A professional punter’s turnover on Australian racing has fallen by 80 per cent.
And yet, I reckon the Australian racing product is in outstanding shape. Our major carnivals still capture enormous attention, the depth of our racing is strong, and there’s an incredible appetite for the sport when we give people a reason to engage with it.
Both of those things are true. That contradiction is the whole problem.
Australian racing is approaching an important juncture on wagering, and decisions made over the next few years will matter well beyond the next budget cycle or season. Gambling advertising reforms come into effect from January 1, 2027, and Principal Racing Authorities are forecasting turnover declines of around 10 per cent as a consequence.
Think about what a corresponding 10 per cent cut in prizemoney would mean right now to owners, breeders, trainers, jockeys, participation and employment.
Wagering and racing’s financial health are intrinsically linked. If turnover falls materially and stays down, the impact has to be felt somewhere.
And let’s be honest about what accepting that forecast decline would actually mean. If we treat a 10 per cent turnover hit as the cost of doing business, that’s not standing still, that’s managed decline.
Racing’s objective shouldn’t simply be to protect what we have. We should be setting a loftier goal than hanging onto the audience we’ve got: growing this industry, genuinely bigger, not just less diminished.
It extends well beyond prizemoney too. Wagering revenue helps fund racecourses, infrastructure and the tens of thousands of people who earn a living from racing, and even much of the industry’s media-rights revenue is tied to wagering performance rather than simply being a fixed fee.
This isn’t peripheral to punters or bookmakers. It goes to racing’s financial health, and everyone who relies on it.
At the same time, wagering operators are already dealing with a tougher operating environment, and state budget pressures aren’t going to make that easier.
Racing is nothing without punters, and at a time like this we need to listen more closely than ever to our number one customer: The punter.
Racing rightly spends a lot of time listening to owners, trainers, jockeys, breeders and clubs. They’re critical participants with legitimate needs, but I’ve seen firsthand, including during my time as a PRA executive, that it’s often whoever makes the most noise in the room who wins the argument, not necessarily whoever has the strongest claim.
Many stakeholders simply don’t understand the wagering landscape or appreciate that it’s an elastic market. It isn’t a given that punters will continue to fund the sport at the same level regardless of the product put in front of them.
Punters don’t have the same organised voice. They’re racing’s biggest cohort and wagering provides the financial engine of the industry, but nobody’s walking into racing headquarters on their behalf demanding action.
Instead, they cast their vote with their wallet.
This week I moderated a panel on exactly this at Backing The Punt, where panellists captured the real challenges facing punters extremely well. One of them was the punter I mentioned at the start: professional punter Kingsley Bartholomew.
Professional punters are only one part of this, and their experience shouldn’t be confused with the recreational customer having $50 or $100 worth of bets on a Saturday.
But the underlying question applies equally to both.
Are we making betting on Australian racing more or less attractive?
Market percentages can sound like something only sophisticated punters care about, and minimum bet limits can look like a dispute between punters and bookmakers, but both ultimately come back to the same thing: what a bet is worth to the person making it.
This isn’t new. Margins have been climbing for years, tracking the introduction and subsequent increases in state-based Point of Consumption Tax (PoCT) and other costs through the wagering supply chain.
Punters and operators haven’t been hit just once by PoCT, either. Victoria’s rate alone has already gone from 8 per cent to 10, and now sits at 15. Those costs land somewhere, and much of the burden ultimately comes back to the customer through higher overrounds, reduced generosity or a lesser product.
A sophisticated punter recognises that immediately. A recreational punter probably doesn’t calculate market percentages before having a bet, but they don’t need to understand the mechanics to feel the impact.
Their $100 simply doesn’t last as long as it once did.
This isn’t an argument that every decision should favour punters. Bookmakers and racing authorities have their own legitimate financial pressures too, but the health of the wagering customer needs to sit much closer to the centre of racing’s decision-making.
If we’re serious about what this industry looks like in 25 years, we need to properly understand what makes someone want to bet on racing, what keeps them engaged, what represents value to them and, just as importantly, what eventually makes them decide it’s no longer worth their time or money.
But making racing more attractive to bet on is only half the equation. We also need to create the next generation of people who want to bet on it.
That question extends beyond wagering products.
Bella Anderson, another panellist, is at Victorian racecourses several times a week creating content that promotes racing to exactly the audience the industry wants, yet works without any meaningful accreditation, mostly from public areas of the track.
Other sports have moved in the opposite direction, giving creators access in recognition of the audiences they can reach. The NRL and AFL now issue media passes to podcasters and TikTok creators, not just traditional journalists.
Racing should be doing the same, especially given how tightly much of its media revenue is bound to wagering. Growing the audience is how we create tomorrow’s customers.
To their credit, I saw one PRA track Bella down after the panel to roll out the welcome mat should she want to head interstate.
There’s also a challenge that can’t be ignored.
State governments under severe fiscal pressure look to wagering taxation as a lever, and there’s a real risk PoCT gets treated as a cash cow rather than a tax with real behavioural consequences.
Every extra cost risks shrinking the base being taxed.
Demand for betting on racing is elastic, and competition for the punter’s dollar is fierce, from sports betting to every other form of entertainment. Push the wagering product too far and customers have alternatives: bet less, spend elsewhere or look offshore.
That last option should concern everyone in racing.
There’s a lesson in what has happened with tobacco. The products and policy issues are very different, but the unintended consequence is relevant: push the price of a legal, regulated product high enough and a black market can flourish.
Wagering risks heading down a similar path.
Offshore leakage means less consumer protection, less government revenue, and wagering on Australian racing that funds nothing at all.
Once a customer walks away, professional or recreational, racing doesn’t just lose today’s turnover. It potentially loses someone who might have stayed engaged and kept funding the sport for decades.
Growing the industry, rather than just protecting it, means looking beyond the next 12 months and asking a more important question: what decisions can we make today that will leave Australian racing healthier in 10, 20 and 30 years?
Sometimes the answers will be uncomfortable. They might involve short-term pain or an upset stakeholder, but leadership isn’t just about this year’s budget or shoring up your seat.
The people running racing are custodians of it. Good ones want to hand the sport on in better shape than they found it, even if some of the benefits land after their own tenure.
The fundamental product is terrific, and we aren’t starting from weakness. We have outstanding racing, passionate participants, enormous wagering engagement and a sport still embedded in Australian culture.
That’s why I’m optimistic. Look at the UK, wrestling with its own funding crisis, and plenty there would envy where we sit. We shouldn’t take that position for granted.
The job now is keeping the ecosystem healthy and reading the warning signs early enough that we don’t spend the next decade giving that advantage away.
There’s real change coming: advertising reform, taxation, rising costs, offshore leakage and changing media habits. We can simply defend against those forces, or use them as a catalyst to build a wagering ecosystem capable of growing the game.
None of this is a job for racing alone.
Racing, wagering operators, regulators and media all have a role in answering the same question: what do we need to do differently so people still want to bet on this sport in 25 years?
I’ve sat in enough of those rooms, across a PRA and a broadcaster, to know that punters’ interests are too often misread or quietly pushed down the priority list, behind participant demands, revenue targets or the next regulatory challenge.
That has to change.
The punter might not be the loudest voice in the room, but ultimately they’re the customer funding the show.
Australian racing has a terrific product. The challenge now is making sure we’re not slowly making it harder for people to want to bet on it.
