Goodwood and York propose sweeping reform of British racing governance

Goodwood and York have put forward the sharpest blueprint yet for overhauling British racing’s power structure, arguing that the sport has reached an “inflection point” and can no longer afford to drift through another round of half-measures. Their June 2026 proposal says the industry’s existing model has failed to deliver meaningful change, even though British racing generates more than £4 billion a year for the UK economy.

At the heart of the plan is a wholesale reset of who controls what. Goodwood and York want the Racecourse Association reduced to a pure trade body focused on standards, services and lobbying, while the British Horseracing Authority would be run by a stronger independent board with the racecourse block vote removed. They also want the next BHA chair to operate under a clear written mandate, ending the ambiguity that has dogged recent leadership changes.

The proposal goes further by tearing up the BHA’s commercial committee and replacing it with three specialist panels for Elite Flat, Foundation Flat and Jump racing. Goodwood and York say the current committee structure forces different parts of the sport into compromise, with participants negotiating on behalf of their own organisations while decisions about fixtures, programming and data rights get diluted. In their view, elite Flat racing should be planned as one coherent calendar rather than a patchwork of competing meetings fighting for space and status.

The intervention lands after a bruising few months. Lord Charles Allen resigned as BHA chair in March 2026 after about six months in the role, and Ascot said in May that it would leave the RCA at the end of 2026 unless its governance concerns were resolved. The RCA is now running a 12-week governance review, while a March letter from Ascot, Goodwood, The Jockey Club, Newbury and York had already demanded a reform proposal by the end of April.

The stakes are enormous because the sport’s governance map is split across competing ownership interests. The RCA represents almost all of Britain’s 59 racecourses, but The Jockey Club owns 15 tracks, Arena Racing Company owns 16, and the rest are independently owned. The Jockey Club, founded in 1752, once shaped British racing by consent for generations. Goodwood and York are arguing that the modern version of that arrangement has become too fractured to protect the sport’s biggest meetings, from the marquee summer fixtures at Goodwood and York to the commercial decisions that set the tone for the whole calendar.