Spotlight Sports Group Report Reveals An Untapped Global Horse Racing Audience Opportunity Of Nearly 200 Million Fans

Published today by Spotlight Sports Group, The Horse Racing Audience Opportunity report draws on global consumer data and senior industry voices to map the sport’s untapped audience while devising a practical roadmap for growth.

ACCESS THE REPORT HERE

LONDON, 3 JUNE 2026 – 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;

1. The horse racing product
2. The digital ecosystem
3. The live experience
4. The betting experience
5. 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 of B2B at 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.

Notes to editors:
For any questions, please contact alex.cottee@spotlightsportsgroup.com

Data sources referenced in this release include:

• GWI Global Audience Data (2026)
• PwC Fan Survey
• Two Circles racecourse data
• Statista (2025)
• Audiense (2026)
• Project Beacon, British Horseracing Authority (BHA)

Stakeholder consultations were conducted with senior representatives from The Hong Kong Jockey Club, Ascot Racecourse, Victoria Racing Club, Japan Racing Association, Horse Racing Ireland, Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia, France Galop, 1/ST Group, Formula 1 and the Professional Fighters League.

Report foreword from Mark Renshaw, Chief Executive Officer of Spotlight Sports Group.

Horse racing is one of the oldest and most compelling sports on earth. That’s a fact.
When experienced live, it’s unlike almost anything else. And yet, for too long, our industry has taken comfort in what has always been, rather than asking the necessary questions about what comes next. This report asks those questions, answering them with tangible data and a genuine cause for optimism.

What stands between racing and its audience isn’t the product’s quality. The racing itself remains extraordinary. What stands in the way is complexity and a failure to tell our own story in a language new fans can understand and connect with.

At Spotlight Sports Group, we’ve spent decades building the data infrastructure and content products that sit at the heart of racing’s global ecosystem. Racing Post remains the sport’s most comprehensive information platform, and through products like SmartView we are actively working to lower the barriers to entry for new audiences. But data and technology alone are not enough. The whole industry needs to move together.

Racing has everything it needs to write its own version of that story. What it needs now is the collective will to put the modern-day audience first on a global scale.

We hope this report serves as a catalyst for that conversation – and ultimately, for the subsequent action that follows.

About Spotlight Sports Group
Spotlight Sports Group is a global media and technology company with a clear purpose, to set the standard for trusted, customer driven experiences across global racing and sports betting. Guided by our mission to create experiences that fans love, we combine more than 40 years of heritage with bold innovation to deliver award winning content, data and digital products. With over 400 employees worldwide, our portfolio includes Racing Post, Pickswise, myracing and Free Super Tips, as well as the international marketing agency ICS digital and ICS translate. Together, we partner with leading operators, racing organisations, affiliates and media groups to power growth and engagement across the industry.