In response to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund, the Government of Jamaica had to finalise arrangements for the privatisation of the promotion of live horse racing in Jamaica.

To this end, a comprehensive document had to be prepared to serve as the enforceable basis for a 2016 divestment agreement outlining the criteria for financial viability and social or economic contribution.

The preferred bidder of two, Supreme Ventures Limited(SVL), the major player in the Jamaican gaming industry market, founded promoting company Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL), which became operational on March 7, 2017. This, under a 30-year lease arrangement, to assume responsibility for rescuing the floundering racing industry.

This divestment agreement includes a large number of deliverables, many of which have not been implemented. The outstanding concerns were itemised by Andrew Azar, Chairman of the Thoroughbred Owners & Breeders Association (TOBA), in a letter to the Jamaica Racing Commission(JRC) Project Management Committee.

As it relates to what remains to be completed eight years and eight months later, this column is more interested in addressing the question of whether or not SVREL could have generated the sufficiency of profits to fund the capital expenditure required. Effectively, the promotion of live horse racing has monopoly status but fails to be profitable with the product delivered in a claiming system format.

Truth be told, SVREL has had to work with a product that has no chance of being commercially viable. For the 25 years of operating a claiming system before divestment, most of the principals of the TOBA and the two Trainers Associations — Jamaica Trainers Association (JTRA) and the United Racehorse Trainers Association of Jamaica (URTAJ) — could not grasp what a gaming product needs to be in order to be viable commercially. They are still of the view that, delivered in a claiming system, a racing product can be profitable enough to generate purse increases under the 06.8 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate of the Agreement.

Rightly, from the outset, the main focus of SVREL was on the high-pressure salesmanship of the racing product. Doubling the points of sale to over 120 outlets and adding more betting options. The withholding of portions of dividends on certain exotic bets, allowing for the accumulation of jackpots to have more substantial pools driving additional wagering, was instantly popular on selected race days selected for mandatory payouts.

Despite these efforts of SVREL, this is what the claiming system racing product has delivered over the last six years. Financial statements from 2019 register cumulative losses of over a billion dollars, culminating in $385 million for 2024. The operating expenses of promoting local racing either exceed or fall short of the budgeted revenue year after year, rendering the promoting company almost entirely dependent on simulcast wagering to remain operational.

Coming from a Caymanas Track Limited (CPL) budgeted loss of $149 million in 2012, followed by $98 million in 2013, and cash injections that accumulated to US$40 million by 2016, including a tax debt write-off of JA$1.2 billion, the fact is that SVREL inherited a questionable “going concern” as stated by auditors of the 2012&13CPL Financial Reports.

It needs to be understood that the failed racing product is formatted in a claiming system model. Provably, it has shown no chance of profitability nearly 33 years after succeeding the handicap system. This now constitutes a predictable existential threat to the industry. TOBA and URTAJ need to acknowledge this fact, especially now that the US Jockey Club has officially recognised the merits of and has implemented a rating methodology similar to the British Horseracing Authority’s classification for a handicapping system effective October 24, 2025. Promoting horse racing in a claiming system is a 32-year-old self-inflicted wound in Jamaica, but in the United States, it has existed since 1930.

Here is a summary of the reasons for the failure of the claiming system. Firstly, it was established on two outrightly false premises that the flourishing racing product of 33 years at an average of 10 per cent annual growth or 300 per cent cumulatively under the handicap system was being subjected to race-fixing and lacked integrity. Then secondly, the trading of race horses could be a viable economic activity, but over time, many big spenders found this an expensive fantasy.

With respect to the claiming system product itself, it is complicated and therefore fails to produce timely growth in the expansive sports betting market. Then, with the horse population originally divided into 25 categories, with races to be projected for sprinting and longer distances, smaller field sizes were guaranteed. Inferior horses conceding handicap weight to superior ones led to a record 389 odds-on favourites in 755 races in 2024, extending the established 32-year pattern.

This column continues to call on the boards and executives of TOBA and URTAJ to explain their affinity to the failed claiming system since profitability and purse increases are mutually exclusive and cannot coexist. These stakeholders simply refuse to accept the fact that the classification handicapping method to equalise form is the most significant positive factor impacting wagering.

In the meantime, stakeholders should undertake an exercise of Googling “handicap horse racing” to find out why a claiming system is not in any of the jurisdictions listed here and elsewhere in the world: Guyana, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, Dubai, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.