A couple of months after causing widespread astonishment and dismay in the sport by selling some of its most precious naming and image rights to the gaming giant Playtech, Nevin Truesdale, the Jockey Club’s chief executive, stuck his head above the parapet this weekend to defend the Playtech deal and discuss all things Jockey Club, in a fascinating interview with the Racing Post’s senior writer, Lee Mottershead.
The Playtech deal, Truesdale said, had been “a little misunderstood”. The rapid-play gaming products that will be allowed to parasitise events like the Cheltenham Festival and Grand National are, he claimed, “very safe and they’ve been around for years, with close links to racing. For us it’s about saying, if this is already happening using brands closely associated with our own, and if we’re in a position to make some money out of it, shouldn’t we be involved?”
As defences go, Derby County’s back line in their disastrous 2007-08 Premier League campaign was watertight by comparison. It has a big hole in the middle, where the argument should be. “Misunderstood” is the first giveaway, the first word that chief execs (and politicians too) tend to grab for when they do something that everyone else thinks is a terrible idea. In politics it is the sure sign of an imminent U-turn. In business, unfortunately, five-year contracts are much more difficult and expensive to unpick.
Of greater concern, though, is Truesdale’s persistent failure to see the Playtech deal in the context of the huge regulatory change which is certain to be unleashed on Britain’s gambling industry long before the contract even hits halfway. Those “close links” between gaming – on fixed-margin casino products – and betting with variable margins, on racing and other sports, are the result of gaming muscling in on racing’s territory since the 2005 Gambling Act wiped out most of the previous distinctions between the two.
The biggest brands in British gambling have been making hay ever since, first by sucking billions of pounds from – for the most part – the most deprived areas of the country via £100-a-spin gaming machines, and also by vigorously cross-promoting gaming products to sports punters wherever possible.
But they were never going to get away with it forever and at some point in the not-too-distant future a hard rain’s a-gonna fall. The vital issue for racing is how much of it will fall specifically on gaming, which is acknowledged to have much higher problem-gambling rates than betting, and how much drenches everything else.
The most sensible plan is for racing to be standing as far away from gaming as possible when the heavens open. The Jockey Club’s Playtech deal is more akin to standing under the tallest tree around when it feels as if there is thunder in the air.
Ayr 1.00 Ailie Rose 1.30 Mourne Lass 2.05 Destiny Is All 2.40 Hidden Commander 3.15 Pure Surf 3.50 Shoeshine Boy 4.20 Geromino
Newmarket 1.15 Dreaming Princess 1.50 Gale Force Maya 2.25 Ribhi 3.00 Master Of The Seas 3.35 Hello You (nap) 4.10 Crenelle 4.45 High Fibre (nb)
Wolverhampton 5.05 Study The Stars 5.40 So Smart 6.15 Mutabaahy 6.45 Asgoodassobergets 7.15 Desert Emperor 7.45 Sir Henry Cotton 8.15 Plumette
While Truesdale has taken the flak, however, he can act only with the say-so of the stewards of the Jockey Club, the organisation’s equivalent of a board of directors. The Playtech contract could not have been signed without their approval, so who, exactly, should take ultimate responsibility?
Oddly enough, and for the moment at least, it is not an easy question for an interested racing fan to answer. Any normal business with an annual turnover north of £200m might be expected to list its board of directors somewhere on its website but for several months now the only person with a profile on the Jockey Club’s website has been Sandy Dudgeon, the senior steward.
A call to the Jockey Club reveals that, while there are normally seven stewards, since 1 January this year there have been eight. The lack of bios on the website for the last three-and-a-half months is due, it seems, to a lack of photographs of two new members – Carolyn Warren and William Wyatt – and will be rectified shortly.
The other five stewards are Lord Teddy Grimthorpe, Dido Harding, Tim Syder, Justin Dowley and William Rucker. Only two of those would be instantly recognised by a significant number of racing fans, and probably just the one for racing-related reasons.
But – gender aside – they are all fairly typical of the individuals that have steered the Jockey Club throughout its 272-year existence, for the most part as the sport’s ruler and regulator and, since 1993, as its most powerful commercial group. They are steeped in racing, frequently from birth, and for the most part as owners and breeders too. They work unpaid, undoubtedly share the fans’ passion for the sport, and have the same interest in seeing it thrive.
At the same time, though, it inevitably feels increasingly outdated that self-appointed clubs of people who were born with a 20-length lead should have total control of such power, wealth and influence in an industry which employs tens of thousands of people. Short-sighted, strategically inept choices like the Playtech contract can only increase scrutiny.
Flogging the good name of some of sport’s crown jewels to a gaming firm was a betrayal of racing’s interests, for short-term gain, by a body operating under a Royal Charter which obliges it to act for the long-term good of the sport as a whole. That obligation should have been the first thing on their minds when Playtech came calling and they asked themselves “why not?”.
