Ed Grimshaw

Fifty years studying form. Racing analytics, probability models & systems thinking on UK racing governance. Racing should own its own market.

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

Dear @BHAHorseracing,

You rushed to defend the fruit machine. Racing never needed it.
Shops: down a third, 9,000 to 5,825.
Levy: up, £65m to £108m.
Punters get restricted, closed, funds locked and an auto-email is all you get.

We ARE your customers. Who are you working for? #OpenLetter #HorseRacing #Budget2026 @Macbet1972 @AtTheRaces

https://t.co/jvBPm6ky6D

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

@a9d00c551ed0474 Is racing worse? Jockey penalties for use of the whip seems disproportionate. If trainers are sponsored by bookmakers isn't that a conflict integrity wise?

@PJAOfficial

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

A stable employee paid £1,950 for inside information: two years out of the sport. A trainer found to have misled the BHA over a £42,033 payment: a £6,000 fine.

Does the BHA penalise everyone equally, or does it depend on who you are? Are jockeys, trainers, and racecourses treated proportionately, or is there a hierarchy and underlying bias from the BHA in its governance of the sport?

#BritishRacing #horseracing @BHAHorseracing @RacehorseOwners @NTFnews @PJAOfficial

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

That's the bit that rarely gets said out loud. If smaller firms can't negotiate, the price is set by whoever owns the pictures, not by the market. Would you back the rates being published, so punters can see how much of the take goes on pictures? My estimate is double to the levy 20%

@RacingPost

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

@RacingPost @MrTimeform @AKBets

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

Every market has a man selling “genuine Swiss” watches from the back of a Transit, and every racecourse bar has a punter who calls himself a Doctor of Form, self-awarded after a good Saturday at Haydock. Britain loves a name that works harder than the thing behind it. On Monday the habit reached gambling policy.

https://t.co/UMHzFU8qHu

@theTDN @thebedfordfox @TheSun

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

On any market stall, the handbag with one letter wrong carries a sticker saying “replica”. A name that sounds as if it should have a coat of arms confers no authority. Publish the funders and the shareholders. And explain why not one member was picked for having stood in the rain at Carlisle.
@BHAHorseracing @NTFnews
https://t.co/UMHzFU8qHu

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

The statutory levy was sold as money to cut gambling harm. Some groups are now reported to be considering a judicial review of how the prevention pot is being handed out. The prior question is whether anyone can show the spending works.

In April, OHID provisionally allocated £25.4m to 33 organisations. Its updated list last week shows £39.7m to 40, about £14m more, published after a period of legal challenges. No reason for the increase has been given.

One of the later awards is £2.7m to Gamban. It was excluded in April as a limited company and is now funded, reportedly as a social enterprise. OHID has not publicly explained what changed.

No full impact assessment was produced for the Gambling Levy Regulations 2025. OHID says it is still building the evidence base on what works in prevention. NICE found no economic evidence on interventions to improve access to gambling treatment.

Before the next fight over who gets the money, will OHID publish the scores, and the evidence that this spending reduces harm?

@OHID @GamRegGB @GambleWithLives @BetGameCouncil @SMFthinktank @HarryStewartMo1

[NEXT.io @nextdotio]

Groups mull judicial review after latest statutory levy funding award:

An upcoming legal challenge will argue the commissioning of gambling harms funds should be taken away from OHID .

Read More ⬇️ 
https://t.co/qlAOc6DY5I

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

The figures were there back at the baseline. I'm talking about the movement on the baseline, the GGY, not the net profit. There's still a net profit in there, which I've calculated previously. It's debatable whether the media rights are extortionate or simply poor negotiation on the part of the bookmakers. Those were around at the baseline 2018/19, as was the levy. This is the movement and what's been taken from punters.

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

Betting on British racing is down 37.5% since 2018/19, after inflation. Bookmakers' profit from racing is up 3.6%. How can both be true?
Bookmakers pay a levy of 10% of their racing profit, meaning stakes minus winnings paid out. Multiply the levy by ten and you get roughly what they make from racing. Divide that by total stakes and you get what they keep from every £100 bet.
In 2018/19 they kept £5.86 of every £100. Now it's £9.71.

At the old £5.86, today's smaller betting would earn them about £657m. The levy points to about £1,089m. That £432m difference is what the wider margin is worth on today's betting.
So a third less betting, and much the same profit. Customer limits, prices, promotions and results all play a part. Only the bookmakers' own figures can show how much each contributes, and they should publish them.
Which do you think matters most?

#horseracingtips #HorseRacing @RacingPost @japantimes @RacehorseOwners @NTFnews @BHAHorseracing

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

Every great act eventually acquires a tribute band: same songs, similar wigs, and a name just close enough that your aunt books tickets by mistake. On Monday, Britain’s gambling regulator got one.

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

https://t.co/UMHzFU8qHu

The pattern: praise racing, tax the bookmakers who fund it, then express surprise when they stop. A carve-out from a commission majority-owned by the co-author of the £100 cap is not a lifeboat. It is a complimentary deckchair.

@GamRegGB @AKBets @BetGameCouncil @geoffbanksbet #horseracingtips @BHAHorseracing @NTFnews #GamblingX

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

Of eight commissioners, three have a documented harm-reduction record, one runs a racecourse, and four have no gambling record that can be found.
Nobody trades a book, runs an exchange or has been limited by one. It is a medical board of three epidemiologists, a hospital landlord and four distinguished people from neighbouring departments.

The patient, the pharmacist and the bookmaker’s actuary are not in the room ?

@GamRegGB @RacingPost #HorseRacing @BHAHorseracing @guardian

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

@nothingsoffpod @geoffbanksbet Blockers are no different than putting cigarettes on the top shelf. Solves nothing

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

@AKBets @VaughanLewis1 There's still £400m+ taken out of the market using various tools to bolster profits and the requests for data are not solely around affordability

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

Betting per race, 2020–25:

Bookmakers promoting Horseracing, you are joking!

🇯🇵 Japan +20%
🇮🇪 Ireland +16% (Tote only)
🇫🇷 France +2%
🇬🇧 Britain −36%

Britain is the only one in sustained decline. Even from 2021, after the Covid bump, it's down a fifth.

That's online turnover per BHA race, so read it as the direction rather than an exact figure.
Field sizes, prices, account restrictions, too many fixtures: what's driving it? To blame the black market would do nothing to create a healthy one.

#HorseRacing #RacingData @RacingPost @BetGameCouncil

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

@jamesaknight Both fair, and I should have had them on the list. I'd put affordability checks first.

On media rights, do you think the deals pushed bookmakers to widen margins on racing, or mainly to steer customers towards products that pay racing nothing?

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

@AKBets @VaughanLewis1 Fair point. Stake factoring and affordability checks aren't the same thing, and I ran them together. Both cut what gets bet on racing, though, whoever started them.

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

They're using every other tool in the book to improve profit and, at the same time, drop turnover. It's not just Kenny Alexander.

A Guardian investigation reported a Paddy Power staff manual telling staff to restrict customers who “look like bad business”. It also described a menu of stake factors: new accounts at 1.0, unprofitable customers at 0.3 and “warm” customers at 0.1. Paddy Power said its safer gambling checks always override stake-factoring decisions

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

@AKBets @VaughanLewis1 Wrong about bookmakers supporting affordability ?

[Ed Grimshaw @mindmodeller]

I agree. Affordability checks are a hopeless tool, but it's a shame that the bookmaking industry, particularly the large ones, wanted to use them to their advantage.

It's the same bookmakers that supported them, Vaughan. Perhaps we wouldn't be in this position had Flutter and Entain not supported them in the first place, and then Grainne Hurst not gone to town with them.