Is Horse Racing A Dying Sport?

I’ve enjoyed horse racing for as long as I can remember, but it’s certainly changed a lot over the years.

Horse racing was once a lot more popular than it is today, and as I was having a conversation about this with a friend recently, he asked me if I thought horse racing was a dying sport.

I’d never heard it put in such blunt terms before, and my instinct was to say that I didn’t think it was dying.

However, his question got me thinking, so I decided to look into it in more depth.

So, is horse racing a dying sport?

Horse racing certainly is not a dying sport, but it has been declining in popularity in a very major way in recent years. However, the sport does still attract many spectators, bettors and fans and the worldwide horse racing community still boasts very large numbers. The question is whether it will survive in the years to come.

Horse racing is a very old sport.

In its modern form, it began to emerge in the 18^th Century, and while it’s changed a lot since then, it is still in some ways victim to these traditional beginnings.

Many animal rights activists in recent years have voiced their opposition to the practice, while those within racing have put forth counterarguments.

Let’s break down why and how support is dwindling, and whether it will ever make a real comeback.

Is the horse racing industry dying?

The industry of horse racing itself is an extremely old and storied one, and you only really need to look at the distribution of racetracks, and the amounts of money involved in the sale of thoroughbred racehorses, to see the power that horse racing had and still has to this day.

Horse racing tracks are everywhere, from America, to the United Kingdom, to Russia, China and Australia.

Horse racing as we know it today was started in the United Kingdom, but has become just as much of an institution everywhere in the world.

But that power and influence is certainly dropping.

In the United States, the industry has lost billions of dollars in recent years.

Both due to raised concerns about animal rights and also about gambling, the industry has come under fire for several different reasons which have driven people away from the sport.

Virtual horse races have become much more popular, that said; races which are randomized and determined by a computer, involving no actual horses.

One of the main reasons critics of horse racing have become more vocal in recent decades is the issue of animal rights.

Many think that horse racing is cruel, so let’s look at why they think that.

Is horse racing a cruel sport?

Many would argue that horse racing, in general, puts tremendous and unnecessary stress on the horses.

They have to wear a lot of equipment on their faces (particularly the tongue tie) which causes them a lot of discomfort, and then they are required to perform at their best under these stressful conditions.

Furthermore, the sport has not been free of corruption and abuse which can cause serious health problems for the horse (and not to mention the jockeys).

Horses are frequently injured during races, and there is often little that can be done for the injured horse. If it is not cost effective to treat the horse, it will simply be euthanised in some cases.

Horse racing, especially in those races involving the most money, then, is a potentially very dangerous sport for the horse.

If something goes wrong, it could mean death for the horse.

The jockeys, too, have a reputation for bad practices which have sparked many debates about the safety of their jobs.

Though its less common now, jockeys intentionally vomiting before races to lower their weight was such a problem that bowls for this very purpose were once placed in jockey changing rooms.

So, many of these health concerns have sparked debates about the safety and ethicality of horse racing, which has in a lot of ways driven its decline.

That said, just how popular is horse racing in the present day?

Is horse racing a popular sport?

While in some places we can say its strongly declining in popularity and while we can say, overall, that it’s becoming less popular, this must still be understood for the relativism that it is.

For centuries, horse racing was one of the most popular spectator sports in the world.

Despite that it’s been declining for years in some places, it still holds this place as one of the most popular since it was so astronomically popular to begin with.

In other words, it has a very long way to fall.

In the United Kingdom, horse racing is second only to soccer in popularity.

It’s also extremely popular in many European countries like France and Germany.

Here in the U.S., it’s still popular, but horses are just less relevant to the American mythos at this point; everything shifted to a focus on cars in the 20^th Century.

So, whether for good or ill, it can certainly be said that the popularity of horse racing has been dwindling in recent times and that trend continues today.

It is also at different levels of popularity at different parts of the world, but we can certainly say that in the United States, the popularity of horse racing has considerably fallen off over the years.

There’s still a huge amount of money in the industry but I think we can expect that to continue to trend downwards.