Itās an investment that generates a return.
Mac posted the article.
You get massive returns out of it thatās why.
That could change in the future and so should the subsidies of course.
For millionaire horse owners.
Very important to put money into the pockets of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed and the likes.
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Itād be like giving millions in taxpayer funded handouts to alcohol company CEOs just because we get some excise duties from beer sales. Itās a preposterous use of scarce resources & itās fucking offensive too.
But but but, they provide rural people with pints!?
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Iād welcome an actual proper discussion on it. Say the funding was cut in the morning and the entire industry collapsed. What would you do with the 30,000 people now out of work and the loss of close to 2.5bn from the economy that the investment creates? And where do we get the additional 6m a week to pay jobseekers benefit to the 30,000 people now out of work?
Theyāll earn proper money building houses on the land from the racetracks.
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Could we not convert the pony tracks into whitewater rafting facilities to keep those 30k gambling addiction enablers employed?
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What do the 30,000 work at @Mac. Itās moderately difficult to believe that over 1% of the workforce work at a few racing yards and intermittently at a few dog and horse tracks?
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Thereās close to around 550 odd trainers in Ireland when you factor in Flat, NH and Point to Point. Think its around 10-11k horses in training in the country. Youād have a small number of super yards where youād easily have staff over 100 between stable lads, drivers, race secretaries, jockeys and general workers. The small yards or any yard with more than 10+ horses would have a handful of staff doing all the above. And then the yards in the middle could easily have 40-50 people on the books. Riding out horses and minding them isnāt exactly scalable, it needs people to do it and a lot of 1:1 ratios.
Couldnāt tell you about the dogs side of it but by the time you start totting up the horsey numbers they get big fairly quickly. Obviously not all the jobs are full-time. I donāt think of the staff at tracks as part of the numbers for what its worth. But very few of those roles would be beyond a few hours a week I imagine.
FFS
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And all to fuel an industry that has thousands of families crippled all over the country and lines the pockets of the big bookies 
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Youāre a great lad to shout, roar and stamp your feet but then offer absolutely nothing when asked for it
You must be mistaken again, I was just pointing out the self evident stupidity of your posts.
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If horse racing didnāt exist, the sad thing is that those families would still be crippled and bookies pockets would be lined. Horse racing betting is now a tiny percentage of overall betting turnover. They donāt need the money from it anymore. And problem gamblers will still find a way to squander whatever they have on something else. That might sound harsh but itās the unfortunate truth.
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I would retort that other sports donāt almost solely exist for the purpose of gambling
If gambling was severely cracked down on horse and dog racing would soon cease to exist, I donāt think any other sports are similar
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