Sporting Life
Members of a Middleham Park Racing syndicate celebrate a Goodwood winner
Members of a Middleham Park Racing syndicate celebrate a Goodwood winner

Future Of Racing project: Horsebox one of three shortlisted start-ups

Horse Racing
Mon May 11, 2026 · 3d ago

It’s a big week for the three finalists in the Future Of Racing programme.

The joint-initiative between Flutter Entertainment and the British Horseracing Authority invited tech start-ups to make their pitches for their projects off the back of research from Project Beacon.

A survey of 7,500 people revealed many people felt little emotional connection to the sport while concerns among racegoers included the wellbeing of racehorses, the high cost of attending meetings and difficulty understanding betting terminology.

Off the back of it Future Of Racing targeted four key themes:

  • Horse welfare – technologies to enhance equine safety and welfare.
  • Education – simplifying the sport for newcomers through accessible tools.
  • Raceday Experience - elevating the social and entertainment value of attending live events
  • Behind the Silks - offering fans immersive, behind-the-scenes access to the racing world.

And it’s in the latter category in which Horsebox fits. It’s the brainchild of Fraser Ralston, who has worked tirelessly to drive it forward.

His aim is to open up racehorse ownership to the wider public, a digital marketplace allowing people to join syndicates and or racing clubs while managing their horses all in one place.

“I really want to make racehorse ownership more accessible, because it is sort of this mysterious thing still. It's crazy how small horse racing is in the wider culture, despite being the second most attended sport in the UK," he said.

“It’s a very weird paradigm to think something like racehorse ownership is not really spoken about at all in the wider culture, so part of what I want to do is making it more accessible, both in terms of finding it and joining it, because some of the current onboarding practises are super-outdated.

“So we created this online marketplace for syndicate shares and racing club memberships, with the aim of aggregating this market, because it's so fragmented across 600-odd trainers who do in-house syndicates and their own racing clubs, and then you obviously have hundreds of syndicate operations as well, who are all offering different varieties of experiences.

“If you google racehorse ownership, you just get faced with maybe a few of those options, and each of these options settles in its own niche, different price points, different share sizes, very varied experiences, so a curious newcomer or even someone trying to find something a bit different might just land on an option that doesn't quite suit them at the time and maybe assume that ownership isn't really for them and disappear.

“With us they have one place they can go, where they can discover ownership, they can learn about it, they can compare the different options, and then we've got a way of easily joining up.

“Online syndicate and racing clubs are governed by contractor agreements, so we do the online payments and we also have the contract signing, all baked into one online flow. That’s the long and short of Horsebox and where we're currently at.”

The company feels at a crossroads - with Ralston understandably desperate to grow it further.

“Obviously the first step is becoming that one unified place for shared ownership, and that's the cold start problems, the chicken and egg if you like," he continues.

"If you don't have horses, you don't have buyers, if you don't have buyers, maybe the sellers especially, some of the people who've been in the industry for years and done it their own way, they're not going to see the use of us.

"So my short-term goal is to really build out the supply side density, and simultaneously getting that traction and getting the credibility and visibility, something like this project needs to actually hit that critical mass.

“Because I think once you achieve that, it becomes self-fulfilling. Obviously I'm in the difficult stage where it's really tricky to get those things moving up, but I think there is the need for that one place. Take Rightmove or Zoopla. They're not very useful if there are no houses in your area, but now they're so spread through the whole country that even if you just want to look at a house or two, anywhere in the UK, you're going to go on there.

“And I think that experience could almost happen for horse lovers as well, where they're going through and they're looking at all these different types, different priced horses, and that discovery layer, and then maybe finding something that they actually want to get involved with.

"And newcomers, there's so many cheaper options out there that can give you a flavour of it, and when you have all the options in one place, you could very easily see someone starting in the lower end, enjoying the experience, and then moving up that ownership ladder.”

And the Future Of Racing experience is already helping Ralston move in the direction he wants.

“I think it's been very, very useful, it's also given me a lot more confidence personally,” he said. “Last October we launched the platform with little or no fanfare. We were launching a platform with three horses on it and no users. So, it was very quietly done.

“I'm putting all my eggs in that basket, which I often do, because I have limited time and limited resources, I'm always looking for the best way to move things forward. And I thought this looked such a fantastic opportunity.

“The two things I thought Horsebox needed at the time were credibility and visibility. Obviously, the credibility of being supported, or at least recognised, by the BHA and Flutter is enormous.

“And then there’s the visibility that's come off the back of it too. I can give a great example. The Racing Post did an article about the competition and the Dragons Den-style element. And the start-ups were barely mentioned. It was more just about the day, the competition, but we were all linked out to from the article. And one trainer, Tom Ward, reached out to me and said,' we saw you in the Racing Post, we'd be really interested in joining'.

“And a week-and-a-half later, they had two syndicated horses and a racing club on there. You make a lot of assumptions when you're running a start-up that if this happens, then this will happen. And some of my assumptions was if we get credibility and visibility, more people want to use us.

“That was almost proved true straight away. Since then, we've had help from the NTF, I met Rob Sage at the pitch event and we've stayed in close contact.

"It feels like horse racing can feel quite locked off, a very tight-knit industry. But the Future Of Racing programme has allowed me to feel a little bit more like I'm inside it now rather than trying to punch the doors down to get through.

"For a sport that's in need for innovation in so many areas, it's so exciting to see start-ups like this coming along and being given some focus by a project like Future Of Racing."

More from Sporting Life

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.