1) Greyhound racing was only created as a way to make money
2) Greyhound ownership was simply a way of increasing profits.
While those two brutal facts may not be particularly palatable, they are historically accurate and cast a pragmatic perspective on a long established belief among owners and trainers that they are under appreciated or even taken for granted.
My pointing out these observations is not coincidental given last week’s announcements of wholesale prize money increases by the GMG/ARC/Entain tracks, and the recent GBGB practitioners appointment. (Well done Paul!)
Not convinced?
Well how about this perspective: If prize money at your local track was £1,000 to every winner and £200 for the also-rans, how many owners would there be?
The answer is “one” The track.
To understand the logic behind the two statements above, we need to look back to the early days of the sport.
When GRA introduced greyhound racing in 1926 in was an instant phenomenon. I mean ****** huge! It absolutely exploded onto the British consciousness; by 1929 attendances were 15m and rising exponentially (the pre-Covid Premier League figure is around 14.5m).
The thing is – the GRA business model had no necessity for greyhound ownership. The tracks were earning so much money that they could easily afford a self financing model.
But business is business. . . .
The original Belle Vue runners, were all were owned by GRA and were failed coursing dogs. But they were soon producing in-house and in industrial numbers. GRA was a hugely impressive beast in its early days.
The company bred their own dogs at kennels in Surrey and Naas. They employed 60 farmers in Northumberland to rear their dogs and had training complexes dotted around the country, none bigger than their own at Northaw (the Harringay, White City and Stamford Bridge/Clapton runners).
But all tracks ran their own racing kennels. Wimbledon had Burhill, Catford (Keston), Walthamstow (Claverhambury), Wandsworth/Charlton, Park Royal (Sunbury), Romford (Ockendon) and so on.
Quite often the dogs were kept on the same piece of land as the stadium, Wembley being just one example.
In terms of the actual greyhound ownership, it wasn’t long before the promoters realised that they were missing a trick.
Why let a dog run without an owner, if someone was prepared to pay for the experience? (And bring along friends and family to boost our stadium income)
Greyhound ownership was – 100% – a business decision.
Some of the dogs were bought directly from GRA, others were leased. If any owner (and his dog) was particularly unlucky with injury there was a compensation scheme that more than paid the vet’s bill and helped incentivise buying the next runner.
I have records showing kennel charges in greyhound kennels in 1930 were around £1 per week – roughly equivalent to £64 per week now.
Any dog racing, without success, once a week, would just about cover their kennel bill. But a win would sort the whole month.
Looking through our archives for an example, we chose a mid-range London track in 1948, Clapton. Winning prize money varied between £6 and £12 for an average midweek race, the equivalent today of £237/£474. Runner-up £2 (£80), others £1 (£40).
Until the 1970s, most greyhounds were handled by company employed trainers and kennel staff.
Some tracks, like Crayford, didn’t just own every dog, they employed a single trainer to handle all of them. In my lifetime, I remember Portsmouth only employing three trainers at the same time – Puzey, Spencer, Jeffries.
(Five runner fields too – much fun was had by some – allegedly)
But by the early 1970s, as huge numbers of tracks closed, so did the track kennels. Northaw was the last big kennel complex to be sold off just after the loss of White City.
By necessity, the bigger stadia began contracting trainers to operate from their own kennels, and in cases like Burhill and Keston, actually sold the kennels to the trainers for that purpose.
The contracts usually included an annual retainer, based on the size of its kennel strength, plus bonuses for each runner, with stayers and hurdlers paying more than middle distance runners.
The smaller NGRC tracks couldn’t afford to pay retainers and usually acted as feeders for the bigger tracks. The dream was to become a ‘contract trainer’.
Of course, no trainer knew exactly how much their colleagues were earning. The retainers were a private matter though the runner bonuses were widely known and were very lucrative.
(When Walthamstow closed 13 years ago next week, I believe the 475m rate was £25 per runner with £40 for the 640m dogs and hurdlers).
These were payable directly to the trainer and not related to prize money.
But there were often additional payments too. One ex-Stow trainer was reportedly paid a £10K ‘signing on fee’ when he joined his new track! It caused a stink when the story eventually emerged – but it was good business for both parties!
Others received ‘diesel money’ or a variety of other inducements.
One of the first mini shake-ups in the system came early in the new Millennium when the BGRB decided to amend their prize money grants to tracks.
Rather than scale it against tote turnover – which favoured the big tracks – they opted to make it ‘more fair’ by linking it to prize money payments.
The exact logic behind the change was never fully fleshed out. The tracks with the highest totes invariably paid the most prize money anyway.
However, the then Hall Green GM Stephen Rea saw an opportunity. After consulting with his trainers, he elected to dispense with all trainers bonuses and throw the cash into prize money.
Overnight, Hall Green became one of the top prize money payers and their grant shot up.
Eventually other tracks followed and the loophole was soon closed. Whether the increase fed through to higher kennel fees actually generated more cash and resulted in happy owners and trainers, is lost in the mists of history.
It certainly didn’t endure. Inducements slowly crept back in.
As for more significant and long lasting prize money hikes. Only two spring to mind in recent years.
The first followed the New Deal stand-off between the BGRB and the betting industry. In an act of post victory posturing, the six bookmaker owned tracks announced huge overnight hikes (30-40%) in prize money.
The second came as a result of the media rights war. With SIS desperate to recruit tracks not signed up with GMG, the likes of Doncaster, Harlow and Henlow had cash thrown at them.
Four years ago, Henlow’s lowest grade paid £40 to the winner, £15 to the rest. They now pay £100 to the winner, £40 to the rest.
Overall though, prize money has plateaued. Ten years ago, the Hove A10 grade paid £104. It is now £110. The Sunderland A8 paid £108, it now pays £124.
While it is likely that the ‘also-rans’ have performed better, overall increases were long overdue at many tracks.
The other unnoticed result of the media rights skirmish was that even the smallest tracks began issuing contracts based on available runners.
In my three+ decades at the Star, I have never wavered from the ‘business theory which predicted that prize money and benefits for owners and trainers would only ever improve when there was a (trained) greyhound shortage.
Why would a track pay a trainer £20 per runner when another trainer would do it for half the price?
This isn’t a game or a charity. It’s business!
But the ’10 track’ model is also subject to the demand/supply equation. Until there are only ten tracks providing one service, the demand will continue to exceed supply.
Thankfully, both ARC and SIS look to have long term contract obligations to their tracks (or at least some of their tracks) and the ‘demand’ looks solid for the foreseeable future.
But here is the problem – the figures still don’t add up! They don’t even come close!
If we look at the lower grades – which are the most vulnerable but worth as much to a betting shop as an S1, an A8 race at a track like Crayford, pays £110, £45, £40 others.
(This isn’t picking on Crayford, but, as a bookmaker owned track, it would generally be considered to be one of the better payers)
If a dog runs ones a week, and wins one in every six, he/she earns £60 per week.
If a trainer charges £10 per day, that means there is a shortfall of roughly £60 per month.
Now some of that will be offset by the hidden payments. Let’s say the trainer gets £30 runner bonus for each race. Then that (4 x £30) rrepresents a £60 profit, per dog per month.
At least when things are good . . . .
We know, according to Steve Cale’s stats, that the average racing career is 48 races.
So the low grader has the opportunity to earn approximately £2,880 profit for the trainer during its career.
You don’t need me to point out the problem!
When that runner has to be replaced, the new hound will cost . . . ?
We know that it costs, on average, around £1,500-£1,800 to rear a pup to racing age. (The average price at the recent Monmore sale was £1,845).
But that doesn’t include the £200 that the owner has to pay towards the retirement scheme, registrations, at least a month’s kennel bill before the dog is qualified to race, plus any additional kennel and vet bills due to injury.
While a 50% grant towards a career ending hock injury isn’t to be sneered at, it doesn’t with the shoulder tear that requires two months rest.
How can a trainer afford to keep replacing his racing dogs?
So those are the problems, what are the solutions?
The obvious one – the only one – is ££££, and plenty of them.
While certain writers may be enthusing high end increases of 30-35% in prize money, the Entain press release made reference to a 7% overall increase. The ARC and GMG press releases were even less forthcoming in detail.
If money is found, who does it go to?
This particular problem was raised in a recent Zoom when the whole concept of trainers bonuses became an issue.
Do the owners have any rights to know the scale of them?
On balance, I would probably say ‘no’. It is a private contract between the track and the trainer.
But do these under counter payments do more harm than good?
Would that money be better spent as additional prize money.
If the trainer owns the dog, he will be paid it anyway. If the dog has a legitimate owner(s), then the trainer could afford to increase kennel fees.
As trainer’s rep Peter Harnden points out, at least when the new arrival is qualifying or off lame/sick/in season, the trainer would still be getting paid.
On balance, it wouldn’t take long for the trainer to make up for the dog’s career earning potential.
Despite the comments on social media that ‘trainer don’t want owners’, it would surely be short sighted?
When I have tackled Mark Wallis on the subject he couldn’t be clearer. He doesn’t want to own any dogs in his kennel. It doesn’t make financial sense.
And the conclusion?
For those of you who thought that the introduction to this article was just a pointless ramble down a historical cul-de-sac, I hope the journey can now be seen in its wider context.
This is a round trip.
Sooner or later, tracks will have to come up with even more cash.
Will they be in the form of under-the-counter incentives?
While the trainers might want to keep those secret from their owners, I would argue that the biggest beneficiaries would be the tracks.
The widespread knowledge that one or two trainers were being better rewarded would bring the roof down.
Or – would all that money be better spent being funneled into prize money enabling trainers to increase their daily rates?
Because ultimately, keeping greyhounds in weekly training is within sight of being do-able. It is footing the bill for buying new dogs that is the killer.
I accept that attracting new owners has never been more difficult.
A Harringay owner in 1935 wouldn’t have expected his dog to be running at 9.30 on a Tuesday morning.
But there was always a bit of ‘give and take’. For every Saturday night when your dog was on the card at Wimbledon, there was also a ‘school night’ fixture that the owner couldn’t make.
In 2021, fixtures are dictated by ‘betting shop’ meetings with assorted time slots and the bookmaker owned tracks have carved up the contracted weekend meetings.
(Money for old rope, they are the most lucrative meetings of the week anyway)
But Crayford, Towcester and Yarmouth race without the insurance of a media contract on Saturday nights. Oxford will do the same when it opens.
If it means encouraging owners back into the game, would it be worth a few others persevering by re-launching Fridays and Saturdays?
Absolutely – though the issue would be more about dogs than money. How many could spare the runners for a non-contracted meeting?
The only alternative is that tracks buy their own dogs, and then build kennels to keep them. Prices rise and breeding (evenutally) accelerates.
But tracks owning their own dogs? When was that ever good business?
