Lord Allen warns British racing is on a 'burning platform' as he calls for the sport to work together and 'commercialise better'

BHA chair Lord Allen has issued a plea to British racing to work together, warning the sport is on a "burning platform".

In one of his first public appearances since taking up the role in September, Allen told guests at the 254th Gimcrack Dinner at York racecourse on Tuesday night that racing needed to pay more attention to its customers, as well as build better relationships with bookmakers.

We were told to expect something visionary - instead Lord Allen gave us opinions we've heard many times before

However, while Allen told the audience that there was no "silver bullet" to solve the sport's problems, he did believe that there was the opportunity to boost racing's income by being more commercial.

Speaking to journalist and broadcaster Lydia Hislop, Allen said that over the last 12 months since his appointment was announced he had been listening to people across the sport, adding: "I do think we need to have change."

Lord Allen's five Cs

Allen, whose long and storied business career included a spell as chief executive of ITV plc, acknowledged that the BHA did not control British racing but that the governing body had a role to play in what he described as "five Cs".

"We bring people together to convene," he said. "Convening is really important. What do we all think, how can we move it forward?

"I think the second point is collaborate. How do we get this sector to positively collaborate together and that's a role we can play.

"Next one would be commercialise. How can we look at what we currently do and say if we put things together can we commercialise better. I believe we can and, wearing my old ITV hat, I think we could do a lot more if we are much, much more collaborative."

Allen said he had been shocked that "we don't really talk about our customers and consumers".

He added: "The other thing I don't think we do well is communicate. We don't explain our sport to the punters.

"The thing that surprised me was the C that I found missing was the consumer. People who pay our wages who come and turn up and support us, we don't spend enough time thinking about what they want.

"I come from a consumer and commercial background. We need to do that much, much more. So I think that's definitely up there in terms of things that you can do.

"There's no silver bullet but I genuinely believe if I look at this from a commercial perspective then we can bring in a lot more more money than we do currently."

Allen said the sport also needed to communicate with government but that it had made a good start, praising the 'Axe The Racing Tax' campaign.

He said: "What really impressed me was literally my first day was being in Westminster and seeing the whole sector stand shoulder to shoulder and that's what you need to do to influence government.

"That's a start but it's only the beginning. We need to have a three-year strategic relationship with government that says this is what we are going to do.

"The other thing we need to do is we need to have much better relationships with bookmakers. They are our principal funders."

'The black economy'

Allen said the sport could find alignment with bookmakers on what he described as the "black economy".

"What I mean by that is the £80 billion globally that goes offshore, that's unregulated, the Treasury get no money out of it, we get nothing out of it and I think we can build common cause on that," he added.

Great British Racing is set to come under the auspices of the BHA and Allen revealed that agreement had been reached with the Levy Board to put a further £4 million into 'The Going Is Good', the sport's national marketing campaign.

Allen said: "We need to invest in the sport, we need that £4m advertising campaign, in fact we need a lot more than that to bring people in the door.

"We want bums on seats, we need more investment in the sport but we need to do that by bringing people with us, so that's really important.

"I think we can find common cause. It's often easy to find differences but what we are trying to do is find more common cause."

He added: "I don't want to be negative but there is a burning platform and I really need your help in this room to get people to move forward collaboratively."

Here's Lord Allen on . . .

The BHA's new independent board

I want a range of people joining the board that have a range of skills. One of them would actually be someone who understands rights management, somebody who would be what I call a digital native who actually understands what TikTok is and speaks to a different generation, and I would also like someone who has financial and commercial capability. David Armstrong [outgoing Racecourse Association chief executive] provided that well.

I also want somebody on the board who actually understands bookmakers' models, which are all different, to actually help us say. 'How do we collectively create more revenue working in partnership?'

Making the raceday experience better

Why couldn't we be thinking about when we arrive at the gate? How do you take me through the experience? Where are the headphones which explain when the horses are in the parade ring? That's what the grey is doing, look at the gait of the horse, things that could actually be used on site to make it much more understandable.

We have the data, but on the screens on site we actually don't tell people about it. We are sort of quite exclusive in that explaining.

One of my early visits was with Dido [Harding, senior steward of the Jockey Club], and I was saying, 'Tell me what I am looking for here, what am I looking for in that horse?', and I was intrigued.

And when I have done it and taken people with me, they really want to know, and particularly younger people, they are intrigued by what this actually means.

What racing needs more of

We need more people coming to the sport, both in terms of gambling but also in terms of coming to the event, and we need to do that in a very structured way.

We need more money because in every conversation I've had, people say, 'I need more money'. But the truth is we need more money collectively, whether it's prize-money, whether it's investment in the sport, we need more money.

What I would like to lay out is how we might be able to get there, because I think what we talk about is our differences, but what we don't talk about is where we have common cause.

So it's about building the sport, growing the sport and there are more similarities than differences, but very often what happens is we talk about differences.

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