Will racing waste its Scoop6 jackpot?

Eight people became millionaires last Saturday, collecting £1,342,599 each when the Scoop6 bet, which had been rolled over for 12 weeks without a winner, was finally won. With racing’s narrative having been dominated for weeks by the gamble to find six winners on the day, there was more than £16 million in the pot: £11 million had been staked that day alone by punters large and small trying to collect an instant fortune. Let us hope no relationships suffer: I could not help thinking of the lottery winner’s wife who asked, ‘Will you still feel the same about me now you’ve won all that money?’ only to meet the reply, ‘I’ll certainly miss you…’

Whether racing itself made the gains it should have done from the Scoop6 excitement is another matter. Channel 4 choreographed the excitement well and should have boosted its ratings but the betting fever did not seem to move far away from the sports pages and we have to wonder how much of the 30 per cent rake-off from the pool that went to Betfred, owners these days of the Tote and organisers of the Scoop6, will be reinvested in racing.