The dust is now settling on the 2025/6 jumps season and the question that should trouble the sport of jumping most does not concern the state of the ground at the season finale, the continued dominance of Irish Grade 1 winners, or even the familiar post-season arguments about fixtures and field sizes. While the Cheltenham Gold Cup is the crowning race for jumps fans, the true barometer of the sport’s popularity is the Grand National.
The National remains the biggest race in British jumping and, in public consciousness, the most important race in the calendar. The BBC estimates it is watched by over 600 million people worldwide. For millions in Britain, it has long been the one day of the year when racing breaks out of its own bubble. That is why the recent viewing figures should sound major alarm bells for the industry. In 2019, when Tiger Roll won his second National, ITV’s peak audience was 9.6 million. Last month, just seven years later, the figure was 4.8 million. The viewership has halved.
It is tempting to reach for an easy explanation. Some may blame the broadcaster. Others will blame changing viewing habits. Racing fans are more likely to argue that the race has been sanitised and is no longer the spectacle it once was. There may be truth in all those explanations. But the honest answer is that nobody really knows, and that is precisely the problem.
As we are all aware, the race has changed materially in recent years. In October 2023, the Jockey Club announced a series of reforms for the 2024 running. The field was reduced from 40 to 34, the first fence was moved closer to the start, a standing start was introduced, Fence 11 (Booth) was reduced in height and the landing side was "levelled off" to reduce the severity of the drop – the latest fence to be subject to amendments following Fences 4, 5, 6 (Becher’s Brook), and 13. Foam and rubber toe boards were also added to every fence, and the minimum handicap rating required in order to run was raised to 130. The intention behind those changes was clearly to make the race safer and reduce risk to both horse and rider.
The awkward question is whether those changes have also altered how the race is perceived. In 2024, there was not a single faller in the National, with 21 of 32 starters completing and all horses returning safely. Some called it progress. Others saw a race stripped of part of its old drama.
However, Racing should be careful not to conflate the view from inside the sport with that from outside it. The vast majority of Grand National viewers are not hardened racing followers. They may not know whether the fences ride more easily, or even whether the field is six runners smaller.
The mistake is to assume that just because racing fans feel the race is less of a spectacle, the wider public sees it the same way. Most people watching the National are not racing fans. The decline might well be about spectacle, but it may also be about welfare.
Animal Rising’s disruption in 2023 pushed racing’s ethical questions into the mainstream, and the group later argued that public opinion had moved against racing. It may be that those campaigns have affected how casual viewers feel about watching the National. It could also be that the race has lost some of its identity as “the People’s Race”. It may be a combination of factors. What is indefensible is that nobody in racing has even identified the decline, let alone set about to arrest its downward trajectory.
On the global stage, the Grand National is somewhat of a masterpiece without a signature. America has the Kentucky Derby, the “Run for the Roses”. Australia has the Melbourne Cup, “the race that stops a nation”. Those slogans are central to how the races are sold and understood by the public. The Grand National is sometimes colloquially called the "People’s Race", but that claim is harder to sustain when the last three renewals have all been won by Willie Mullins, twice in the colours of JP McManus.
Even the popular back-to-back winner, Tiger Roll, represents some of the most powerful jumping connections in the world. That is no criticism of Mullins, McManus, Gigginstown or Gordon Elliott. They are outstanding supporters and participants. But the National has always needed to feel different from the rest of the programme. If it becomes simply another elite race dominated by the sport’s strongest forces, something of its magic is dissipated.
The race has needed popular heroes before. Red Rum rescued the race’s place in the national imagination when popularity for the National waned in the 70’s. He was trained by Ginger McCain, a local car dealer, on the sands of Southport, and his story had the human texture that turns a racehorse into a public figure. Even decades after his death, a 2016 survey by Sport Relief saw Red Rum voted into the Top 10 Greatest British Sporting Heroes.
This is why the National should be treated as a race with different objectives. It cannot be treated as just another valuable handicap. It is the sport’s ultimate shop window. If preserving that status requires a different set of rules, those rules should at least be debated. Personally, I would place limits on the numbers of runners trainers and owners can have; Willie Mullins saddled eight horses this year, nearly a quarter of the field.
I would also revisit the compression of the weights at the top. With all the recent changes to the race, it clearly favours horses at the top of the weights, and we shouldn't be handing a head start to the horses who already have every advantage.
Other jurisdictions act far more swiftly. Racing Victoria reviewed the Melbourne Cup weights after back-to-back northern hemisphere three-year-old winners: Rekindling in 2017 and Cross Counter in 2018. The benchmark allowance for that type of horse was amended in 2019, reducing from 4kg to 2.5kg. No such horse has won since, showing a governing body prepared to identify a risk to the race and respond quickly.
The Melbourne Cup also offers a welfare lesson. Between 2013 and 2020, seven horses died after running in the race, placing it under enormous public pressure. After the 2020 death of Anthony Van Dyck, Racing Victoria introduced stricter veterinary protocols, including advanced imaging and mandatory scans. Since those reforms, the Cup has stabilised its welfare record and rebuilt engagement. In 2024, its television audience rose to 1.91 million, while 2025 figures showed further growth in digital viewing and national engagement.
Understanding that welfare reform and popularity are not opposites is pivotal. They can reinforce each other, but only if the sport understands what the public is responding to. The National’s changes may have actually been the right thing to do, but if viewership continues to fall at this pace, the sport cannot simply point to safer outcomes and assume that all is well.
But before we start with more suggestions and changes, an independent report should now be commissioned into the decline in Grand National viewing figures. It should examine audience behaviour, public perception, welfare sentiment, the impact of race changes, the strength of the race’s branding, international comparisons and the type of storylines that make occasional viewers care about the race.
The best defence of the Grand National is not nostalgia, or defiance, or pretending the old race can be restored. The best defence is popularity. A race watched by ten million people is part of the national fabric. A race watched by a fraction of that becomes vulnerable. If Racing wants the Grand National to remain untouchable, it must first understand why fewer people are watching.
