Horse racing still has legs in the modern sports betting economy

“You couldn’t write a better script!” the exasperated commentator exclaimed after veteran jockey and recovering addict Andrew Fortune rode See It Again to an unlikely win in the grade one race at the World Sports Betting (WSB) Cape Town Met at Hollywood Bets Kenilworth Racecourse.

The previous sentence would’ve been 20% shorter if it were not for the necessity of sponsorship money (for the horse racing industry) from the very entities that are threatening the long-term sustainability of betting on the horses.

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“Hollywood Bets have come in and invested an incredible amount of money to sustain it [the business of horse racing],” Race Coast marketing head Stephen Marshall told Daily Maverick during an interview on race day on Saturday, 31 January.

“Without their investment, these events [WSB Cape Town Met] wouldn’t be on. That’s the brutal truth.”

Get in the pool

As it turns out, even something that is said to be simple as owning a horse and running a race is nie perd koop nie. Marshall says they are incentivising syndicates on the ownership side, and even Race Coast is itself a syndication of sorts.

Race Coast is a newly consummated marriage of Cape Racing and KwaZulu-Natal’s Golden Circle, with a vision to create a sustainable organisation that can help grow horse racing in the country. This consolidation into a coastal duopoly alongside 4Racing on the Highveld is an attempt to find economies of scale in an industry where traditional Tote turnover is decreasing year-on-year.

To combat the Tote decline, Race Coast has waded into the World Pool – a global liquidity hub managed by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. By betting into a singular global pool, local dividends remain stable even when big hitters drop six-figure bets, preventing the local market from crashing.

The frenemy economy

Perhaps the most curious feature of the 2026 racing season is the weird occurrence where direct rivals such as World Sports Betting and Betway are sponsoring races at a venue owned by their competitor, Hollywoodbets.

In the cut-throat world of online betting – where, according to the Softswiss 2026 iGaming trend report, mobile-first crash games and instant-win slots are projected to gobble up 67% of the online market by 2029 – the traditional bookmakers have realised that if the stage (the racecourse) collapses, everyone loses their lead actors.

“There’s a mutual respect,” Marshall said. Hollywoodbets needs the naming-rights revenue from WSB to lessen the capital burden of maintaining the tracks; WSB needs the prestige of the Cape Town Met to maintain its brand and add additional street cred.

The sport of financial kings

While Race Coast is aggressively pushing syndicates and fractional ownership models to get the man on the street into the winner’s circle, the top of the podium remains an ivory fortress.

The success of See It Again is a case study in vertical integration at the elite level. The horse was bred at Drakenstein Stud Farm, the dominant force that clocked R40-million in earnings for the 2024/25 season.

“I came from addiction. […] Nobody wanted me. […] And here I stand on the biggest stage,” the outspoken jockey Fortune said of his Cape Town Met win.

“But it’s amazing how his name is See It Again. Do you know what I mean? And I keep coming back and coming back… but this is my last ride and this was the most amazing ride.”

Both jockey and horse have reached the tail end of their careers but were given a new lease on life – if just for one race – by Snaith Racing.

Good breeding

Drakenstein is owned by Gaynor Rupert (Johann’s wife) and represents the pinnacle of genetic intellectual property, often funnelling its best assets to the powerful Snaith Racing stable (which accounted for the overwhelming majority of race winners at the Met).

Trainer Justin Snaith is candid about the secret sauce: “buying from the right farm”. When you pair the country’s leading breeder (Drakenstein) with its dominant trainer (Snaith) and elite owners such as Nick Jonsson, you create a cycle that is almost impossible for a local syndicate to penetrate.

For an owner such as Jonsson, the ROI isn’t just the R5-million stake; it’s the appreciation of the animal as a genetic asset. While the 2025 Cape Premier Yearling Sale saw averages hit R760,000, the top lots – the ones with the Drakenstein stamp – went for R2-million.

Spectacle as a service

Race Coast’s reinvention of the sport involves turning racecourses (venues that they own and operate) into seven-day-a-week conferencing venues and selling broadcast rights to Australia and the UK. But the heart of the business remains the race day spectacle.

It still needs mass interest to buy the tiered hospitality packages on race day, and bet on the horses. The syndicate model is a shortcut to filling seats.

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“I’ve been part of some syndicates,” Marshall said. “In your heart, you own that horse and you’re shouting it home as loud as if you owned the whole thing.”

Whether the emotional ROI of a 5% share in a syndicate horse is enough to keep the industry afloat against the tide of instant-gratification mobile gaming remains the multimillion-rand question. For now, the sport is surviving on a high-stakes cooperation between sports betting rivals who know that, in this race, they either all finish or no one does. DM