Cover image courtesy of Racing NSW
Racing NSW has had the same chief executive since the Howard Government. Two decades later, global sport, public scrutiny and wagering economics have been transformed - but the state's racing leadership has not.
The NSW Government’s review of the Thoroughbred Racing Act 1996 is meant to test whether a 30-year-old law still safeguards integrity and proper governance. It should also confront a question the industry has never yet asked: should the most powerful executive in the state face a limit on time in office?
Corporate regulators say yes. APRA is moving to impose 10-year lifetime limits on directors of financial institutions; the ASX Corporate Governance Principles call renewal a “cornerstone of accountability.”
Cathal Beale | Image courtesy of Irish National Stud
In Ireland, fixed seven-year terms are standard for public-sector chiefs, with limited extensions. Even the Irish National Stud, a state-owned enterprise at the heart of the global thoroughbred industry, recently reappointed its CEO, Cathal Beale, for what was explicitly described as his final three-year term despite his exceptional performance.
Yet in Australian racing, where the CEO often controls licensing, funding, prize-money distribution and industry policy, there is no limit at all.
One of the reasons this conversation is taking place in New South Wales regarding Peter V'Landys is so extraordinary is that racing often struggles to retain executive continuity at all. Most jurisdictions cycle through chief executives every few years - a problem of retention, not entrenchment.
Amid this instability, Racing NSW stands as the outlier in the opposite direction: one leader in the CEO seat for 21 years and counting.
Peter V’landys | Image courtesy of Racing NSW
Long-term thinking: the positives
There is no denying the benefits that long tenure can bring. Racing NSW’s transformation from a cash-strapped regulator in the early 2000s to one of the world’s wealthiest racing jurisdictions is inseparable from Peter V’landys’ two-decade leadership. Continuity can deliver stability, institutional memory and the ability to see complex projects through, advantages most other racing bodies have never enjoyed.
When V’landys was appointed in 2004, the industry’s revenue base was disintegrating under the weight of corporate wagering. Within four years, he had engineered the Race Fields Legislation, a reform that forced bookmakers to pay a 1.5% turnover fee for using NSW race data. When the High Court upheld the scheme in 2012, it created a new funding model that has since generated more than $1.35 billion for the code.
John Messara | Image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
Longevity also meant that the next reform, tax parity, could be pursued patiently and politically. For decades NSW had paid the highest TAB betting tax in the country, disadvantaging local participants against Victoria. In 2015, after a sustained lobbying campaign led by the then Chairman John Messara, legislation was secured that aligned the tax rate with Victoria’s - delivering an additional $235 million over five years, and about $90 million a year thereafter. It was a textbook example of long-term planning paying off.
These achievements show what can happen when leadership has the time and political capital to push through resistance and test ideas. But the virtues of longevity can harden into liabilities once the environment changes and the leader doesn’t.
The negatives of entrenchment
What should be the great benefit of long-term tenure is long-term vision. Twenty years at the helm ought to mean the capacity to plan for generational infrastructure - to build what others only blueprint. Training centres take a decade to design, fund, and deliver; welfare frameworks even longer to embed. Longevity should allow for projects that survive political cycles and short-term news headlines.
And yet, despite record revenue and around $500 million in reserves, New South Wales has limited development to show in physical renewal over 20 years.
The much-promised Southern Highlands Training Centre remains a plan on paper. The Sydney Basin expansion outlined in multiple strategic documents hasn’t left the page, while clubs and training centres continue to depend on government grants rather than principal-body investment.
The same tenure that built Racing NSW’s financial fortress is now arguably constraining its evolution, with key metrics showing declines across the board.
NSW’s share of national wagering turnover has collapsed from 32% in 2006 to 13% in 2022-23, according to the Racing Australia Fact Book.
The Point-of-Consumption Tax - introduced in 2019 and lifted to 15% in 2022 - has stripped much of the advantage once won through race-fields and tax-parity reforms. NSW receives just 33% of those proceeds, compared with 50% in Victoria and 80% in Queensland.
On-course attendance is another piece of the puzzle, and of the top eight attended Australian race days in 2025, six took place in Melbourne and only two in Sydney.
Field sizes also show a decline: the NSW average has dropped from 10.14 starters (2010-11) to 9.35 (2024-25). Over the same period, the state’s foal crop fell from 7273 to 5386, a 26% decline. Fewer foals mean smaller fields and weaker wagering turnover: the very base of the financial pyramid that once looked unshakeable.
In addition, two decades with the same leader have concentrated decision-making at the top, and the effects now extend well beyond New South Wales. Racing Australia, intended to act as the sport’s coordinating umbrella, now appears to mirror, rather than moderate, the state’s position.
Pattern meetings have not been convened in eight years, while races unilaterally upgraded in New South Wales are still published by Racing Australia as though ratified - despite those upgrades being rejected by both the national and Asian Pattern authorities.
The same dynamic has played out on collective initiatives such as National Thoroughbred Week, where Racing NSW’s refusal to participate effectively ensured Racing Australia’s involvement was also quashed.
This is the paradox of entrenched leadership: the aggressive attributes that can once make a chief executive indispensable become liabilities when renewal and collaboration are what the moment demands.
Losing interest, or stretched too thin?
Peter V’landys has led Racing NSW since 2004. During that time he has also taken on two major national sporting roles: Chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission (since 2019) and Director of the International Rugby League Board (since 2022).
No other CEO in Australia juggles parallel leadership of a second professional sporting code, each with its own stakeholders, crises, and political demands.
During the 2025 spring carnival, V’landys was required overseas to address issues affecting rugby league. His absence from several major Sydney race meetings was widely noted as a practical demonstration of maxed-out bandwidth.
Racing and rugby league are both billion-dollar ecosystems, each requiring deep, sustained attention. During the time of focus on rugby league's battles, Racing NSW issued a controversial show-cause notice to the Australian Turf Club; a move with major implications for metropolitan racing, stakeholder confidence and public perception. Escalations of that scale typically rely on close, present leadership.
It was one of several recent decisions that pointed to the same underlying tension. The reluctance to support even low-investment, community-driven national initiatives - National Thoroughbred Week, Pony Racing, workforce pathways - sits uneasily against the industry’s stated priorities for participation and public trust.
Pony Racing | Image courtesy of Thoroughbred Industry Careers
Coupled with unilateral actions that destabilise the Pattern system and the bloodstock market it underpins, it raises a reasonable question: are these the decisions of a leader still fully committed to the sport’s long-term future?
The consequences of these decisions appear not to affect the CEO directly, but on the people whose livelihoods depend on the credibility and development of Australian racing.
This is why the question matters. Modern racing relies on constant regulatory vigilance, long-term strategic planning, participant engagement, infrastructure reform, and national coordination.
It is reasonable to ask whether these fundamentals can be delivered by a leader whose attention has been required unrelentingly for two decades - and is now divided across two professional codes.
Tenure, accountability and the Act
Racing NSW today oversees roughly $2.5 billion in wagering turnover and an industry environment that supports tens of thousands of participants. The stakes are generational, and with stakes that high, no structure should rely indefinitely on one individual, no matter how powerful.
Longevity brings strengths, but it also carries predictable risks: blind spots, resistance to renewal, over-centralisation of decision-making, and diminished national cohesion as relationships sour. The data, and participant feedback, suggests those risks are now visible in the industry’s fundamentals.
V’landys’ early reforms built the financial foundations of modern NSW racing. That legacy is real and should be respected. But the industry he helped stabilise now faces a different set of threats - in an environment that may require a different set of skills to overcome.
Leadership renewal does not erase legacy, but enables the next chapter of it. True strength is knowing when continuity becomes constraint.
And yet the question should not fall solely to individuals, but to the best framework.
The NSW Government’s review of the Thoroughbred Racing Act 1996 is the industry’s first real chance - in 30 years - to modernise its governance settings. It is an opportunity for participants, breeders, owners, trainers, punters, clubs and administrators to speak clearly about the kind of stability, accountability and renewal they want embedded in law.
Submissions close at 5pm on Monday 24 November, and all participant voices should be heard.
The question posed here is simple but consequential: Should executive leadership of the most powerful office in NSW racing be time-limited in the same way boards and public-sector institutions already are, or should it remain open-ended and indefinite?
