The EBF Celebrates 40yrs

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Transcript

00:00The European Breeders' Fund was initially set up to boost the prize money levels for

00:06maiden races. Forty years later, it remains one of the biggest sponsors in European racing.

00:12We spoke to CEO Kerry Murphy and Chairman John O'Connor about the durability of this

00:17original self-hub scheme in Europe.

00:19Well, the discussions around the creation of the European Breeders' Scheme started

00:23in 1982 and it was really a small group of breeders who'd heard that, and this is a

00:28very familiar story I'm afraid, that prize money was going to be cut quite drastically

00:33in Britain particularly. And it was the levy board announcing that no prize money was going

00:38to be available for two-year-old maidens, which obviously from a breeder's perspective

00:42was quite unpalatable and really unviable. So they got together with some Irish breeders

00:48and discussions began. In parallel to that, prize money was really integral to whether

00:53they were producing horses to race or producing them for the sales. So they started this discussion

00:59and by 1983, within eight months really, the European Breeders' Fund was launched and they

01:07had decided to go to stallion owners and ask them to fund it, which they, with very little

01:14resistance, stumped up the money to start the fund rolling in 1983 and the first prize

01:20money was paid out in 1984. So there is a mechanism which we call the graduated payment

01:25scheme for pulling that money in and we have over 650 stallions registered throughout Europe.

01:32France joined in 1986 and then Germany shortly after. So we charge the stallion owners and

01:40invite them to register in July and there is a mechanism for charging them. So it's

01:44a very fair way of bringing that money in. So the small stallion owners pay a minimum

01:48fee if you're covering under a certain number of mares and for under a certain fee and then

01:53if you cover over 65 to 85 mares and then again back up to 121 mares, it's a process

02:01where you're charged more. So it's the average value of a nomination sold and then there's

02:05a mechanism for charging one times or two times or three times depending on the number

02:09of mares covered. It's a kind of very cohesive piece of support from the stallion masters

02:16right across Europe. Big, small, national hunt, flat and that cohesion I think is really

02:23important and it's a way of the stallion industry giving back to the industry that it generates

02:32its income from. Because of the strength of the European stallion market it's become ever

02:36so more important. So in the 40 years it's been running, the income from European stallions

02:41into the fund has grown and grown and that's really due to the success of those European

02:45stallions and the fees raising and the number of mare owners using them. So we pull the

02:49money in and then that money goes straight back out into prize money the following year.

02:53We have good international support, Shaddai Farms support by registering most of their

02:57stallions and they have a very global approach to their breeding organisations, they encourage

03:03people to their sales. We also have Lane's End who are long term supporters of the EBF

03:07and they've decided this year to put Flightline into the EBF which is great news for us and

03:12it means that they clearly want to give him some appeal maybe to European breeders. They

03:18obviously believe that he could perhaps translate from the dirt to the turf and if he does that,

03:24that's a huge credit to them so we're delighted to see Flightline being put into the EBF this

03:29year.