Revealed: how £1.25m ownership strategy failed to deliver key projects

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Several key elements of the sport's Industry Ownership Strategy (IOS) have never been delivered despite being repeatedly identified as goals of a three-year project that cost British racing £1.25 million in levy funding, documents obtained by the Racing Post reveal.

The Racehorse Owners Association (ROA), which led the industry-wide project to boost the recruitment and retention of owners, aimed to create a trainers' comparison site to boost the numbers getting involved in the sport and showed off mock-ups of the planned website in presentations to senior racing officials.

However, the comparison website is one of several crucial components of the project which have never been delivered. While the Covid-19 pandemic effectively halted further work on the strategy in March last year, by that stage £1.25m had already been spent, including £283,000 on staffing and at least £90,000 on a rebranding exercise which produced a new logo for the ROA.

Among other elements of the project which have not been delivered, the ROA intended to produce a luxury welcome pack for new owners, a kitemark scheme for trainers and an accreditation framework for syndicates. The ROA intends to complete the work on syndicates, but it is understood the other components of the plan are unlikely to ever get off the ground.

Along with its new brand, the ROA spent £215,000 on ten ownership days at racecourses (a further 11 days were abandoned due to Covid), £50,117 on promotional events at Liverpool Cathedral and the House of Commons and an unspecified amount on a Racecourse Quality Mark designed to rank tracks and establish minimum expected standards for owners.

An unknown sum was also paid to the consultancy firm Portas, which led "across 16 of the original 40 IOS initiatives" and provided "project management and communication expertise", according to an internal Levy Board assessment of the project.

The failure to deliver several central elements of the plan despite a seven-figure bill for the project will sharpen focus on the ROA's management of the critical project. These revelations also come at a time when prize-money and the retention of top owners are in the spotlight after Britain's near-wipeout at the Cheltenham Festival.

As part of the cross-industry plans for the IOS first drawn up in 2017 and concluded last year, the ROA, which received input from stakeholders across the sport, aimed to create a trainers' comparison site which would "provide a comprehensive guide to the trainer selection process, alongside an enhanced trainer search function", thereby "matchmaking" prospective owners to professionals.

The trainers' comparison website was highlighted in a range of documents produced by the ROA between 2017 and last year, including in a presentation to the sport's members' committee, the highest decision-making body in British racing, which featured a mock-up of an online directory called 'findatrainer.co.uk'. This website is not registered to the ROA or any other racing body according to the WHOIS database of web domains.

A slideshow illustrating how the trainer comparison website might have looked

Documents obtained by the Racing Post following a Freedom of Information request to the Levy Board show a budget of £150,000 was set aside for the website, including £50,000 due to be spent in 2019. It is unclear if any paid work was ever undertaken and the ROA declined to answer any specific questions about the project.

By the time the ROA published the IOS in October last year, all references to the website had been removed, while a further document recently released on the organisation's website only mentions "work with University of Liverpool MBA student to scope 'Trainer Comparison Website'" in relation to the project, which has been marked as completed.

A welcome pack for new owners containing "cross-industry information" designed to promote a sense of luxury "club membership" was also halted by the ROA last year.

In an IOS update in the ROA's 2018 annual report, chief executive Charlie Liverton wrote: "A Welcome Pack is being developed using the increasing knowledge we gain of the ownership experience. The Welcome Pack will acknowledge the investment owners make in terms of financial expenditure, emotion and time."

A mock-up of the proposed pack was presented to the Levy Board in October 2019, with £50,000 budgeted in 2020 for the design and delivery of the project. It is understood no IOS expenditure was actually incurred in creating the pack, and the ROA has since launched a 'digital welcome pack' for new members.

Despite the conclusion and publication of the IOS, work on syndicate accreditation remains ongoing according to the ROA, which describes it as a '2021 priority' on its website. Growing the base of syndicate owners was identified as a priority early in the IOS project and viewed as a means of marketing the sport to a younger and more diverse audience, with promotion to be achieved partly through creating a "syndicate selection website".

Jon Hughes, co-founder of the ownership pressure group Keep Owners In Racing, which called for the dismissal of Liverton following the release of the IOS last year, said he was still struggling to understand the direction of ownership promotion in Britain and demanded clear action.

"The sport is missing a proper recovery plan and a proper ownership strategy and that's unacceptable," he said. "British racing seems obsessed with starting initiatives and projects and then never getting anywhere with them. It's a huge job for [new BHA chief executive] Julie Harrington to make sure this attitude gets changed.

"We should be looking to embrace the opportunity that is there and they have to find a way of making key decisions and then living with them rather than just doing nothing. What hope do we have of there being a sensible strategy if people aren't prepared to commit to it?

Jon Hughes: 'Too often British racing settles on the lowest common denominator, rather than the highest common numerator'

"Too often British racing settles on the lowest common denominator, rather than the highest common numerator. As an owner I don't see anything really meaty coming through that I can get behind and go 'that's good'."

Too much confusion remains for potential owners wanting to enter the sport according to Dan Abraham, chairman of the Racehorse Syndicates Association and manager of Foxtrot Racing.

He said: "My view is that there's currently a lack of responsibility for delivering and directing people into ownership. The industry lacks a clear and coherent strategy about how to bring in new owners into racing and what that ownership experience should look like.

"As such, it's probably not a surprise the ownership strategy appears to be struggling to find a way to put it all together under one brand. The ROA are not just there to represent or provide benefits to their members, but to support all owners."

The ROA declined to answer questions about the project, but in a statement published in full in the Racing Post on Tuesday it said it was "the voice of ownership in racing" and that the long-term benefits of the strategy would "enhance racing for owners".

The Levy Board declined to answer specific questions concerning the ownership strategy, but said an end-of-project report would be submitted by the ROA. It added that it did not expect any further call for funds for work associated with the project.

Read more on this story:

Furious owners slam low prize-money and warn of racing's 'terminal decline' (Members' Club)

Senior racing figures doubted ROA's ability to deliver ownership strategy (Members' Club)

Comment: ownership strategy offers a meagre return for £1.25m (Members' Club)

Revealed: owners' association spent £90,000 of levy funds on rebranding exercise (Members' Club)

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