Saratoga, ridden by Mark Walsh, celebrates winning the McCoy Contractors Juvenile Handicap Hurdle at Cheltenham Racecourse in Cheltenham, England on March 10, 2026.
Michael Steele | Getty Images Sports | Getty Images
This report is from this week’s CNBC UK Exchange newsletter. Is it what you see? You can subscribe here.
dispatch
Yesterday kicked off the Cheltenham Festival, the biggest annual event on the jump racing calendar.
The four-day festival, extended from three days in 2005, will attract more than 160,000 racegoers to the champagne- and Guinness-fueled celebration of Britain’s second-most popular spectator sport.
The festival draws a unique crowd to the rolling Cotswold hills. Streetwise young people from the Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham neighbourhoods, many of whom dress like characters from the cult Birmingham-based TV series Peaky Blinders, rub shoulders with landowners, business leaders and urbanites, show business figures and the farming community in Gloucestershire and neighboring counties.
Best of all, there are Irish participants, who make up about a third of the audience. The festival, which usually coincides with St. Patrick’s Day, but not this year, is a showcase for Irish horse racing.
Irish trainers, especially the great Willie Mullins, have coached the most Festival winners in 14 of the past 15 years. And 17 of the past 18 years have been dominated by Irish jockeys, most famously the excellent Ruby Walsh, whose record for riding the most winning horses at 11 Festivals is unlikely to be broken.
The head of the governing body resigns
But this year’s festival comes at a time of crisis for British horse racing.
Charles Allen, the respected former chief executive of broadcaster ITV, last week resigned as chairman of the British Horse Racing Authority (BHA), the governing body for horse racing that licenses participants, oversees disciplinary procedures and enforces rules.
His resignation after just six months, due to what The Guardian called “racing’s unruly politics”, highlighted the difficulty of coordinating the industry’s stakeholders, including owners and breeders, jockeys, trainers, racecourse owners and bookmakers.
Mr. Allen’s distinguished business career and close ties to government make him the ideal candidate to implement a strategy to bring unity and grow the sport.
Unfortunately this turned out to be impossible.
What appears to have contributed to his downfall was the refusal of smaller racecourse owners, particularly the Arena Racing Company (ARC), which owns 16 courses including Chepstow, Newcastle and Wolverhampton, to support the idea of an independent BHA board.
This is said to have been caused by ARC’s demand that the BHA continue to charge so-called “race day data” (mainly information about non-runners and off time) at a relatively low rate. This data can be sold to bookmakers by racecourses in combination with other information and footage of horse racing, and can be shown at betting shops.
ARC and its allies have already fallen out with bookmakers, particularly Betfred, in an attempt to increase the price of this footage.
Mr. Allen is said to have reluctantly acquiesced to ARC’s demands, alienating others in the process.
The Jockey Club, owner of some of Britain’s most famous courses including Aintree, Newmarket, Epsom and Cheltenham itself, responded to Allen’s resignation by calling on the Racecourse Association (one of the bodies currently represented on the BHA board) to review its corporate governance. Other leading courses, Ascot, Goodwood, Newbury and York, also joined in the call.
A civil war has broken out between the racetrack owners, and it is unclear how their differences can be reconciled. The Jockey Club operates under a Royal Charter, with the King and Queen as co-patrons, and all profits are reinvested into the sport. In contrast, ARC, owned by billionaire brothers David and Simon Ruben, is known for its aggressive commercial activities.
Meanwhile, attendance at racetracks remains below pre-pandemic levels, costs for the horse racing industry are rising, and gambling revenue is falling. This latter point is important because 10% of the profits bookmakers make from horse racing bets are returned to the sport through government levies.
There has never been a time when we need unity more than now. But never before have conflicts of interest within sports been so destructive.
— Ian King
need to know
The Iran war has put a brake on the Bank of England’s next interest rate cut. The central bank was widely expected to cut interest rates in March or April. Economists say it’s best not to count on it now.
Nvidia is backing AI data center startup Nscale, which has reached a valuation of $14.6 billion. UK-based startup Nscale has emerged as a leading player in building AI infrastructure, developing data centers and operating cloud computing services.
Cypriot Foreign Minister Konstantinos Kombos says the regional situation in the Middle East is becoming more unstable. He discussed the regional impact of the US-Iran conflict and the UK and EU responses.
— Holly Ellyatt
very soon
12 March: Speech by Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England.
March 13: UK monthly GDP data
March 19: UK January unemployment rate
