While the plans around the Racing League were certainly novel, the concept failed to really catch on and connect with the wider horseracing public with some critics calling it “contrived nonsense”, while the format also struggled to gain substantial numbers.

It also wasn’t just a conceptual failure, but a significant financial drain as well with approximately £5 million being accumulated in debt.

The idea initially was for it to emulate Formula 1’s successful ‘Drive To Survive’, however the concept lacked the organic fanbase that would have helped to sustain the significant financial overheads. Because the business model relied heavily on corporate sponsorship, team branding rights and huge prize money injections, the problem was that it failed to draw in the type of top-tier participants that it had planned to.

Furthermore, the hardcore racing community appeared to heavily dislike it, especially the jockeys, trainers and owners, many of whom thought the idea nonsensical and gimmicky with jockeys having to wear neon coloured silks instead of traditional ones.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it only featured lower-tier handicap horses at lower profile tracks, such as the all-weather circuits of Wolverhampton and Southwell, while critics also frequently mentioned that “Class 5 is Class 5 no matter the branding”. Essentially it seemed that this was a poor product wrapped in fancy paper with many really not liking it.

Running from 2021 to 2024, prior to Arena Racing Company (ARC) scrapping the concept, in its first year, there were 12 teams involved, all of which were corporate-sponsored and included the likes’ of talkSPORT and eToro Racing.

However, this corporate structure experienced almost immediate failure because the fans and punters had essentially zero affinity to these companies. Because of this and, in an attempt to win fans back, the teams were then split into teams based on regions (Wales & The West, London & The South etc) – seven in total for 2022 and beyond.

The idea here was to attempt to copy the tribalism factor that you have in football, but pure racing enthusiasts rejected the idea due to the elements of artificiality.

All in all, although the team element of the competition struggled to capture an audience, it was essentially dominated individually by jockey Saffie Osborne who won three consecutive titles and claimed the £20,000 prize money for jockeys each time.

Perhaps where it started to border on ridiculousness was that the competition started to bring in rules that were unheard of in British racing that included ‘The Joker’ card. The theory behind this was that it let team managers double their points in a particular race (one per night).

So that the team standings kept competitive, points were awarded as far down as 10th place; 25 points for the winner and 18 points for second with one point awarded for finishing in 10th.

Ultimately, the identity crisis of the concept killed it with traditional punters seeming to despise the corporate/regional gimmickry while casual fans appeared to show little interest in travelling to all-weather tracks during summer evenings.

Friday Night Live

Despite this though, it appears that the ARC have reallocated the prize funds into a new project, labelled “Friday Night Live”.

The plan for this is for it to be a high energy series, filmed under the lights with competitive handicaps being combined with a “dance music culture and party like atmosphere”.

As such, it is understood this will specifically target 18 to 25 year olds as well as students who wouldn’t usually consider horseracing their primary sport in a bid to not only help to raise its profile but also attract another demographic.

It is a program that is planned to be held during the winter months of January through to March on ARC’s all-weather tracks.

In doing this, attendees will get a unique experience; essentially a night out, with cheap £10 tickets, DJs, free student transport and some racing action thrown in, the hope being that this attracts a new type of crowd that doesn’t know anything about racing and wants a different kind of night out.

Instead of regional teams, horses will race under the owners’ silks and actual names, while there will still be prize money on offer for those that perform well across the duration of the designated meetings.

While this is still really in development mode, time will tell as to whether this will be successful. The last model obviously failed, though conversely, a similar one has gone down well in the US, launched by Greg Maffei where there has been significant interest and demand.

Maffei, who was instrumental in helping to raise F1’s profile revealed:  “There’s enormous interest, but some of it’s episodic and we’re trying to capture both the fan interest that’s in big events like Kentucky Derby and bring continuity across the season, with continued interest.”