Horseracing is a wonderful sport - it just needs a proper marketing budget so people can be told

Horseracing is a great sport. It is exciting, intriguing, and has plenty to offer that other sports don’t have. What it lacks is an ambitious plan to make sure the nation knows – and the funding to implement it.

Great British Racing, the sport’s marketing and promotional arm, has done a good job with insufficient support. Now, another step forward is needed.

Historically, persuading this structurally flawed sport to get behind central marketing has been hard work. In 1993 the newly established British Horseracing Board appointed a marketing director. Lee Richardson’s arrival was greeted with a mixture of scepticism veering towards hostility. There was a disheartening ignorance of marketing, which tended to be seen as something that involved spending money while ignoring its value in generating income. Richardson was given an investment budget of only £1 million over three years. Racing didn’t take marketing seriously.