good.

Ed (00:25.91)
If you’re enjoying the show, hit like and subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching and hit the notification bell to never miss an episode. It helps more than you know. So, this week we’re looking at horse racing, one of the world’s oldest sports and right now we’re at one of the most critical points in the sport’s history. Its fans are getting older and the next generation mostly isn’t following. The industry employs thousands and turns over billions, however, but the aging audience that pays for all of this is not necessarily being replaced.

Can racing find a new generation before the existing one is gone? A new report from inside the industry says yes, but only if the sport changes fast. Joining us today today, I’m delighted to say is one of the men who led that work, Sam Holding, MD of V T B at Sportlight Sports Group. Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Houlding (01:08.92)
Yeah, thank you very much. It’s pleasure to be here.

Ed (01:11.674)
Sam, I think what’d be useful to give some context to the people watching and listening, if you could a l give a little bit of background about yourself and also Spotlight Sports Group in terms of what are the work what is the work that you’re involved in.

Sam Houlding (01:21.462)
Yeah, absolutely fine. So I’ve been at Spotlight Sports Group.

for 16 years, a lifetime Ed, a working lifetime by some people’s standards anyway. yeah, I’ve been at Spotlight Sports Group for 16 years. I’ve worked in various commercial capacities here, always with our industry partnerships in mind. So I head up our B2B division, which is effectively all of our partnerships within the industry. At Spotlight Sports Group, as you know, Racing Post is one of our main brands, our flagship brand. And we do

a ton of work across both B2C, our own audiences, where we curate all of our data and content and serve it up for all our horse racing audience, predominantly UK and Ireland when it comes to B2C channels. But then what we also do is we take that data and that content, we package it, and we work with racing data, but also a load of sports data and content with partners globally to help them engage their own audiences as well. So we’re across many different markets.

from a B2B perspective, but really the heart of the business is the same across everything we do, it’s about audience engagement.

Ed (02:32.624)
Gotcha. Yeah, so it was interesting. was reading Mark Renshaw’s forward in this as well, and and and I like how you said that you know the racing product is genuinely extraordinary, especially live. And from my own personal perspective, I you know I absolutely concur with him and I’ve been lucky enough to meet Mark on one of my horse racing trips to to Saudi Arabia and and and I’ve been to racing in the UK, Saudi, the US. I I wouldn’t say I’m an expert in any way, shape or form in horse racing. I just love the experience.

of horse racing, but he also goes on to say that the industry very much has been resting on the heritage rather than asking about sort of hard questions. Because I I often find that when I go to the racing and there’s bits I understand but there’s lots I don’t and it can be very I guess if you’re not an expert in it, trying to understand the sport in itself can be difficult because of the all the different acronyms and and the ways that things are described. It’s not obvious to a I guess a nascent race goer

What’s actually going on other than horses going past obviously the winning post?

Sam Houlding (03:32.75)
Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned at the very beginning there, the different countries where you’ve been racing. And I guarantee the experience was very different in all of those countries as well. The way they talk about racing, some of the terminology attached was different. yeah, racing is a fantastic global sport. And you know, it’s like very few sports where it kind of transcends different countries. But…

Ed (03:43.418)
Totally different. Totally different. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Houlding (04:01.247)
in all of the various aspects of racing, there is a lot of heritage. It’s a heritage sport in many ways, and it probably has rested on that for a long time. I suppose that brings us back to why we felt it was really important to do this report. And bringing new audiences to the sport is what we live and breathe in our DNA at Racing Post. And we wanted to widen that discussion to frame the opportunity around new audiences for the sport, because

the lifeblood of new fans into the sport, like every sport out there, is going to dictate the success of its future.

Ed (04:40.048)
So yeah, so I I guess for context of people watching and listening then, where does Racing’s audience actually sit today and and I guess how how big do you think it could realistically be?

Sam Houlding (04:52.587)
Yeah, we drew on and what we were really keen to get into in the report was quantification with data. So credible data sources and pieces of research out there and layering in real expert industry opinions. So we’ve got some of the biggest voices in the game within the report as well. The data sources we used just to kind of, you know, preface this conversation were really credible. PWC, Two Circles, GWI, Project Beacon, our own in-house research.

And we use those to quantify exactly what you’ve asked there. The kind of the size of the prize for racing.

The report identifies that it currently sits at 36 to 48 million people as a global fan base. I’m going to talk globally here. There’s core fans of six to eight million, which when we say core fans are those really loyal, racing, loving fans that are going to come back to the sport time and time again, no matter what. And then there’s a big pool of casual fans of kind of 30 to 40 million. And they would be fans that engage with many different sports, but are quite, you know,

easily drawn to racing. They’re racing enthusiasts and they’ve got quite strong knowledge. So that’s the kind of 36 to 48 million pull which we know we service very well across racing. What the report really highlighted outside of that is that there’s a further potential to grow the racing fan base by 200 million fans and it carves this up quite neatly into sports fans. So fans that are following sports but haven’t really discovered racing properly yet or they have a limited interest.

and what we called in the report entertainment and big event fans, which would be about 60 to 80 million as an opportunity and they would be an audience segment that is drawn to significant entertainment events, fashion, music, hospitality and again could quite easily be swung by racing if they discovered the sport. So…

Ed (06:54.32)
I guess where that’s where yeah, where I mean I’ve certainly attended a few of these as well, where you get that crossover where you pair together racing with live music. I I went last year and saw Texas play live after the racing itself. And look, and and I was in equally interested in both, and I guess you might have a a view on when people do like are people more interested in the in the music when they go to that and just happen to go to the racing or actually i e is both things a pull?

Sam Houlding (07:00.739)
Yeah.

Sam Houlding (07:05.773)
Yeah.

Sam Houlding (07:17.934)
I think what we identified in the report is that in the big event fans, which is what we’re talking about there, which are, let’s say half the 200 million opportunity, the entertainment as a whole is the pull. And they will discover the sport through that entertainment vehicle. So places like, I don’t know where you would have seen Texas necessarily, but the Melbourne Cup have done this really well in recent years. It’s almost like an entertainment event. And it leads with that. has DJs.

Ed (07:44.121)
Yeah.

Sam Houlding (07:47.891)
in and loads of different things going on to draw people in and then they discover the sport. So yeah, I think that’s probably the way that discoverability in that segment will happen the most.

Ed (08:00.251)
Yeah. It certainly it certainly worked for and I’ve heard a lot I’ve you I I I know lots of people that wouldn’t necessarily be attracted to horse racing per se that have gone to horse racing because of something like that’s been attached to it, but then have enjoyed the horse racing aspect of it and get exposed to something they wouldn’t do normally. So i look it’s it’s pretty unique that I think that horse racing has done that and it certainly worked and you know, you see it happens a lot in F one these days and and like the whole you know, it was on the news this weekend, right? We’ve just had Silverstone

Sam Houlding (08:14.637)
Yeah.

Ed (08:28.398)
Whereby a lot of people are going to like yeah, they’re going to the the the F one racing, but they’re going for everything else that’s going on around it too, because the racing itself happens for relatively small windows and you need other things to do when you’re there as well. So that entertainment factor is clearly an important part of that mix.

Sam Houlding (08:45.314)
Yeah, yeah, really is. But we’re talking about kind of live entertainment there as well. And obviously in the modern day and age of sports and sport consumption, it’s really important to bring that digital experience to life as well. And some of that live entertainment can then create that. think Tom mentions in the report, the editor of the Racing Post, the virtuous circle of you create the experience that then kind of generates more content on social media. And then, you know, it’s a virtuous circle of engagement. But we know that’s the kind

Ed (08:48.846)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Ed (08:58.608)
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Sam Houlding (09:15.248)
of the battlefield where most sports are playing nowadays. I think there was a stat in the report that said 70 % of 18 to 44 year olds sports fans follow teams or athletes on social media, 52 % follow 11 or more sports. So we know it’s a really competitive digital playing field as well where racing has to modernize.

Ed (09:34.863)
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So I think I think there is a there probably is a challenge, right? And you’ll you’ll definitely know more than me around ness about around racing characters and that followability across social media. So y you’ve talked in a report that racing doesn’t necessarily have a product problem per se, but what what do you mean what i I guess what is the issue then? ‘Cause like I said, the product in itself when you go to live is not the problem, but how how is then that manifesting itself then then digitally on through these different

cultural platforms like social media, how do you create the characters?

Sam Houlding (10:11.63)
Yeah, my quote in the report on the product problem is what I had to read back and think, what was I saying here? But no, what I was saying is that racing as a sport is relatively simple when you think about it. You know, have horses at a start line, first past the post is the winner. So as a sport and a concept, it’s not too difficult to understand, but we can complicate it quite heavily with lots of terminology and, you know, making the sport quite difficult to

Ed (10:16.752)
I’ve done that loads of times.

Sam Houlding (10:41.584)
and understand when you are there at the races or you are looking at a card or form. So what I was trying to explain there is that to reach that 200 million, and that’s the important number here, we know we have to have kind of cleaner, stronger narratives around racing, and we know we have to demystify the sport when people do find it as well. So it is easy to access, it is easy to understand. And I think they’re two really important things that racing has to bear in mind.

In particular, if you think about how people digest sport nowadays, football is good example. You’re following a season-long event, the Premier League. The winner is the one with the most points at the end of the season. Racing and racing events arrive almost in isolation without any kind of pre-contest thing or competition.

Ed (11:32.196)
Yeah, you’re right. There are there are yeah, there are you know ev every so often you hear about the champion jockey and things like that, but it’s almost like I wouldn’t know where to go and find w who’s keeping track of that or what is a league system. And and the reality is when you start to do leaderboards and things like that, you are then gamifying that experience and that tends to be what people like to lean into.

Sam Houlding (11:40.748)
Yeah.

Sam Houlding (11:54.615)
Yeah, it’s difficult to do with racing because we are dealing with equine athletes rather than the human athletes. So you can’t just say, right, this is your schedule. You’re going here and here on these days.

Ed (12:02.958)
And suddenly they get pulled out for a variety of reasons when you think they were gonna yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Sam Houlding (12:06.91)
Yeah, so there is difficulties in creating that, but the season long narratives are often kind of secondary to the actual one off racing events. There’s some places that do it really well. know, Cheltenham in the UK is almost a crescendo, Cheltenham and Aintree are the crescendo of the jump seasons. Japan do a really good pyramid system with finals. The Breeders Cup do a kind of challenge series which runs globally as well. So some do it well, but those narratives are still a bit hidden compared to the on the

one-off narratives that we push around racing.

Ed (12:40.922)
Yeah, I wasn’t I and look and and again I only knew how popular horse racing was in Japan because like I said I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with like Mark and other people in and around the horse racing industry but again that’s because I’ve had access to those senior people around the horse racing industry. I think as a punter I I would have never known that that horse racing is so strong in Japan and there are things like that going on there.

Sam Houlding (13:03.17)
Yeah, yeah, and look, it’s not just Japan, it’s the same as many territories. We’re quite, I think in racing, we’re quite focused on our own territory because lots of the commercial structure runs around that territory. It’s media rights, it’s betting, and it’s live attendance, know, in event attendance in that particular country, focused on their particular style of racing. So, you know, what I think is a really big opportunity to hit that kind of 200 million fan base and unlock it is stronger.

globally unified narratives.

Ed (13:36.305)
So what what does a what does a season long, I guess, racing story actually look like in practice? Then how would you with such fragmentation across the sport, not just like saying one territory but multiple territories, what does that look like in practice? How could you potentially bring it together? And and and is some of this blue sky thinking or is some of these conversations going on behind the scenes? What I imagine some you can talk about and some you can’t. Right, e are there lots of conversations going on about this at the moment in the sport where people are trying to think of how this becomes a reality?

Sam Houlding (14:06.274)
think if there are.

They’re relatively narrow. And I think there are definitely attempts to push more global narratives. We’ve got so many good big festivals and some kind of alignment. mean, Felicity, the CEO of Ascot said it really well in the report, but alignment between some of these major festivals in terms of the narrative is really important. We have the events there. Can we kind of link them up a little bit more? But you do have instances where…

The Hong Kong Jockey Club has developed Whirlpool and there is the Whirlpool series of races that run across the globe through the year. What they’ve done is unify the backend products and the liquidity from a betting perspective that goes into those events. Maybe as a front-end experience, there’s more that racing could do there, bringing that narrative to life from a consumer and audience perspective. Whirlpool might mean a bit if you’re into a

Ed (14:40.378)
Yes.

Sam Houlding (15:07.362)
to you if you’re really kind of into the betting side of racing. It might not mean as much to you if you go along and you’re not. So there’s things that the sport does have and the raw elements are there. It’s probably a little bit blue sky thinking at the moment in terms of how we as a sport join those together more.

Ed (15:13.828)
Yeah, I know what you mean.

Ed (15:24.452)
I understand yeah, because you look at Whirlpool and I think like what look when you go to the race as well, and obviously you’ll see more about Whirlpool. I think the where it became really obvious to me is when I went to Santranita in LA and and they really did push Whirlpool while we’re there as well because of all the things going on. But I think like I said, if you’re if you’re a casual fan and you don’t know who the c the jockeys are, you don’t know who the horses are, and the reality is look, the reality is not everyone knows how to read form. I’ve certainly tried plenty of times and I can’t read form.

Sam Houlding (15:52.654)
You

Ed (15:52.727)
even though my grandad tried to teach me as child. not sure if that was good or a bad thing. But if you but the reality is if you’re not relying on form, then the reality is you are going to rely on characters about who you decide to to take a punt on. And look, and and it’s not all about betting, some of that might just be gamified ways of taking a punt, and that’s not necessarily spending money on betting, because betting’s not for everyone, and we’re not necessarily suggesting that. Like, how how can something like Whirlpool lean more into those characters?

so then people can start to follow them more as like a an individual horse or an individual jockey.

Sam Houlding (16:26.028)
Yeah, Winfred in the report said it really well, the CEO of Hong Kong Jockey Club. And they have a stat that, you know, there’s more engagement in racing if you lead with the sport rather than lead with betting. So you have to lead with those sporting elements, but demystifying that for first time consumers, new audiences, which is obviously where the major opportunity is for racing is massively important. Like I said before, it’s simple. It doesn’t have a core product problem.

It’s first part of the line wins the race, but just taking away some of the complexity in terminology and thinking about things like how do we get, you know, maybe data led race card that’s simpler to understand, ranking systems, you know, people understand things like that now when they consume sports, like very easy to understand digestible visuals when it comes to, you know, a race card.

Ed (16:56.698)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Houlding (17:25.912)
maybe that’s more powerful than form. Like you said, you sound quite seasoned in terms of going racing, still wouldn’t necessarily be able to digest the form. I’d be the same, you know, worked in racing for a long time, but all of the form elements in every territory, I would be a bit lost in as well.

Ed (17:31.642)
Try. No, I’m

Ed (17:40.911)
Yeah, I I’ll look at form, I’ll look at I tr I try to make it make it look like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t really. I’m I I but I always like I try I sort of try and take a punt based on the very limited knowledge I’ve got and then try and stick to it and and then that’s my idea. But I and I think look, and I think even race rituals right like is a is a clever way of how you can actually get people to really understand the meaning of the race, whether you’re going or not. And I I think like the the report identifies a clear mismatch between how modern audiences look can

consume sports, God even live their lives right, and forms of media racing that that actually that that racing actually prioritizes. Like what does that look like? How what is that mismatch, do you think?

Sam Houlding (18:23.502)
I think the mismatch that we’re trying to draw out in the report is that if we’re going to grow new audience, and I keep coming back to that because that’s the most important thing, that 200 million, that is the opportunity. We know that audience lives on mobile, predominantly in the evening, and they want easy content to digest, ideally short form.

Ed (18:35.672)
Of course.

Sam Houlding (18:48.716)
Whereas racing’s product lives on a race card largely. And when it does live on mobile, it’s often run by internal racing voices that are steeped in that terminology and that complexity and that one-off, isolated events narrative. Yeah.

Ed (19:04.954)
I always joke about that tweeding a flat cap. It ta and it look it and and I know it’s not all that anymore, but you still do see it quite a lot and and it I don’t think it necessarily and I’ve seen some younger, even content creators almost leaning into that more and I’m I’m thinking to be like I think you need to sort of be stepping away from not leaning not leaning more into it, but look each to their own.

Sam Houlding (19:24.896)
Yeah, yeah. And look, the stats in the report support it. But we know that 86%, I think there was a stat in there, of the racing audience is mobile first. So quite clearly, we have to meet consumers that are on social platforms and mobile first with content that is relevant and content that allows them to discover the sport, not make them think, what’s this, and scroll on past it.

Ed (19:53.807)
Yeah. So I guess look, I I I know that I’m very much aware of what Spotlight does, aside from racing ports, you’ve got lots of digital products and services, right, that you work with a variety of people across the industry. How is Spotlight specifically approaching closing that gap for the different partners you work with in the industry?

Sam Houlding (20:10.99)
Oh yeah, so we’ve put loads of effort into ensuring that we invest heavily in content that meets new audiences. Effectively, exactly what I mentioned there. I think firstly from helping our partners. We’ve developed products recently like our SmartView Race Card. And like I talked about earlier, that’s based on rankings. It’s based on kind of clean, color-coded visualization. So it completely transforms the race card for a first time.

user is not something we just made up. It went through loads of user testing and it’s very easy to digest. You get a of percentage score against each horse and you can have a view on a race very easily without having to know too much about that particular race.

Ed (20:56.826)
Sounds ideal for me. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Houlding (20:58.35)
Yeah, it’s a good product as well. In a way, it’s taking all the complex data that we use across race cards anyway, but just breaking it down to get the user a little bit further along the journey. It’s the same-owned outcome.

Ed (21:14.704)
think that’s the beauty some t yeah. That’s the beauty sometimes of, you know, technology and data. I think often people then use that to overcomplicate things, but it sounds like what you try to do is let take the other way and simplify it.

Sam Houlding (21:26.828)
Yeah, absolutely. And it wouldn’t just be the race card. We invest really heavily and it’s part of kind of a big three year audience plan here at Racing Post in social content. We’ve done partnerships with influencers on their influencers I’ve never even heard of that are involved in fashion or cooking or whatever it is to take them to live race course experiences and have them record and publish content about that to reach their audiences. So we’re doing loads.

of work in that sphere, loads of short form video which is becoming more and more important, attention span. Attention spans are not high nowadays are they for people, like I said it’s a competitive playing field so all of our work at Spotlight Sports Group with Racing Post is about new audiences and how we engage them.

Ed (22:15.13)
I think you’re I th look it it I think it’s a it’s a mix, right? I think people will engage with long form content if it’s the right right long form content. But the reality is I think like you’re absolutely right that I think racing has always had long form content, right? And actually what it’s probably lacked is that short form content. It’s not like it’s not happening, people are are doing it now, have been doing it for a few years now, but it it wasn’t necessarily built for that and you can see that’s the kind of stuff that you’re trying to to do now. interestingly, like if like I think you’ve already touched on it, but

I’d love to learn more about like what what you see is the best comparison to horse racing in other sports. What what what are the models that you’ve been looking at where you say, actually these are things that we other sports where we can look at what they’ve done. Might have different demographics, might have different sort of schedules, but things you that you’ve fully can learn from and actually take that into horse racing.

Sam Houlding (23:00.93)
Yeah.

Sam Houlding (23:06.742)
Yeah, I suppose the best sports to look at are heritage sports or traditional heritage sports.

Ed (23:13.274)
The who’ve had to go through a change themselves.

Sam Houlding (23:15.766)
Yeah, things like cricket have been, you know, they’ve been through tons of changes. If you think about, you know, test cricket as a heritage sport, they’ve developed loads of different formats. not saying formats are necessarily the way that, you know, new formats are necessarily the way that racing has to go. But you look at their sport and they’ve developed, you know, things like the hundred where it’s broken down the complexities of cricket. It’s not talking about overs and you have to understand the six balls in an over or anything like that. It’s a hundred balls. Most runs win.

it simplifies it. know, alongside what they’ve done there, they’ve brought in partnerships that are going to appeal to younger audiences and new audiences, things like I think they did a partnership with Marvel and they wove like superheroes, you know, into the into the narrative for the day. So they’re a great example. Everyone draws on the Formula One example. I like the Formula One example where they kind of centralised all the data, media rights, every team has a social channel and they created consistent

across the sport and obviously it worked beautifully but the only caveat I always have when drawing that example is there’s very few races in a season you’ve got 20 odd races and actually it’s quite an easy one to then go race to race to race and have a really good global narrative across so if you can’t do that in Formula One I think you’d be struggling to do it anyway so for me there’s some really good examples out there I think it’s taking the things they do well rather than taking a playbook from another sport and just saying that works for racing

Ed (24:24.858)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s it, yeah.

Sam Houlding (24:45.456)
you

Ed (24:46.148)
Yeah, you’re absolutely right, ’cause like you said, F F one has what, twenty odd races and I I don’t know, could you even put a number on how many horse races go on around the world per year? It must be in the heavy high thousands, I’d imagine.

Sam Houlding (24:58.638)
Yeah, I wouldn’t have an answer for that now, but it’ll be the very high thousands, yeah, for sure.

Ed (25:01.358)
Yeah, I’m no I’m not not putting you on the spot. Yeah, yeah, it would be it would be a high number.

but yeah, it like I said, it it is a it is a good comparison. I think look, I want I want to try and sort of ’cause I think it is important, the live experience where we know that racing gets it right. And look, and like I said, I I can vouch for that ’cause I’ve been to plenty and we’ve even been having a conversation with some of my work colleagues recently, ’cause we used to do it it used to be my thing that every year I’d drag everyone out for our summer jaunt to a to a race course and we have not done it for a few years. And a few of my more recent colleagues are like, can we go to races? ’cause it i like I said

Sam Houlding (25:34.882)
Gotta keep those new fans coming Ed.

Ed (25:36.503)
Yeah, yeah, no, I’m I’ve I’ve already promised I’m so I’m going to do it. I just need to get myself organised. but you know it is a live experience. So how I guess the sport gets that right in so many ways on so many levels and and I think that when you do get those younger audiences there, they they do they have a great experience. So how how do we take that?

Sam Houlding (25:39.064)
Yeah.

Sam Houlding (25:51.65)
Yeah.

Ed (26:04.974)
as a door opener to then to then then maintain them from a digital perspective thereafter.

Sam Houlding (26:09.89)
that’s the access point for a lot of young people in racing and it’s probably not all racing as well, it’s probably those big events.

And I mentioned earlier, you know, around the Melbourne Cup, but you’ve got other examples of Kentucky Derby, Royal Ascot. They’re all posting peak figures for their live events over recent years, but they are being turned into those entertainment and cultural experiences. So it goes back to that first point, I guess, that we’re discussing that if you mix the two and you use that as an access point to get younger people discovering racing, but maybe a soft discovery, you know, through entertainment first. That’s the point where we then need to have

really good products in place to help keep them engaged in the future as well.

Ed (26:57.114)
Yeah, it’s interesting about like I said, I I wasn’t aware of the Melbourne Cup and and also this the f I’m gonna pronounce this wrong, the Frances Gallup. and they feature heavily in your case studies. What do they each do that that the rest of the industry should be copying? ‘Cause I’ve touched on, sorry, it like obviously like I said, I’ve been to see I’ve been to the racer to see live music and I’ve been to the racer to see the racers. Like, what are they doing differently specifically that that is

Let’s say bigger and better than than than the norm.

Sam Houlding (27:28.754)
playing to their strengths I think and I think that’s the really important thing when you come to you know considering how any racing event evolves. The Melbourne Cup

is almost positioned now as a carnival, know, a major entertainment event. They make sure that they also cater for all of their audience. And I’ve talked a lot about new fans here, but there’s that 48 million or 46 million of core fans and casual fans exactly. So it’s not a one size fits all experience. You still have to make sure that you are catering for people that love racing and are going to go and like the heritage of it. That’s important. But they both play to their strengths.

Ed (27:58.587)
Can’t forget about them, absolutely.

Sam Houlding (28:11.908)
The Melbourne Cup, like I said, there’s other events that do it globally really well as well, but it’s almost carnival-led atmosphere. The French example that we draw on there targets young Parisians coming after work. So, you know, it knows where its strengths lie, it has good admission pricing, and it’s kind of made sure that it’s…

key events, some of the group races have been moved so that the audiences that come on those days after work on Thursdays for the evening summer racing are going to see top quality racing as well.

Ed (28:47.344)
Yeah, you ultimately you’ve like that’s reality. We’ve got there are so many things we can do in our day to day lives now that I think i it’s it’s obvious but clever to work around people’s schedules and and put those things in place. Because the reality is like you what you want to do is is pe people have their day to day, but you want them to start building rituals around horse racing as well as part of their life. So it’s like the reality is you’ve got to try and fit it in around people’s lives rather than put it in a time when it’s not gonna be convenient.

Sam Houlding (29:12.492)
Yeah, alongside 11 sports or more. know, like I mentioned earlier, over 50 % would watch 11 sports or more. And you’d probably be the same, I’d be the same. You’d see, you know…

Ed (29:17.251)
Yep.

Ed (29:25.722)
Well there’s always been that assumption, hasn’t there, that th if you love that, that’s the only thing you love. No, I like I like like football’s probably my first love, but then I’ll watch cricket. I I like going to the horse racing. I like I’ll watch a bit of tennis if it’s on. There’s there’s other sports that that I that I enjoy that that it doesn’t mean ’cause I’d like that I don’t like that. And I I know I would absolutely go to the right horse racing event over a football match if I’ve been if I’m given the right reasons. It’s n it’s it’s not that just ’cause I pick that I’ll never pick that.

Sam Houlding (29:44.845)
Yeah.

Sam Houlding (29:53.25)
Yeah.

and if it’s tennis, it’s probably Wimbledon or a major event. And that’s where I mean, with racing, we have to use those major events as the entry point. And we might have to accept that someone’s going to enter through a fantastic live experience at Royal Ascot. It might not mean racing’s their first love forever after that, but we need to make sure that they are exposed in a way that they want to consume the sport for as long as they are going to be engaged.

Ed (29:59.161)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Ed (30:18.948)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And hopefully when they come to that, as much as they want to come to another live event, right, and and do it in person, that when they come to that event they they connect with the characters, whether equine or human, and that that afterwards they still want to lean in and okay, I like I quite liked the personality of that jockey or I liked how that horse did what that horse did. Or I you know, I walked around and I saw the horse walking around, that afterwards

They feel I wanna keep following that particular character in some way, shape, or form ’cause then it’s sort of can e keep it’s that thread that keeps them to the next time that they have a a touch point.

Sam Houlding (30:57.292)
Yeah, definitely. And all sport thrives on its superstars, That probably comes back to the complexity of we have equine superstars. We also have jockeys and trainers, so we need to make sure that we’re bringing out the best of all characters across the sport, really.

Ed (31:15.428)
But in a lot of ways, if you compare it to something like football, right, and I think that it’s it might not necessarily be thought about that in horse racing. It’s not only the same as a player, a team, a coach, a manager, a league, a nation. Like those hierarchies exist in other sports too. I I just I just don’t know if they’re as interconnected or thought about in the same kind of way in horse racing, that actually it’s not one better than other, they’re just all parts of the the puzzle.

Sam Houlding (31:38.211)
Yeah, and probably a lot of the behind the scenes content is really important in sport. I watched something this morning with the England dressing room, you know, after the Mexico win. It was a great watch. You know, it only a small snippet on social media. John Stones’ injury, yeah, exactly. But, you know…

Ed (31:43.098)
Forget about yes.

Ed (31:49.956)
Where they were why where they were winding up too, shall about bit I think John Stones is at shoulder. Yeah, yeah. It was great though. Yeah, absolutely.

Sam Houlding (31:57.039)
There’s other things, Anthony Gordon, did a press conference in Spanish, you know, like, didn’t he, when he got announced to Barcelona, I was sitting there thinking, geez, I had to replay it about five times, thinking this must be AI, but no, he speaks Spanish. So like, just small things like that, and they really hook you in and engage you, but it’s that behind the scenes content that’s really important as well.

Ed (32:01.528)
Yes. Yeah.

Ed (32:16.068)
You’re right, and those are those are those are when you get the cultural and the lifestyle crossovers that actually really pull on people’s emotions and really allow them to connect with sports or individuals when they see things like that that is not the norm. And I’ve got no doubt whatsoever that there are stories going on like that in horse racing on a daily basis. Like I s I love seeing footage of when you’re seeing, you know, jockey hands working with horses in the you know, the misty morning and

Sam Houlding (32:43.981)
Yeah.

Ed (32:45.84)
‘Cause you just you don’t see the the early morning wake ups and the effort that goes into preparing some of these like I said, when I was in Santa Anita ’cause we were near where the horses were, just to go down and speak to some of the trainers and it i it is a unique experience and you you can’t get that kind of access in football.

Sam Houlding (33:05.132)
No, no, exactly, exactly. And I think how we solve that is a really key thing. we have, you know, in the report, we were really conscious of trying to, you know, bring in solutions. We’ve listened to a of industry forums that highlight the…

Ed (33:10.265)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam Houlding (33:21.902)
problems that racing has, you know, in audience. A lot of sports will talk about the same problems, by the way, so, you know, these aren’t something we need to kind of panic too much over, but you highlighted them at the beginning. We talk about them, but it’s the solutions that are really important. And they’re not easy, by the way, and a lot of the time, you know, even thinking about that, how do we bring more behind the scenes narratives to life? But there’s no point just telling a ton more stories in isolation as well. you know, racing has some challenges there to think about. Is there a way it can do that in a unified way?

Ed (33:28.666)
Absolutely.

Ed (33:36.101)
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Houlding (33:51.888)
you

Ed (33:52.785)
Okay, so I I wanted to come on to betting, ’cause obviously look, betting and horse racing are are probably more heavily linked together than I think it’s fair to say any other sport. But also horse racing is not not just about betting too, or people engage it in different ways. But the report calls the betting experience one of racing’s biggest untapped levers. Now if I’m just sat here before I read that I’m thinking to myself, got bettings everywhere in horse racing. How is that an untapped lever? W can you

Can you explain to me wh how you got to that conclusion?

Sam Houlding (34:25.59)
Yeah, I think probably the way I think about it is that the audience challenge is the thing that, you know, sits above everything. We bring the audience, it will funnel new audience into the sport and it will provide opportunity for the sport to grow. Then you’ve got three levers below that. You’ve got kind of media rights and how that’s monetized. You’ve got betting and look like it’s very clear racing is more dependent on betting in terms of funding the sport than most other sports. So we can’t

shy away from that and then you’ve also got the live experience, people paying to go to a race course. Betting is probably the one that if done properly and the audience is extended has the most opportunity to provide future growth for the sport.

Ed (35:13.508)
Yeah, it’s like I said, it’s it’s there’s a difficulty right around the modern audiences and and I guess like because of the way that betting is is viewed now. but I think as you’ve touched on it, the issue you know, the issue isn’t necessarily again the problem with betting or even the UI UX of when you use an app or I think the race card, I think you touched on it earlier as well, is something that probably informs but probably confuses in equal measures.

Sam Houlding (35:43.787)
Yeah, yeah, I think there’s I think there’s a stat in the report. If it’s not in the report, then it’s definitely a stat that we use at 31 % of sports fans site feeling informed as their primary trigger to bet. So you can make betting accessible.

or you can quite quickly make it inaccessible in horse racing. So racing is very data rich and presentation of that data is key and that’s where I talked earlier about the SmartView product that we produced that just simplifies that data experience, allows people to feel informed in a very simple way using rankings, using data visualization and giving people access really. If you feel informed, you’re much more likely to place a bet.

Ed (36:31.406)
Absolutely. And and I I know that Boil Sports have adopted that, which clearly sure there’s a demand there and they’ve they’ve identified and understood that there’s a a solution that’s needed to help them do that. How has it specifically worked for them so far? What what success has it shown in since they’ve adopted it?

Sam Houlding (36:49.174)
Yeah, there’s some PR in marketplace around this actually, so anyone listening can go and have a look as well. But Boyle Sports started using SmartView as one of the various views that they have on their sportsbook. And it worked really well. There was an 8 % uplift in bets placed, I think, since its adoption. And it provided a certain segment of the audience that obviously wanted to consume racing in a different way with exactly

the solution that they needed. So it’s been a real success and it’s not just Ballsports, there’s other operators in marketplace that have either adopted it before that or since adopted it and it continues to be a really powerful product. I think the more the operators latch on to the fact that you’re going to need to provide different experiences for different users, the more SmartView and products like that for new audiences will become more popular as well.

Ed (37:43.056)
Yeah, and I guess what it shows is it’s less about creating new betting products per se in terms of things you can bet on, more about actually giving better information to to the people who are interested in the sport for them to get to lean in and engage with the sport, either through betting or otherwise.

Sam Houlding (37:58.829)
Yeah, back to my product problem. Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I meant. There’s no product problem. We need to solve the actual product that we put forward to people. The product of racing is good, yeah, exactly.

Ed (38:02.734)
Ha ha ha ha!

Ed (38:08.944)
Yeah, like you like you say, like it it’s not a presentation in terms of presentation per se, because it’s present it’s more p it’s it’s the information to get pe because I think it I think it even becomes before presentation, right? It’s kinda like it’s informing and demystifying about the sport to be able to get you to then lean in. ‘Cause then when you lean in then then the presentation around the sport in the live experience is really, really good.

Sam Houlding (38:32.502)
Yeah, yeah, and look, if you went to a first time football user or football better and they weren’t too familiar with the sport and you started talking about XG as your first entry point or something, they think, what the hell’s going on here? The starting point is talking about who’s gonna win the game, you know, and giving a little bit of digestible information that can help people form a view on that. The XG and all the more detailed stuff comes later once you’ve discovered it a bit more.

Ed (38:46.572)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ed (38:59.012)
You’re right, it d I think it was in the World Cup where FIFA came up with a load of new stats that they used during the World Cup and everyone was looking screen and going, I don’t even know what any of this means because they’d not gone through that whole process of explaining to people what these different things mean. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Houlding (39:09.646)
Yeah, there’s XGI, goal involvements and things. And even as football fan, you have to pause and think, what is this stat I’m looking at? But racing kind of seems to lean into leading with those stats fairly often because the form and the data used is relatively complex, I guess, compared to other sports.

Ed (39:17.272)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Ed (39:28.684)
Okay, then so lo look to to to wrap up with this, because this this has been fascinating and I and and and I definitely am going to speak to you offline about this as well because I want to learn more about what’s going on. there’s a structural framework, right? And for what for whatever reason things haven’t changed. So the report is not calling for a single governing body per se, but it does call for a shared conviction across racing, almost like a shared viewpoint of how do we make change in the sport. What does that actually mean in practice and what

What benefits, not just for the organisation involved, but for the fans themselves, ’cause ultimately, right, all of this is to try and give value to fans.

Sam Houlding (40:06.156)
Yeah, absolutely. And look, this is probably, this is the hardest part to talk about in racing because it’s the most fragmented. We go back to that fact that it’s a global sport, but with quite a local mindset. And each local territory has its own way that it governs racing, its own media rights.

Ed (40:27.3)
Yeah, there’s no equivalent of a fee for a World Athletics or an I C C for instance.

Sam Houlding (40:30.894)
Yeah, so I think probably in the report and Mark, our CEO, closes it by explaining that we don’t need a single governing body to unlock growth. But like you said, it does need a shared conviction. I think probably…

expecting a single body to be formed of racing might be slightly unrealistic. I might be wrong and that’d be fantastic if I am. But I think what is really important is you think about those key entry points that we’ve talked about there. Ascot, the Melbourne Cup, Breeders’ Cup, there’d be too many for me to name but just pulling out some of the key ones is that the owners of these events and also racing bodies globally do work together and share a conviction that there is opportunity if we bring the sport.

closer together with narratives, with alignment of events, because ultimately, let’s go back to the very top of this conversation, 200 million untapped fans. The best way to win those fans over will be presenting the sport as a unified sport that…

runs globally and we could all probably go and attack our own individual territories or countries and make sure we’re doing a good job but that’s fragmentation still. So yeah it’s a great question what does that actually look like there’s definitely a shared conviction needed maybe there’s an informal body needed to help tackle some of the sports problems and maybe that’s made up of some of the kind of key stakeholders in racing some of them commented you know very well and within the report and input really well into the report so you know maybe some of those

are the voices we need as well.

Ed (42:06.052)
Yeah, and and I know I think that look some of the some of the major horse races have come together certainly from a media perspective, haven’t they, to do a joint a little bit like, you know, in marathons you’ve got the marathon majors. I know there’s I can’t remember the name of it now, I know there’s a group that have come together in terms to w to work together for some of the major horse races in terms of how content’s made, content’s distributed, media be sold. but probably on a it needs that on a larger scale than just that small number because there are so many races, right?

Sam Houlding (42:33.014)
Yeah, and there’s some examples of the European pattern committee. One I mentioned Whirlpool earlier. For me, I see this as the biggest opportunity. You know, there is a unification of global major global racing events from a betting perspective, a liquidity perspective. If we could bring that to the front end and, you know, probably blue sky, but say everyone that, you know, was hooked into Whirlpool paid into a central marketing fund and that marketing fund was controlled by a body and then promoted the sport globally via the Whirlpool.

pool series events and brought that to life, maybe that’s a solution but again it’s going to take conviction from the industry and alignment to really unpick that I think.

Ed (43:13.764)
Yeah, it feels like there needs to be a thought process there from them. Less about what they lose from what exists already, more about what they gain from a wider audience that they could tap into. It feels like there’s a bit of protectionism perhaps there at the moment about worrying that if I if I if we’re all aiming still for the same audience then I’m just gonna get less of it if I share it, whereas actually what you’re aiming for is that top of the pyramid, the two hundred plus million, the where where actually everyone benefits because you’re opening it up.

Sam Houlding (43:41.548)
Yeah, and alignment often does mean you have to kind of sacrifice something or control over something in the shorter term for the longer term benefit. So yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Ed (43:52.41)
Sam, this has been fascinating. So obviously what we will do is, for anyone who hasn’t read the report and it is a fascinating read, we will make the link available on our on our webpage where we’ll host the podcast as well. But Sam, if you just want to explain where people can go and get the report themselves, if they don’t if they if they listen to this and they don’t come to our webpage to to watch it, please explain. How do we get the report?

Sam Houlding (44:14.286)
Yeah, it’s a fantastic question. Alex, our marketing, our head of marketing is going to kill me for not knowing the exact answer or web address. But if you engage with Racing Post Spotlight Sports Group LinkedIn channels, it’ll be on there. If you go through the Spotlight Sports Group.com website, I think there’s a link on there as well. So yeah, if you Google the racing audience report by Racing Post and Spotlight Sports Group, you’ll find it. won’t be won’t be any issues there.

Ed (44:41.424)
And I think if anyone in the sports r in the horse racing industry as well wants to engage with you, Sam as well, I’m assuming they can find you on LinkedIn as a starting point as well.

Sam Houlding (44:48.598)
Yeah, absolutely. Anything we’ve published in the report, even to obtain a copy, given I’ve failed to point someone towards a particular destination. yeah, anything regarding the report, more than happy to engage. are obsessed with audience engagement and growth at Racing Post, so the door’s always open to talk about this stuff.

Ed (45:13.646)
As our weight display, which is why it was a good a good reason to get you get you on the pod. What we’ll also do as well is obviously when we edit this video out as well, I’m gonna ask Dan, our producer, to also put the web address in the graphic on the video as well so people know where they can go and get the get the report from as well. So Alex is then happy. And we’ll make sure we’ll put a link on the webpage as well. Sam absolutely, absolutely. Sam, this has been fascinating. Like I I definitely want to learn more. I definitely am now committed to make sure I do organise a social for all of our staff.

Sam Houlding (45:29.976)
perfect. You need to Baleck’s happy, always.

Ed (45:42.586)
to to some horse racing very soon. but thank you so much for your time. if anyone’s got any questions, feedback, want to feature as a guest on the pod, you can email us at hello at attention shift dot media. I’ve been Ed Abyss, this been Sam Holding. this has been the Attention Shift. Thank you, Sam.

Sam Houlding (45:58.115)
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me here.