Advent of Alpha Day 15: Games Owners Like to Play

I was in the Betfair hospitality tent on the Tuesday of Cheltenham 2017, enjoying a drink and listening to their invited guests - Paul Nicholls and an assistant to an Irish trainer who I won’t name, to protect the guilty.

An invited guest asked a question about a horse within the stables of the Irish trainer and asked if the price was “a bit too generous”.

“Good grief, no. That horse should not be within 100 miles of Cheltenham. We’ve brought him because the owners want him here, and they’ve paid for that privilege to have a nice day out with an owner’s badge”.

It’s rare you get that sort of candour in the page of the Racing Post, for obvious reasons.

In theory, trainers make entries based on the best estimated targets for the horses in their care and for their abilities.

In theory, planes can’t fly, anaesthetics shouldn’t work, and 95% of the mass of the Universe is missing. In other words, theory can only take you so far.

In reality, a horse might be in that race because the owners want a day out with friends. This is obviously true of the big festivals, but I think I’ve spotted patterns in the past with certain owners just really “liking” a particular course and asking (or perhaps telling), their trainers about a preference. Of course the trainers are trying to be fair to the game, to the horse, to give it a chance, but I don’t think it’s always fully priced in just how far a trainer might feel they have to go to serve their patrons.

I won’t name names, but I think most fans of horse racing can think of certain races or meetings that certain owners would insist on having entries in, even if they didn’t have the class of horse to make a showing. Sometimes that’s commercial interest (breeding owners need to be seen to be at the table), sometimes its bragging rights (Royal Ascot, Kempton on Boxing Day, Cheltenham particularly in March), and sometimes it is proximity to home (Newbury and Chester spring to mind as I write).

That means the market is assuming a fair trier, but it isn’t. And some of those horses can be surprisingly short-priced given the reality of their situation.

In other sports, don’t underestimate owners’ influence either. Does every owner care as much about the FA Cup as every fan? Especially if there is a busy Champions League run to think about?

Most F1 fans know that teams care about constructors’ championship points more than drivers’ championship points (the former directly translate to income, the latter less so), but I expect there are also sponsor interests to think about in F1 and other sports that might at least distract managers and participants, if not directly change their effort.