Amid general turmoil for British racing as a whole, the senior executive at the nation’s premier venue is keen to accentuate the positive
There are, of course, two sides to every story. Begin a discussion about the current state of British racing, and many viewpoints will be so relentlessly glass-half-empty it would be enough to drive you to drink.
The sport is entertaining a problematic future, it’s true. Yet the other side of the story belongs to those whose glass is half-full, who see opportunities and solutions, who accentuate the positive. Enter stage left Felicity Barnard, the chief executive of Ascot racecourse, whose effervescence lends a glass half-full the impression that it actually runneth over.
This is easy to do, you might say, when your realm is Ascot, one of the most famous racecourses in the world, a bright fiery beacon of all that is best in the game, with plenty of money for insulation against stormy forecasts – last year Ascot reported record turnover of £113 million and pre-tax profits of £8.4m. Barnard acknowledges your cynicism, but fashions that into a wider commitment rather than a local complacency.
“It’s true that Ascot has a lot of advantages, we have the ‘brand’ of Royal Ascot, we have 300 years of history on our side,” she says. “We’re not in this fortunate position just because we’re really clever.
Responsibility to racing
“So it’s not okay just to say ‘we’re all right Jack’, we have to stand shoulder to shoulder with the sport as a whole, we have a responsibility to racing and we’re in a good position to give it our support.”
Barnard, 42, has the vigour and enthusiasm of the new broom, having stepped up from the role of deputy CEO at the beginning of 2025. Her four years as second-in-command may give the impression of someone steeped in the culture of the sport, an insider, but the truth lies elsewhere.
“I always enjoyed going racing with friends and family, but did I ever see myself working in racing? Certainly not,” she says.
“I’ve always been interested in the power of sport to enthuse and entertain, though, and that’s a big part of the synergy that has brought me to where I am now, at Ascot, which feels like the pinnacle of anyone’s career.”
Barnard’s resumé resembles the running order of the old Saturday afternoon television programmes Grandstand and World Of Sport. She has worked on the commercial side in F1, rugby, tennis, NFL and sailing, with the main thrust of her professional career coming via a ten-year stint in Premier League football with Arsenal and West Ham United. Her entry into racing came not so much as a culture shock but a cultural shift.
Huge influence
“I hadn’t appreciated before what a huge influence racing has on the culture of the country. I’ve always been a sport enthusiast but I’ve never known a sport like it,” she says.
“It’s such a complex industry, so many moving parts, but its stakeholders, all the characters of racing at every level, make you love the sport. They have all been really supportive, which is really unusual. Work in football or rugby, say, and you’re already expected to know all about it. Racing hasn’t had that expectation.
“Ascot is a fantastic place to work, it’s thriving as a business, and I think that racing is at a very intere
sting point in its history. There are opportunities to be exploited and I have a huge amount of confidence that we can do so.”
Positivity is Barnard’s mantra, running like a persistent melody through the steady rise and fall of conversation, and that quality is certainly better than the alternative. She points to the popularity of the major racing festivals – York, Cheltenham, Aintree, Goodwood as well as her local shindig – emphasising that racing is in a strong position to market the sport in the right way to attract new customers.
Another of the central tenets of Barnard’s philosophy is that racing does not have the self-confidence to do itself justice. She considers that racing has a great deal going for it, but given that its various factions have their own objectives and invariably lack the cohesion to pull together in the same direction, any positive messages run the risk of getting lost.
She references the basic simplicity of the sport – “It’s very easy to understand at a fundamental level, all about the first past the post” – and insists that we’re all doing ourselves an injustice by not using the horse as our foremost marketing asset.
Horse is paramount
“We must always celebrate the horse,” she says. “That’s our USP, something no other sport has. We need to make sure we communicate that – making a hero of the horse is paramount and should be at the centre of everything we do.”
Ascot recently announced an increase in prize-money for its flagship race the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, with next year’s edition becoming Britain’s richest-ever race with a prize fund of £2m. The King George has, of late, been afflicted by the small-field syndrome that permeates British racing in general and vexes punters and administrators alike, and the allure of all those extra tenners is intended to draw interest from a wider community, a global constituency. This, too, is all part of putting horses front and centre.
“It’s about trying to attract the best horses from around the world, to make sure the race remains internationally relevant,” says Barnard. “It’s all rooted in the essence of the horse, making the horse the centrepiece, the best horses coming to Ascot and racing in Britain.”
One element of Ascot’s calendar that already achieves this goal is Royal Ascot, the five-day extravaganza that has no equal anywhere in the world. Indeed, Barnard has spoken before about her surprise at the ‘sub-brand’ of Royal Ascot being more popular than the ‘master brand’ of Ascot itself.
She believes that the status, the format, the tenor of the royal meeting is exactly where it should be, exactly where she wants it, a viewpoint partly supported by the 2025 renewal – her first at the helm – being regarded as one of the best of recent years.
“We were all really delighted with Royal Ascot, on all fronts, and I think most people shared that view,” she says.
Shop window
“I’ve been telling people about what’s happening here, speaking to colleagues at previous jobs, telling them to come to Ascot and take that experience and be evangelists for racing. I think we managed that at Royal Ascot, putting it in the shop window domestically and internationally.
“As far as Royal Ascot is concerned, there is no ambition to get bigger and bigger. The focus is now more about two things, the experience of our guests and the quality of horse they come to see, about polishing and refining what we have already.
“For our guests, it’s about entertainment, and providing a richer experience for their day out. On the horsemen’s side, it’s about making sure we stage the best racing, about building equity in Royal Ascot on an international scale.
“We need to make people feel connected, to extend the ‘brand’ – that’s what we’ll be focusing on.”
It would be almost impossible to find someone willing to make substantive criticisms of Royal Ascot, but Royal Ascot is no more the true face of the sport in Britain than Harrods is the true face of the weekly shop, and the rising tide of Ascot’s prominence and financial heft can’t lift all racing’s boats.
Root and branch
Transformation at both root and branch may well be imminent within the industry following the commencement of Lord Allen’s tenure as chairman of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), and Barnard is understandably hopeful in regard to the new man’s appointment and the prospects of change.
“This sport has never been easy to govern, it’s reliant on so many factors, but over the last few months we have come together on certain issues,” she says.
“We talk all the time, trying to reach alignment in various ways, we’re quite collegiate in that respect although it’s not seen externally. Change has to be made in the right way, made in an evolutionary manner rather than revolutionary, and I’m positive that this can be achieved, although we may be in for a tricky few months.”
In her spare time, not that there is a great deal of that, with a young family (May, eight, and five-year-old Tom) vying with the office job for the limited number of hours in the day, Barnard immerses herself in the arts – “That’s my passion, my outlet, I love the theatre” – while participating in the complicit induction of her children into the sport she has adopted as her own.
“I love the dynamic of this sport, I love the horses, I love all the characters involved, it’s easy for me to love it,” she says.
Guessing game
“May and Tom are getting more and more into racing as they love it too. When Tom picks out a winner he says ‘I guessed the right one!’ He calls it a guess and he’s so excited about his success. Anything can happen in the short window of a race, that’s what makes it so exciting.”
Outsiders are invariably viewed with suspicion by the grizzled old lifers who populate racing, something to which Barnard’s predecessor-but-one Guy Henderson alluded during his first year in the hot seat. Now Barnard finds herself in the same position, literally and figuratively, but typically pursues a positive approach when the subject arises.
She is not burdened by the weight of received wisdom but instead liberated by the absence of previous involvement, a clean slate, a blank page, ready to breathe new life into one of racing’s oldest and grandest institutions.
“I think a fresh outlook is something we can all benefit from,” she says, characteristically asserting the self-confidence that she says racing lacks. Surely everyone would raise a glass to that, whether half-empty, half-full – or bubbling over, as Barnard’s must be.
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