For as long as I can remember, people have been declaring that the betting ring is finished.
“The game’s gone,” is the familiar cry after a quiet afternoon at Fontwell or a wet Wednesday at Wincanton. You hear it when the crowd is thin, the favourites have gone in and the expenses have swallowed whatever little profit was left in the satchel.
And yet, the old dog is still here. More than that, it is starting to bare its teeth again.
Today, the Gambling Commission has published figures showing that online betting turnover on British horseracing has fallen again. At the same time, and against all odds, the amount wagered with racecourse bookmakers rose from £240 million to £270 million – an increase of 12.5 per cent and its highest level for 15 years.
On the face of it, those two things should not go together. If people are betting less on racing online, why are they betting more in the ring? Having spent most of my life standing in one, I think the answers are obvious. It also raises a wider question: what does it tell us about over-regulation?
First and foremost, the odds are leading the fight. There has long been an assumption that online means better value. For a period, that may have been true. But anyone who regularly compares the boards with the prices elsewhere will know that is a thing of the past.
At the front of the market, where most of the betting takes place, you need to “come racing” to get the value
The Starting Price figures support that. The average SP overround per runner in Britain has risen from a historical average of 1.85 per cent to 2.12 per cent in 2026 to 21 June. That gives anyone who understands value a good reason to walk the line.
At the same time, many of the online incentives with which the ring could never compete have been reduced. I know through my own website https://www.dragonbet.co.uk how expensive offering Best Odds Guaranteed is, and I know the cost of free bets. The big firms are cutting back on both. Add to that the fact that many online firms do not want to know you if you even look like being able to back a winner.
Bigger punters are noticing. They care about the price, but they also want somebody willing to take the bet. We at DragonBet don’t have the technology that big corp has. They can identify a sharp customer and reduce their stakes before either side has had the chance to build any kind of relationship. Away from the biggest races, exchange liquidity is no longer deep enough to satisfy many serious punters either.
My own racecourse figures reflect that change. Over the past two years, our average on-course bet has increased by 18 per cent, while the number of bets taken at each meeting has remained broadly stable. We are not taking thousands more tickets. We are seeing larger bets and more serious money returning to the track.
Those customers are more price-sensitive, more likely to have faced document requests or stake restrictions online and more likely to notice when exchange liquidity is not there. It makes sense that they should be among the first to rediscover the racecourse.
A good betting ring is a living thing. The boards light up, increased turnover allows prices to move independently and the money begins to tell the story. Bookmakers shout the odds. Punters walk the line looking for an extra quarter, half or full point when someone, somewhere, decides to take a stand.
That movement, noise and sense of battle is what makes going racing different. Lords and ladies stand shoulder to shoulder with cooks and crooks. A first-time racegoer with a two-pound slip can be next to a professional trying to have a few grand on. Both are part of the same show.
When you hand over your money on course, you know it’s a person that’s taken the bet. It matters to them.
You might even take some delight in knowing it will be beans on toast for the bookie that night rather than steak and red wine when you draw, while they take pleasure in reminding you that you are only borrowing it.
For too long, racing has treated the betting ring as part of the furniture: a line of flashing boards between the parade ring and the bar. It is far more important than that.
A busy ring lifts the whole racecourse. Serious money creates movement, movement creates noise and noise attracts interest. When a gamble develops, heads turn and neighbouring books react.
The betting ring is not a sideshow to racing. It is part of racing.
It turns an opinion into a contest and a spectator into a participant. Opinions go on the board and demand and supply do the rest. The bookmaker who gets it wrong pays the price.
None of this means the wider decline is not a concern we should all fear. Racing relies heavily on betting for funding, sponsorship and engagement. Nor will growth on course make any meaningful difference to what is being lost elsewhere, it’s a grain of sand on a beach in comparison.
But the success of the ring tells us something important. Punters have not lost their appetite for racing or for having a bet.
Give them competitive prices, a fair chance of getting on and a chance to spend their own money with liberty, and they will do what generations before them have done: punt on a sport they enjoy.
Racing should celebrate the ring and give it greater exposure through its terrestrial coverage and the racing channels. Plenty of sports have a grandstand and a bar. Racing is unique because between the spectators and the field of play sits a living, breathing market right in eyesight.
I have spent enough wet Wednesdays standing on a few yards of tarmac to know the problems. The expenses are high, the quiet days can be painfully quiet and there have been plenty of long, silent journeys home after a bad day.
But I also know what a good ring feels like when it catches fire.
There is nowhere quite like it.
Far from being a dinosaur facing extinction, the betting ring is reminding the industry what made betting on racing special in the first place.
There is life in the old dog yet – and, judging by those turnover figures, plenty of steak dinners still to be had.
