Let us entertain you: Capitalising on Australian racing’s greatest strength

Cover image courtesy of The Entertainment Grounds

In TTR’s winter series, Olly Tait and Duncan Ramage addressed the topic of how Australian racing would benefit at all levels from attracting more high level investors to the sport. The owners who spend millions at the sales, race multiple horses on the track, and set up broodmare bands have a wide-ranging impact on the industry.

As discussed, reassessing the distribution of prize money with the intention of increasing the chances of breaking even benefits the entire ownership ecosystem. And while Australian pedigrees and race results have currency with international investors, perhaps our greatest drawcard for people playing at the top is something we do better than anyone else.

Entertainment value

For operations like the Boersmas’ United States-based racing and breeding operation, The Flying Dutchmen, it becomes less about business and much more about fun.

“Perhaps what’s unique about the position the Flying Dutchmen is in is that we don’t necessarily view it as a business,” said the group's president Hunter Rankin.

“That gives you a little more freedom to invest in what you perceive to be the best horse. We certainly have a business plan that we are trying to execute, but we aren’t looking for each individual purchase to return investment. This is entertainment for us.”

The Boersma family, who own the Dutch Bros coffee company, have long been fans of racing, but they got serious with their investment in 2022 when buying a 2.5% share in unbeaten stallion Flightline (USA) for $4.6 million (AU$6.65 million). The operation has since expanded to include around 70 horses in training, plus its own boutique stud.

Their name appeared on the buyers’ list in Australian for the first time at this year’s Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, paying $750,000 for an I Am Invincible daughter of triple Group 1 winner Shoals (Fastnet Rock). They also purchased a mare to send to Extreme Choice on Northern Hemisphere time this year.

“One of the reasons that we chose to have a little presence in Australia was because it is fun down there,” Rankin said.

“You meet a lot of great people who like to have a good time, and that’s very central to racing. We’re not building rockets here, we’re not saving lives, but it’s a lot of fun and that’s what it should be. We enjoyed our time and the people in Australia, and I think we will enjoy the horses we have bought too.”

The whole immersive experience

World-renowned broadcaster Nick Luck made his first splash into Australian racing at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale in January, with his Lucky Down Under Syndicate purchasing two fillies in partnership with Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, and Kestrel Thoroughbreds.

Luck said that Australian racing has a lot to offer international investors - the prize money was just one draw card.

“There are a lot more opportunities to win,” he said. “And in my experience, the communication from trainers is very good. If I had unlimited resources, I would be getting much more stuck in to Australia.”

Luck has recruited a large number of Northern Hemisphere-based owners for the Lucky Down Under syndicate, and he is interested to see if this translates into the owners investing more and more into Australian racing.

“The feedback I have had so far is very positive, particularly on the communication,” he said. “People are quite impressed. I feel a lot of the Australian trainers have very good back offices with people who are very skilled at selling horses and at giving owners a good experience, so they remain invested.”

Luck points to the Magic Millions sale, and its surrounding entertainment and racing carnival, as a particularly good example of giving potential owners a good experience that makes them want to stay.

“If I had been to a fairly sort of sterile atmosphere and I had been presented with a scenario in which I bought half a million dollars worth of horses, would I have done it? No.

“The fact that I was there enjoying quite an immersive social experience was definitely the trigger for it.”

There will always be people who can’t get their head around owning a horse in training thousands of miles away, but Luck pointed out that there are plenty of people who can.

“Look at Phil Cunningham, for example,” he said.

Given such a great experience in the Melbourne Cup carnival, Cunningham came to Magic Millions in 2025 and purchased The Next Episode (Snitzel) for $2.8 million, a decision vindicated by the colt’s stakes win and $1 million Magic Millions National 2YO Classic victory in the winter.

“He's exactly the sort of person that the sport needs more of. If every owner was like Phil, the sport would be in unbelievably good shape.”

Nothing quite like it

While Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rick Gold has not spent seven figures to acquire a single yearling in Australia, he does own shares in over 30 horses - including Saturday’s G3 Cap D’Antibes Stakes winner Satono Glow (NZ) (Satono Aladdin {Jpn}) - and was equally endeared to Australian racing by the Cup carnival. Gold first came to Australia in 2014 and arrived simply a fan of the sport.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” he said of the Victorian Spring Carnival. “The driver that took me from the airport to the hotel knew more about racing than 99.9% of most Americans, and as I learned later, there's cab drivers that know more than him. He wasn't in the 99th percentile in Australia.

“But I just love the spectacle. We went to luncheons, to the parade and to the Cup itself, to Randwick, and up to the Hunter Valley. I said, ‘I have to come back here’.”

Gold’s Stateside trainer Dan Blacker put him in touch with Craig Rounsefell of Boomer Bloodstock (FBAA). Rounsefell took him to the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale and introduced him to the industry.

“It was crazy,” Gold said. “When I was here in 2014, I said, ‘boy, I would love to have a runner in the Melbourne Cup. I can't imagine anything like that’, and 10 years later, I had a runner (Athabascan) get scratched the day before the race, and then the year after that he ran.”

Gold also praised the communication from trainers as a key factor for keeping him invested.

“When you're 8000 miles away it's extra important,” he said. “I love American racing, but I get such a kick out of Australian racing that I have an apartment in Sydney where I spend a fair amount of time.

“For me, the interpersonal experience and the on-track spectacle is really special. I can meet random people in Australia and when I say I am here for the horse racing, we can strike up a conversation.”

For the love of the sport

Rankin noted that to operate at a similar level of investment to The Flying Dutchmen and their contemporaries while expecting to turn a profit on the track is difficult.

“If you're buying yearlings to be racehorses and you view it as a business, I think it's very difficult to make it work,” he said. ‘But if you're using disposable income to fund a hobby and provide yourself entertainment, I think that's an altogether different game.”

The Flying Dutchmen have bought 19 yearlings in the States since the start of 2026 for a total of US$24.46 million (AU$34.4 million), including three on the first day of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. They bought the top two lots at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale - colts by Into Mischief (USA) and Gun Runner (USA) - for US$4.2 million (AU$5.89 million) and US$4 million (AU$5.61 million) each.

“It’s not that we don’t care about losing money, but I believe that buying the horses we have been trying to buy and operating at the top end is going to be fruitful for the family, but really it’s for entertainment,” Rankin said.

“It’s for the sport itself. It has to be - you look at the depth of buyers in the North American market that will pay a million dollars for a yearling. The cost of a really good horse has doubled in the last five years, and if you want to acquire those horses, you have to go buy them. You know what that cost will be now and you have to decide if you are willing to pay that.”

For Gold, the economics is fairly comparable between the two jurisdictions, but the entertainment value is bigger down under.

“There's no question, people in Australian racing have more fun racing than we do in America,” he said. “If you win a big race in America, you have a lot of fun, but it feels like Australian owners and punters and fans are always finding ways to have fun and enjoy yourselves along the way.”

As lovers of the sport, the celebration begins for The Flying Dutchmen at the fall of the hammer.

“If you don’t get excited when buying a horse or naming it or when it has its first gallop, it can be a very difficult game,” Rankin said. “It can be a long wait for that winning celebration, unless you are excited about the whole journey.”

More exposure

For Rankin and The Flying Dutchmen, what Australia is already doing is exciting and entertaining enough.

“You can’t create excitement or culture out of thin air,” Rankin said. “I don't think Australia has to do anything different. I think you just have to expose more people to it.

“Horse racing is like any other sport - you either get it or you don’t. For those of us into it, it’s a really intoxicating sport. When you watch a race and the horse you own or bet on or just know hits the top of the stretch with a chance to win, it’s rare to find anything else that generates the same feeling.”

One of the barriers to this goal that Luck identifies is simply the forces of the calendar; the Breeders’ Cup, arguably the States’ most important racing carnival, clashes with the Melbourne Cup carnival. Luck has made the trip between carnivals himself with a tight turnaround, but it isn’t easy.

“It would certainly be more useful if they were more than a week apart,” Luck said.

“It is easier if the Breeders’ Cup is before the Melbourne Cup and it’s on the West Coast, but not quite so straightforward if it is on the other coastline. The travel becomes more complicated, and the best horses, the best trainers, and the best jockeys can’t be in two places at once.”

Instead, he champions looking at other events on the calendar to bring in overseas interest.

“Katie Page has done a lot of work to try to penetrate the American market and to raise awareness of Magic Millions, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more American buyers in the sale next year,” he said.

“It’s a strong brand and they have created an occasion that is very attractive to people, especially at a time of the year that is less exciting in other parts of the world. There's not really too many better places to be in the second week of January.”

Gold had had a similarly meaningful experience with Inglis at the Easter sale, and was appreciative of the welcome he received from the Inglis team.

“The first year I came, Boomer got me on the list to Inglis’s reception for their international buyers and they did a great job with that,” he said.

“They invited me to their suite at Randwick, which they have done every year since. I will say it made a big impression on me because it made me feel welcomed and wanted. It felt like they were singling us out as people they wanted to help to get involved, and they really made it easy to do so.”

Meaningful outreach

Luck also thought that a greater Australian presence in overseas racing and sales would encourage reciprocal efforts down under.

“Generally speaking, horseracing people are quite provincial, and in order to look beyond their own horizons, something has to be put in front of their nose,” he said.

“I feel British people have only started to take a meaningful interest in Australian racing because, firstly, Australian horses were coming to Royal Ascot and winning, and secondly, suddenly European stayers became valuable propositions at the sale. Now people are paying attention to Australian racing beyond the Melbourne Cup.

“Now that restrictions have been lifted on horses moving out of South Africa and their horses have come to the States and done quite well, there’s starting to be American interest in South Africa. If there were a horse or two for whom it would be a good move to go and run in one or two races in the States, then I think that that would prick people's ears up.”

If you want international investment, you require international co-operation. And once people are interested in Australian racing, they may send horses down themselves and keep the momentum going.

“There would be far less global interest in Australian racing had they not gone out in the midst of the 90s and really aggressively tried to attract horses for the Melbourne Cup,” Luck said.

“Now there are plenty of other races to attract people as well, and once they go down and experience it in full, they’ll want to spend money in Australia. Wathnan Racing will have a Cox Plate runner this year with Map Of Stars and once they do, I’d say, ‘watch this space’.”