Breeding Drain or Racing Gain: The $100 million question

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

The number of European imports racing in Australia has doubled over the past decade - but the number of individual stakes winners has barely moved. As more horses arrive chasing the same races, they’re increasingly competing against each other. It’s one thing to pay a premium for a quick return or skip the slow burn of developing a yearling, but how much is actually being spent chasing that shortcut?

In Part 1, we looked at the rise in European imports, their dominance in staying races, and showing that some measures of results are plateauing.

Correction: We’ve updated the data in this story following a revision to our original auction match, which had undercounted the number of European imports purchased at public sale. The corrected figures confirm 244 auction purchases between July 2020 and June 2024, with an average landed price of around $450,000.

The private market

“Importing didn’t really get commercialised in my mind until Chris Waller did it successfully. One of the first horses he bought from the Tattersalls sale was Moriarty,” said bloodstock agent Will Johnson.

Moriarty (Ire) (Clodovil {Ire}) was Group-placed in Ireland, then came here to win the 2013 G2 Brisbane Cup, and the 2014 G1 Kingston Town Classic, winning 11 times in Australia with earnings over $1.7 million. He was bought by Waller Racing for 90,000 gns (AU$198,000) at the 2011 Tattersalls Autumn Horses In Training Sale.

“The market very much shifted to wanting to buy these imports off the back of Waller’s success, and the breeding landscape shifted towards the Golden Slipper some time in the 1980s.

“When I started in the industry, Zabeel was coming to the end of his career, and he was probably the last stallion, along with High Chaparral, that I can recall who could breed a Cox Plate winner in the Southern Hemisphere. The end (of Zabeel’s career) coincided with people wanting to buy imports.

“There is a lot of money to be won, not just the Melbourne Cup, but races over a mile for 4-year-olds and up where the domestic population doesn’t have the quality of horse bred to run over a trip. The only way to go after winning that money is to find a product that is more suitable, and this goal can be achieved by looking to Europe.

“You are able to go there and buy a product that you know can run to a Timeform rating of 100 to 110, and bring it to Australia and race it within 4 to 6 months at the minimum, appreciating that the horse might need one preparation or two to fully acclimatise. But in under 12 months you will be able to have a horse who can potentially peak to a number that’s already set in his form.

“If a horse can run to 110, you're winning Group races, and then it comes down to how much people are willing to pay for that horse?”

And this is the 100 million dollar question.

“You're trying to find a ready-made Group horse or one that you think you can get to that level quite quickly. Whilst there’s a handful horses who might be sold for a couple of million landed cost, the average purchase price is probably $300,000-$400,000 before vetting and flights which cost around $40,000-$50,000 plus GST, and then there's commissions, so on average approximately $400,000-$500,000 for a horse capable of running to a decent level on paper,” said Johnson.

In other words, the private sales are, anecdotally, cheaper than the ones purchased at public auction. “Privately, there's a lot of horses that get shifted for €100,000 or thereabouts. Huetor, Touristic, Unspoken, Old Flame, these are all Group winners I purchased with various partners for under $500,000 landed, which might be an anomaly compared to what others spend.”

While Johnson estimates that many competitive imports still land around the $400,000–500,000 mark, others such as Australian Bloodstock's Jamie Lovett believe that price range is now outdated. As competition intensifies and the cost of transport rises, the entry point for city-class horses has shifted higher, Lovett thinks the days of bargain buys may be behind us.

“Transport costs, and cost of import have gone up from $30,000 to about $50,000, and you really can’t buy a horse of city class ability for under $450,000,” said Lovett. “We’ve had some amazing private purchases at around the $100,000 mark, but I’d say those days are gone.

“It really depends what you are after. If you’re buying a nice Group class horse, those are a little bit dearer - well over $500,000 and up to $3 million. It’s hard to guess at an average. I’d say probably closer to $600,000 or $700,000, but there’s a wide variety depending on what you are buying.”

If we take Johnson’s private sale figure of $500,000 landed and extend it over the 759 horses imported from Europe in the last four years who haven’t gone to stud (using the list TTR gained from the Stud Book), and that makes the whole market worth approximately $380 million over four years, or $95 million per annum.

If we take the $600,000 mark quoted by Lovett, it puts the total annual spend on permanent European imports at approximately $114 million across the country.

That’s a significant outlay of investment leaving the economy for a group of horses that, while high-profile, made $61 million in prizemoney during the 2024/25 season.

Getting more expensive

Ciaron Maher’s Head Of Bloodstock, Will Bourne, is currently in Europe sourcing horses for the stable and before he left, he spoke to racing.com about the trip.

“We've had relative success with the likes of Duke De Sessa, Light Infantry, Middle Earth, and Circle Of Fire. It can really change the top end of your middle-distance horses by doing the work over there,” Bourne said.

But it’s not proving to be an easy task with costs increasing and the market becoming more competitive. “The tried market in Europe has gone up say 15 per cent and then the dollar's shifted 10 per cent, so everything's feeling expensive … it is getting very difficult."

“Compared to last year, everything’s gone up 25 per cent due to the exchange rate. If you aren’t in oil, you can’t buy a horse. It’s stratospheric how crazy it’s got,” confirmed Lovett.

“The quality of staying horses, where the Australian buyers used to do well, just isn’t there anymore either. We’ve seen a number of affluent buyers come into the market and destroy it. It makes it very tough, but there’s always a diamond in the rough. We just have to find it.”

Will Johnson expanded on why the market for European tried horses is going up so fast, and despite the increased number of European imports coming into Australia in the past eight years, it’s not just Australian buyers who are pushing up the market.

“If you're looking at the exchange rates the Aussie dollars is now very weak against the Euro and the pound. You’re only getting 48p to a dollar and €0.56 to a dollar, so it’s a poor time to buy in Europe given the exchange rate year-on-year.

“(The competition for horses) is from the rise of racing in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the continued racing in the United Arab Emirates who need horses for the summer carnivals from December through to April. There's more competition than there was three, five, and 10 years ago.”

Table: Change in prizemoney in Australia over time

“American turf racing now accounts for half their calendar, and they need 2000-metre horses as well. Often, when I call up a trainer or agent in Europe, they’ll say an American will give x dollars on the same horse that I identified for Australia. They are looking for a very similar profile to what we want. And the money in America’s major states, specifically Kentucky and New York, is very strong. You can run for US$150,000 (AU$230,000) in a maiden in Kentucky. I think people aren't really appreciating the strength of their prizemoney.

“We aren’t driving the market. We're falling into line. Over the next 10 years, I predict that one, it’ll be more difficult to buy the horses we really like and two, we’ll be settling on buying that second or third tier horse from Europe rather than the slightly better ones.”

Is the yearling market missing out?

Some argue imports and yearling purchases serve different goals. But the impact is harder to dismiss when you zoom out.

In 2024, according to the Racing Australia Fact Book, 3838 yearlings sold for $559 million at an average of $145,000. That’s 31 per cent of the foal crop, leaving 69 per cent raced as home-breds, or sold as weanlings or 2-year-olds.

Meanwhile, European imports average more than triple that price, but go to fewer owners, and generate less industry-wide economic activity.

With the Australian yearling market generating $560 million annually, and European imports now accounting for an estimated $95 to $170 million each year, the gap is narrowing fast. That’s not an insignificant leakage.

So, is there a way to keep more of that investment flowing into Australian and New Zealand-bred horses? In the next part of this series on Sunday, we’ll explore potential mechanisms that can be adopted to encourage domestic investment over foreign spend, including looking at how other countries tackle this challenge.

“If we can breed a product that is able to perform at a higher level over those distances chasing that big prize money, we wouldn't have to go overseas,” Johnson suggests, a sentiment often echoed across the industry.

“We have to go and buy the proven product (from Europe) because there's a demand from the market. It's a supply problem here. We're not supplying the market with the horses capable of winning those races. And the turnaround time from paddock to the track when breeding or buying a yearling is obviously much longer than it is buying one privately, or at the Tattersalls sale in October.

“We’ve also got a shrewder buying bench now. People are more informed than they have ever been. They sit back, they watch, they listen and then they identify what they want to go into. We've gone from being a wholesale market to a very well refined, educated market, and people are more savvy when they do spend a dollar.”

Market leakage on imports is no small issue - it’s draining hundreds of millions from the domestic ecosystem at a time when the local breeding industry is already under pressure. Foal crops are shrinking, small breeders are exiting, and confidence in the long game is wavering.

While importing will always be vital to sustaining a balanced and open industry, strengthening domestic measures may prove equally essential.

Whether it’s through smarter programming, targeted bonus schemes, or even levies that reinvest into staying bloodlines, there are levers available to help balance the equation.

We’ll explore those options in the next piece, and if you have ideas or insights to share, reach out to Vicky directly: vicky@ttrausnz.com.au