• Leading race horses earned £126,093 on average per minute in 2020
• Top 20 earning thoroughbreds took just 11.05 minutes to surpass the £1 million-mark last year
• Arrogate remains the all-time leading earner with £12,718,498.00 prize money, or £635,924.90 per minute
• 2020’s top 20 horses passed the £1million-barrier 65.42% quicker than sport’s top earning athletes
• Authentic picked up £402,623.08 for every 60 seconds raced last year, more than Cristiano Ronaldo (£18,782.16) and Lionel Messi (£19,926.51)

Horse racing’s class of 2020 pocketed £126,093.67 per minute of action, a new study into the value of racehorses has revealed.

The top 20 earning racehorses last year took 11.05 minutes of racing, on average, to break the £1 million-barrier, 59.56% quicker than global sports’ top earning athletes, across the same 12-month period.

However American great Arrogate still tops the all-time charts, having banked £1 million for every 1.57 minutes raced.

Exactly half of last year’s leading thoroughbreds pocketed six-figure sums for a mere 60 seconds’ work, according to OLBG’s Most Profitable Racehorse report.

Arrogate, bought by Juddmonte Farm for a meagre £408,000.00, landed three of the planet’s richest races within the space of four months, amassing as yet insurmountable career earnings of £12,718,498.00; £462,490.84 per minute on the dirt. The Breeders’ Cup Classic netted his camp £2.24 million, the Pegasus World Cup £5.69m and the Dubai World Cup £4.88m.

The Bob Baffert-trained phenom won on seven occasions in total, earning more than his keep in just 20 minutes.

That ‘time to £1 million’ figure dropped to 5.66 minutes, when you assess the financial vitals of the top 20 earning racehorses of all time. This elite group earned an aggregated £160,446,327.70 across collective careers comprising 229 starts, and a win percentage of 52, to boot.

The stats for the class of 2020 are quite remarkable too, with a combined 69 wins from 117 starts; landing each of their respective owners a sizable share of £23,847,336.32.

There are some exceptionally wealthy racehorses out there, or there would be if they got to keep the cash.

Recently retired Authentic, the sport’s top earner in 2020, added a further £402,623.08 to his owners’ coffers for every single minute he ran.

Winner of the 2020 Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic, setting a new track record at Keeneland in the latter, he took home a cool £5,234,100.00, in just seven starts and recently began his stud career in central Kentucky, having retired last November.

That comes against the backdrop of prize purses for the top 10 most expensive horse races on the planet surpassing the £50 million-mark for the first time in 2020, the collective fund up 28.74% year-on-year.

Disappointingly, but understandably due to the pandemic, the cumulative total prize money available for the 489 races staged across the world last year finished at £322,187,199.00, down 19.09% from 2019 (£398,218,061.00), with the available funds in Europe taking the biggest hit, falling by a jaw-dropping 58.82% year-on-year.

Across the rest of the sporting world, Cristiano Ronaldo, who plys his trade in Serie A for Juventus, cleared £76,650,000.00 through salary, bonuses and endorsements in 2020, banking £18,782.16 per minute in the 2019-20 season, 60.08% less than 18th-ranked horse Mr Freeze (£34,911.89).

Footballers Messi (£19,926.51) Neymar (£29,218.36), Basketball’s Le Bron James (£27,774.14) and F1’s Lewis Hamilton (£26,384.38) also failed to trouble Mr Freeze, purchased in 2016 for £54,750, in the earnings per minute stakes, based on 2020 income.

Tyson Fury meanwhile was the most lucrative earner. Despite fighting just once last year he averaged £2,117,557.25 per minute – 248% more than the next highest earner which was Irish racehorse Tarnawa, who also only competed once.

Commenting on the findings, OLBG’s Richard Moffat said: “We’ve always known about the huge sums of money involved in racing horses, both on the betting exchanges and the business side of it too, but to see the figures in black and white and compare what racehorses earned versus sport stars really does make you sit up and take notice.

“It’s the fine margins between winning and losing, and the colossal financial incentives on offer, that add to the drama and intrigue of the sport. It also gives you a feel for why major bloodstock operations such as Godolphin, Zayat, Juddmonte, to name but a few, exist and take the creation of future leading thoroughbreds so seriously.

“When you microanalyse it to the point where Authentic earned £402,623.08 for every 60 seconds’ work in 2020, the lucrativeness of the sport is plain to see.”

“We continue to undergo strong growth, revenues increased by 69% to SEK 16.9 million during the fourth quarter and during the full year 2020, total revenue base amounted to SEK 46.9 million. During the full year, total revenue base thus grew by 84 percent, despite a strong negative impact from COVID-19 at the end of the first and sizable parts of the second quarter – when the global sports calendar was halted. In a longer perspective, COVID-19 has resulted in a faster pace of digitalization in general and for companies operating in the entertainment sector in particular, which has benefited Scout Gaming.

Scout Gaming continues to meet strong demand at the same time as we have so far only touched the long-term potential. We have updated our internal assessment of the potential size of the European fantasy sports market and currently estimate it to amount to between SEK 5.5-7.0 billion at Gross Gaming Revenue level, which means approximately 2-3% of the entire total online gaming market in Europe. It is an attractive market and we do everything we can to consolidate and expand our position to competitors.

The Scout Gaming’s Operator Index, which measures the underlying customer activity, amounted to 2,436, which is an increase of approximately 135 percent compared with the corresponding quarter last year.

EBITDA improved from SEK -8.1 million to SEK -5.8 million. Cash flow from operating activities improved from SEK -2.6 million during the fourth quarter of the previous year, to SEK 0.2 million during the fourth quarter of this year. We were less aggressive in our marketing costs, which primarily relate to guaranteed prize pools in comparison with the third quarter, in order to ensure that we get value for the investments we make in these, and it is gratifying to see that this theorem holds and that we reached an all time high for our operator trading index. Going forward, we are expected to be more aggressive regarding this marketing related expense. In connection with this, we also continue to invest heavily in product development, to ensure high future growth.”

Extract from CEO Andreas Ternstrom’s commentary to the year-end report.

Fourth Quarter: October – December 2020

• Revenues increased to mSEK 16.9 (10.0), corresponding to a growth of 69% compared to same quarter last year

• EBITDA improved to mSEK -5.8 (-8.1)

• Net result was mSEK -13.9 (-13.3)

• Earnings per share amounted to SEK -0.7 (-1.4)

• Operator trading index (which illustrates the underlying client activity) increased to 2436 (1035), a growth of 135%

Full year: January – December 2020

• Revenues increased to mSEK 46.9 (25.7)

• EBITDA was mSEK -39.2 (-42.8)

• Net result was mSEK -54.6 (-52.2)

• Earnings per share amounted to -3.1 kr (-3,8)

Events after the period ended

• Scout Gaming has launched another product for its award-winning portfolio. The Pick’em Jackpot game combines traditional sports knowledge with a jackpot. The game was made available to Fanteam users in mid-January and will be available for our B2B network shortly

• Scout Gaming has entered into an agreement with AB Trav & Galopp, ATG (the Swedish Horse Racing Totalisator Board), Sweden’s largest gaming operator measured by turnover. The companies have agreed to jointly launch Scout Gaming’s award-winning DFS product on ATG.se with a soft launch aimed at the second quarter 2021, followed by a wider marketing push in the third quarter, in time for the start of English Premier League and other major European sport leagues

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