Australia is experiencing a surge in racehorse ownership despite the average cost of a yearling bought at auction more than doubling in the past decade, latest industry figures reveal.
In a trend that would seem at odds with cost-of-living pressures, there were 141,190 combined owners involved in racing across all states in Australia during the 2022/23 racing season.
This represents a 23 per cent increase on the 114,614 who were registered across all states in 2019/20. It should be noted that those combined statistics from Racing Australia's (RA) 'double count' owners involved in multiple states, however, the trend is undeniable.
Most of that rise can be attributed to the growing popularity and high-profile success of public and private syndication outfits, according to statistics in RA's annual fact book.
Australia is recognised as a world leader in this area of ownership.
RA identifies four types of syndicates - ordinary, company, firm and studs - and these have increased from 7210 in 2019/20 to 11,321 in 2022/23. That figure does not include micro syndicates like MyRacehorse or miRunners.
That growth has sparked an almost 50 per cent increase in individual ownership within the syndicate model.
In 2019/20, RA figures revealed there were 40,809 people involved in a racehorse under one syndicate banner or another.
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