Spotlight Sports Group, owner of Racing Post and a leading partner to the global horse racing industry, has today published The Horse Racing Audience Opportunity, a major new cross-industry analysis examining the state of horse racing’s global fanbase and the strategic choices that will define the sport’s growth over the next decade.
The report reviews the current state of audience engagement in racing, identifies where the gap is most significant and provides recommendations for bridging it. To do this, Spotlight Sports Group drew on consumer research from GWI, PwC, Two Circles and Project Beacon and consulted senior figures from some of the world’s most influential racing organisations, including the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Ascot Racecourse, Horse Racing Ireland, the Japan Racing Association, and the Victoria Racing Club. The report also incorporates learnings from outside of the sport, with contributions and insights from Formula 1.
The report addresses five core areas;
- The horse racing product
- The digital ecosystem
- The live experience
- The betting experience
- The structural framework
Each topic has been interrogated with the latest data and insight and includes clear areas of consideration to meet the challenge of attracting and engaging new and emerging audiences in the sport.
Major findings include:
- Horse racing’s current global fanbase stands at between 36-48 million fans. Beyond it lies an addressable opportunity of up to 200 million people who have little to no engagement with the sport and therefore don’t yet have the tools to become a core fan.
- Sports fans aged 25 to 44 are the primary target for casual conversion, while 16 to 24-year-old big-event fans represent racing’s most accessible Gen Z opportunity, a demographic willing to spend more on-site, and place a high premium on shareable live experiences.
- Racing’s digital landscape isn’t yet built for the audiences that it needs to reach. New fans discover sport on mobile, through social and creator-led content – but racing has no single mobile-first entry point for newcomers, and its content remains shaped by insider voices that speak to existing fans.
- When racing is presented as a sport first, commercial outcomes improve. Evidence from the Hong Kong Jockey Club shows that approximately 70 per cent of new fans introduced through the sport, rather than betting, eventually engage with wagering organically.
Sam Houlding, Managing Director, B2B, Spotlight Sports Group, said: “As an industry, we are sitting on one of the richest data environments in global sport. What we need now is the courage and coordination to make it work harder for the next generation of fans. Spotlight Sports Group is already investing on behalf of our partners in global racing data, short-form video and products like SmartView to support first-time customers. The next chapter for racing will be written by the operators, federations and commercial partners willing to build it together.”
The report’s findings are directly reflected in Spotlight Sports Group’s own product development. SmartView, Spotlight Sports Group’s next-generation racecard, was designed specifically to address challenges around the complexity of the betting experience. It is already live with three major operators across more than 30 countries, and since its adoption by BoyleSports, sessions resulting in a bet have increased by eight per cent.
Felicity Barnard, Chief Executive Officer at Ascot Racecourse, said: “At Ascot, we see huge opportunity globally and every major raceday is a chance for us to convert people into lifelong fans. Whether they are here in person or watching from afar, the content we distribute around the live experience is crucial to this. As the report highlights, racing’s digital offering needs to develop and evolve so that it can reach new fans and the insights from this work will help the whole industry do that more deliberately and at greater scale.”
The Horse Racing Audience Opportunity is available to access and download in full HERE. At a pivotal moment for the sport, Spotlight Sports Group hopes its findings will equip racing’s decision-makers with the evidence and the impetus to act, helping to inspire and attract a new generation to the sport.
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