Field sizes in Britain showed small recovery last year from 2022's historic low

Average field sizes in Britain staged a modest recovery in 2023, with figures for both the Flat and over jumps edging upwards after hitting precipitous lows in 2022. There was a commensurate drop in the percentage of races which featured fewer than six runners, the measure by which the BHA determines a contest to have 'failed' in betting turnover terms.

The average field size across all 9,978 races run in Britain last year was 8.76 runners, up from 8.46 in 2022, when there were 10,216 contests staged. Although that figure of 8.76 is also slightly above the 8.66 average of 2014, it is below each year between 2015 and 2021.

An average of 8.2 runners for jump racing represented an encouraging uptick from 2022’s mean of 7.73, the lowest recorded this century and a huge warning shot for British racing, given the significance of eight runners to each-way betting.