Advertising ban presents a major headache for horse racing

The long-awaited Gambling Regulation Bill has finally passed through all stages in the Dáil and is set to come into law in the coming weeks.

The new legislation is wide-ranging and much needed, but presents more problems than solutions for horse racing.

The big ticket headache for horse racing is the ban on gambling advertising between the hours of 05:30 and 21:00 each day.

This applies to all licensed betting operators in the State and prohibits them from advertising “with an audio-visual on-demand media service, an on-demand sound service or a broadcaster during these hours.”

From a horse racing perspective this basically means that RTÉ, TG4, RacingTV, ITV Racing and Sky Sports Racing cannot show any gambling ads to an Irish audience at any time during live coverage of the sport.

Gambling advertising revenue supports all of the above horse racing programming and this ban effectively makes the broadcasting of the sport in Ireland financially unviable for these providers.

It could be argued that all aspects of horse racing have become far too reliant on gambling related revenues, but unfortunately that is the position the sport now finds itself in.

Because of this reliance Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) had looked for an exemption for the sport when it came to the advertising ban, but their submissions fell on deaf ears in Government circles. The fact that the HRI is a semi-state body funded by the same Government may not have helped their position in those failed negotiations, but I suppose we will never know the impact that relationship had in this regard.

What we do know is that HRI must now try and broker some sort of arrangement whereby horse racing in Ireland remains a sport covered by mainstream broadcasters. The most obvious way this will happen is if HRI itself, and possibly aided by the individual racecourses and/or other sectors of the industry, stump up the shortfall lost by gambling advertising to the broadcasters.

This presents a real problem for HRI as a very large proportion of its annual budget is currently spent on boosting prize money. 62% of all prize money in Irish racing comes directly from HRI.

HRI considers prize money to be one of the cornerstones for a successful industry in Ireland. “In simple terms a competitive prize money environment attracts owners from around Ireland and internationally, which in turn creates demand for horses in training and significant rural employment.” The last thing HRI will want to do is to divert money from prize money to support TV coverage of the sport, but that is the dilemma it is now faced with.

The new Gambling Regulations with regards to gambling advertising are well intentioned and go far beyond the watershed ban on broadcasters. There are new rules in relation to the types of promotions that are acceptable and who can receive them, and the primary focus is on deterring children from being exposed to the potential harm of gambling, but I wonder how much of a difference all this will make.

It is mainstream broadcasters that have been singled out for the watershed ban on gambling advertising, but the new legislation takes into account that nowadays people consume content and view advertising in a wide variety of ways. Most of us are familiar with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and possibly Telegram,TikTok and SnapChat, but there are many more Social Media platforms and that is before you consider the advertising displayed on video games and games apps on your phone, nevermind Google search results which are also filled with advertisements and the millions of websites you can access through the internet. Then there is direct marketing to individuals through email and text notifications.

Imagine trying to police all that? And even if the new Gambling Regulators do spot something somewhere that contravenes the law it could be virtually impossible to secure a conviction or even remove the content unless the gambling operator being promoted is licensed in Ireland or the source of the content originates here.

Virtually all the main betting companies operating in Ireland at the moment are already licensed in the UK and do already adhere to a strict code of conduct when it comes to their advertising policies. It is the ones that choose to remain outside that net that will pose the greatest problems for the new regulators.

The legislation also includes regulations whereby licensed operators will be required to pay a percentage of their turnover as a contribution to a “Social Impact Fund.” This fund is to be used in a variety of ways to help reduce or eliminate compulsive and excessive gambling. It seems to me that any company or individual that is making their money from gambling derived revenue should also have an obligation to make a contribution to this fund and rather just the licensees.

Changing the subject, last week’s belated disqualification of Alphonse Le Grande from the Cesarewitch by the Whip Review Committee continues to cause controversy. Connections of the horse have now lodged an appeal against the decision which included a draconian 28-day ban for apprentice jockey Jamie Powell.

Losing such a high profile and valuable race was surely a sufficient penalty for Powell without throwing him totally under the bus with such a long ban. According to the British Horseracing Authority the length of Powell’s ban is directly linked to the fact that this was a Class 2 contest with a prize fund of more than £150,000. You might expect the length of the ban to go down as the importance of the race goes up, rather than the other way around, as the penalty of losing a major race is such a significant sanction.

When Alex Edwards became the first rider to fall foul of these rules in a minor event at Market Rasen last November he received a 24-day ban for hitting his mount 9 times more than the permitted limit and lost his winning prize money percentage of around £600. Jamie Powell hit his mount only four times over the limit, but received a longer ban simply because his offence occurred in a higher profile race and he lost out on a payday of approximately £9,000.

Just because more people see something shouldn’t make it any more wrong.