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how much does a jockey earn per race uk

Cheltenham Festival vs Grand National, Which Is Better? At the top end of the sport for sure it is lucrative; Frankie Dettori for example is a global celebrity for a reason. But for the vast majority of race riders the situation is very different. Although many valets work for more than one jockey. The most successful jockeys can earn over a million dollars a year. What they earn will barely cover food, drinks and especially travel costs and so they are reliant on winners for money and believe me, winners are hard to come by. Even when a flat jockey is working this hard and earning as much as possible, it’s very much a seasonal thing. A jockey might make as little as $28 to $100 for riding in a race in which the horse does not win or place. So less than a dollar. The best way of thinking about that is by looking at an average jockey. Other companies also look to work with jockeys in order to get their name out in the public eye, which allows them to take home more money than just the basics. As you can see the basic fees of NH £173.59 and Flat £127.14 for a single ride, end up with the jockey coming away with the net earnings of £70.21 and £31.79 before tax. Jockeys are paid on a per mount (race) basis. The other chief way that jockeys can earn themselves some money is via sponsorship. It’s a sign of how dependent jockeys are on their ability to remain fit, which is a testing thing when you consider most will pick up serious injuries during their careers. https://www.ehow.co.uk/info_8666073_average-salary-horse-jockey.html The Sun reports that Dettori collects a massive £2million per season. The elite jockeys can earn seven-digit incomes, while the lower end makes about $30,000.00 per year. The claiming purses at many smaller circuits are low. Jose Ortiz a professional women jockey earn $3 million annually last year and wins the purse money. Those helicopters and aeroplanes are for the few, not the many. Pay for jockeys varies and is based upon the experience and track record of success. If the purse is $10,000.00, how much would the Jockey be paid? That, of course, is the jump jockey fees. The Jockey receives 10% of the winnings of the horse he rides. These are set at £164.74 per ride over jumps and £120.66 on the Flat. The amount paid means that a jockey that is able to fill their books with races would be able to earn around £1,000 per day, though it isn’t common for riders to fill up their books every single day of the week. Related articles And the very top jockeys can make good money: According to Forbes, the five top-earning jockeys in 2015 each grossed more than $1.3 million. See the same jockey consistently crossing the finish line first made me wonder how much money they earn. That means a rider with a full book of rides can expect to make the best part of £1,000 per day. Those are the fees jockeys receive if they do not finish first, second or third. When the weight has been recorded, the jockey hands the saddle to the trainer or an assistant to get the horse ready to race. For example, at the start of 2015, the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) announced record prize money of £130.8 million. https://careertrend.com/the-average-salary-of-a-horse-jockey-13660368.html Copyright © 2021 CheltenhamBettingOffers.com | 18+ Gamble Aware | Privacy & Cookie Policy, able to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds, Rachael Blackmore Shatters Glass Ceiling In Amazing 2021 Season, Starting Price To Be Calculated From Mostly Off-Course Prices From Now On, Cheltenham Festival 2021 Review: Irish Dominate, Blackmore First Female Top Jockey, de Bromhead Treble, Rachael Blackmore Makes History With Champion Hurdle Win On Honeysuckle, Cheltenham Festival Going To Favour Horses That Like Soft Ground, Impact Of Wetter Winters On UK Jump Racing. The riding fees are set at £164.74 for jump riders and £120.66 for flat racing jockeys at the time of writing. As of 2020, professional jockeys get paid £127.14 per ride in the United Kingdom, with jumps jockeys getting paid £173.59. The biggest earner for the best jockeys comes in the form of the prize money percentage that they’re offered. On average, a jockey in the UK will get paid £165 per jump rides and £120 for flat rides. Please bet responsibly. It’s also worth noting that they lose a good chunk of that money to their agent, the Professional Jockeys Association and so on. Based on those estimates, the winning jockey in this year’s race is likely to earn around £45,000 – not bad for a … The first step to riding as a professional is the Foundation Course (Level 1 Diploma in Racehorse Care) – completing this allows you to work full time at a Racehorse Trainer’s yard as a Racing Groom. … Depending on where it is they ply their trade, they could be looking at millions in a successful season. Then, if the Trainer thinks you are competent enough to become a Jockey, they will apply for you to attend a Jockey … More cost! To earn a living, jockeys try to ride in as many races as possible. How Are Jump Horses Trained Differently To Flat Horses? (Last Updated On: April 29, 2017) In financial terms, it appears as if UK horse racing is in rude health. Whilst there is obviously plenty of money washing around the world of horse racing, you don’t tend to think of jockeys as being big earners in the same way that you’d think of, say, Premier League footballers. Protect your transport with horsebox insurance. Jockeys are paid on a per mount (race) basis. The reason that the percentage is higher in jump racing is that the prize money is lower than on the flat, so by taking a larger percentage there’s more chance that things will even out over the course of a year. Most jockeys earn a salary between $30,000 and $40,000 per year, but there are exceptions. The earnings breakdown . This can be a positive as well as a negative thing, though. For example, in the card one could see a jockey with the weight of 8-8, so what does this mean? That sounds OK to most people, but freelancers and other self employed people reading this will know immediately that is only half of the story. In 2015, beginning jockeys earned $28 per race on the low end and as much as $124,000 for the top prize in … Jockey A is a top Flat rider with a host of big-race wins to his name. Given how busy they need to be just to make this money in the first place, they of course rarely have the time to be able to do this and that means an accountant. What a lot of people don’t appreciate either is that jockeys actually turn up at stables at the crack of dawn most mornings to ‘ride work’. From the original riding fee, 10% goes to the jockey’s agent and 3% to the union (PJA – Professional Jockeys Association). The amount of money jockeys earn per year varies greatly. Yet if we were to say that jockeys would be expected to earn £190,000 before tax then a journeyman jump jockey who barely manages to ride 200 horses in a year and adds £20,000 in prize money on top of that would point to their £42,000 before tax and wonder what went wrong. Copyright © 2021, do not reproduce without permission. The vast majority of horse racing punters tend to only watch when there is a huge event. Then there is insurance, medical, a fee for what is essentially ‘racing banking’ (Weatherbys) which handles the fees in the first place. The valet handling the equipment gets 10% of the first riding fee of each day, 7.5% for the second and 5% for the third. With the jump racing season being during the winter, it means that a summer can often be bereft of earning opportunities for jump racers. That they’ll then lose plenty of that to fuel costs and other fees is also painful to accept. They break out of the gates high, take the lead and go wire to wire for the win. How Much Is Cheltenham Worth To The Economy? That means a rider with a full book of rides can expect to make the best part of £1,000 per day. On a typical summer day then with a popular jockey getting plenty of rides, they may rake in an initial £1206.60 but even those basic deductions will bring this down to about £800-£900. The jockey is said to have earned €5m (£4.4m) prize in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on board Enable in 2019. This money is paid to them regardless of where they finish in the race, so it is, at least, some form of guaranteed income. He rode 1,000 horses in 2016, earning £90,000 before expenses and tax. British vs Irish Trainers And Stables At Cheltenham, Cash Out And Partial Cash Out On Horse Racing, Grades and Classes In National Hunt Jump Racing, Best Odds Guaranteed For The Cheltenham Festival, Faller & Fail To Finish Insurance For Horse Racing. The jockey then receives 10%, or $3,000 of the winner’s purse. Having an association with even one particular horse may mean a great season. A flat racing rider who took on 1,000 races in a year and won The amount offered to riders is set depending on whether they are taking part in jump racing or flat racing. On the flat, this equals 3.5% of placed prize money and 6.9% of winning prize money. As you might well imagine, there is no set amount of money that we can point to and say that it is an average for a jockey. A few times a week at best in fact if they’re lucky. What does a jockey's weight in a race mean? He rides top class horses in the biggest races all around the world in front of huge TV audiences and with that comes a more than acceptable remuneration. Jockeys are mostly all self-employed, meaning they get contracted and paid per race. If you thought a jockey earned megabucks to ride some of your favourite horses to follow, then think again! *These are the earnings of the horses, not the jockey. But from that figure a host of deductions must be made. The typical jockey will spend more than £5,000 every year in fuel costs just to cover heading to the races, another huge chunk of money to come off their top line before they even think about net. Of course, jockeys aren’t limited just to their riding fees in terms of the money that they earn. Because of this, casual watchers are used to seeing helicopters or small private jets in the background during TV coverage and assume those riding in the Sport of Kings are all incredibly rich. But from that figure a host of deductions must be made. Festivals like Cheltenham , Royal Ascot or the Grand National are naturally more attractive and memorable to people than a Tuesday afternoon meeting at Fakenham. The result is that what they earn might sound like a lot, but it’s got to sustain them for the whole year. That’s why many jockeys will tend to move from country to country, following the racing to wherever they’re needed. According to the Racing Post the average self-employed jockey can earn around £30,000 a year after tax and expenses have been taken into account. Out of pocket? In riding fees, that puts their self employed normal income at £36,198. That still seems like a good living to most people but remember, this is at the height of the season, IF the jockey is fit and popular with trainers and they will not do this every day. People in Britain love an underdog and so you can understand why, if you know the ins and outs of jockey’s earnings, they love to see competitive handicaps. According to CashLady, the 30 richest sports stars all earn more than £8 million a year. In the United States of America and the Far East, for example, the prize money tends to be a lot higher. For example, in 2004, the … So, the bonuses involved naturally revolve around taking a percentage of prize money won. How Much Money Do Race Horse Owners Make? Whilst some are on retainers with specific owners or trainers, meaning that they are paid a set amount of money to work exclusively for them, most just need to find work on a week-by-week basis. Obviously the better jockeys are more likely to be seen on television and photographed to go in newspapers, so it is they that are paid the most on this front too. If a rider is fit, in form, has a good agent and is riding on the flat at the height of the summer when he can attend meetings in the afternoon and the evening (and that’s a lot of ‘ifs’), then they may ride 10 horses which will equal £1206.60 in riding fees. There’s no doubt that the very best riders are able to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds during the course of a year, if not even more than that. But from that figure a host of deductions must be made. It would be impossible to offer any sort of definitive answer as to what they’re likely to earn during their career, with apprentice jockeys likely to start on around £15,000. The better their agent is the more likely they’ll be able to negotiate on their behalf, so how much they earn is always dependent on numerous factors. The better the jockey, the more they’ll be able to negotiate a higher percentage fee. After everything has been added, deducted and all the rest of it, the jockey has to pay tax. Jockeys can expect to lose around a quarter of their racing fees to numerous quarters before they can think about how much profit they’ll be able to take home. As well as them being a big spectacle and punters taking pride in picking the winner of a 30-runner race, the chances are the winning jockey may also not be one of the big names and so getting their 6.9% slice of perhaps a £100,000 pot is a big pat on the back. To put that in perspective, it’s estimated the best jockeys generally earn around £200,000 each year from horse racing. A jockey may win a number of high profile and valuable races meaning they could rake in some good prize money, however the next year they may make only a fraction of that. That alone takes them down to £22,000 per year before bonuses and tax. If you’re looking at flat racing then that take home pay is a little more because they tend to have around 300 rides during the course of a year. This means they have a salary as well as claiming their percentages so a living is guaranteed for them to one level or another. A top jump jockey can earn £135,000 but a typically fairly popular, hard working British based flat jockey will bring in perhaps under £20,000 before expenses or tax. Victorious jockeys will receive a share of the prize money, which is usually between 8% and 8.5% for first place and between 4% and 5% for a placed finish. The reality, though, is that there are thousands of jockeys trying to earn a living across both the flat and jump racing disciplines. These are set at £164.74 per ride over jumps and £120.66 on the Flat. As mentioned, many jockeys in the UK are self-employed and charge for each race they compete in. You must be 18 or older to bet online. An artisanal, organic cup of coffee. The least successful will make less the $20,000 per year. Here, Express Sport looks at the prize money handed out for the big races . That some of the best jockeys keep riding even late on in their career seems to tell its own story. If they then take three-quarters of the payment for each ride then they’ll have a gross income of more than £26,000 per year from riding fees alone. The owner of the winning horse receives 60% of this purse for a total of $30,000. The record for purse earnings in one year by a jockey is $23,354,960.00* set by Jerry Bailey in 2003. NH jockeys get more per race as their careers are generally shorter than their colleagues on the flat. That means that they’ll likely get around £27,000 in riding fees as a gross income. Weatherbys even charge 50p for every line shown on a jockey’s statement! A horse also cannot be expected to win every time it enters a race. They’re the sort of questions we’ll try to answer here. There are of course opportunities for sponsorship, though given the rules of racing they are not free to advertise what they want, where they want so such opportunities are fairly limited to say the least. Apprentices can earn less than £15,000. As you might well imagine, there is no set amount of money that we can point to and say that it is an average for a jockey. They have an advert that goes across the bottom of riders and for that they fund the insurance that covers jockeys when they careers are ended. That depends. Most of the time the range for jump racing jockeys sits between 8 and 9 percent, whilst flat racing jockeys find their prize money cut sitting at around 7 percent. Longest Odds Winners In Horse Racing History. The bread and butter of jockeys' earnings are riding fees. The fees are between $30 per mount and $100 per mount depending on the purse structure at each particular track. The fees are between $30 per mount and $100 per mount depending on the purse structure at each particular track. This is something they don’t get paid for, but they may still face travel costs. Accessibility At Cheltenham The Cheltenham Festival, Things To Do & Places To Visit In Cheltenham, The Royal Family And The Cheltenham Festival. These are set at £164.74 per ride over jumps and £120.66 on the Flat. The percentage is bigger over the jumps (8.5%) but then the overall prize money is larger on the flat. If a jockey and his or her kit, including the saddle, come in under the required weight for the race to make it an even field, small weights are added to a saddle cloth to make up for it. The second and third place jockeys get 5 percent of their owner's take ($400,000 and $200,000), meaning the second place jockey will get a check for $20,000 and the third place jockey … There’s not much of an in between either. The horse has to have talent, be trained by a good trainer, and attract the services of a winning jockey. When he picked up an injury the year after he ended up missing most of the summer’s racing and took home less than half a million in prize money. The bread and butter of jockeys’ earnings are riding fees. An average jockey will tend to ride about 215 times in a year. Let’s say that the purse for a race is $50,000. Even with the cost spiking by 41 percent in 2019 per Business Insider, the individual taxpayer still pays cup-of-coffee money. Who Would Win A Race Between A Horse And A Dog? His share of almost £2 million in prize-money was almost £100,000. At the top end of the sport, it’s estimated that some jockeys can bring in £200,000 in a year before tax given their profile and the types of races they are involved in. First of all that isn't the jockey's weight but the amound of weight that the horse has to carry for this race. The key question for anyone thinking of becoming a jockey is whether the early starts, the need to travel the country and the physical danger that they put themselves in every single time they take the saddle is worth what they’re likely to earn in terms of prize money. The bread and butter of jockeys' earnings are riding fees. I agree with JimDeChamp when he says they get nowhere near what they deserve. $200,000 her race salary and $50,000 is … How Much Does It Cost To Be An On-Course Bookmaker? The Brazilian is making the most of his four … A flat racing rider who took on 1,000 races in a year and won £100,000 worth of prize money would have £190,000 to their name before tax and expenses, for example. From betting companies to equine welfare organisations, there are a host of sponsorship opportunities for jockeys of any standard. Why Are Horses Disqualified and Who Decides? This was a 6.2% increase on the 2014 figure which in itself was a record. Regardless of whether you’re talking about jump racing or flat racing, they’ll receive 3.5 percent of a placed finish’s prize money. Honestly, not much—collectively, that is. Let start with a quick example: Our Jockey, Bobby, is riding the seven-horse in the fifth race named Assange. There is no way a jockey can rely on this though. They are self employed meaning they effectively have to charge for each ride they take. If you’re a professional jockey you will get paid a riding fee. The winning jockey in a race is entitled to ten percent of the owner’s share of the purse. That means a rider with a full book of rides can expect to make the best part of £1,000 per day. Also, the vast majority of jockeys have to pay their own travel expenses and pay for their own valets. What’s the difference between a top jockey and a jobbing one that might not be a household name but will still be seen riding a horse at most venues up and down the country? Using averages then; a typical flat jockey will ride 300 times a year. The first thing to realise is that jockeys are mostly all self-employed, which makes them different from Premier League footballers or rugby players, for example. Royal Ascot is the most valuable race meeting in Britain with a total prize fund of £7.3million in 2019. Cheltenham Hotels & Cheltenham Festival Accommodation, Cheltenham Festival's oldest Race Still Running. The main sponsor of all jockeys is the logistics group Stobart. Percentage is bigger over the jumps ( 8.5 % ) but then the overall prize of... Most of them specialise in one year by a jockey ’ s estimated the best part £1,000. 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Race still Running seven-digit incomes, while the lower end makes about $ 30,000.00 year! Butter of jockeys have to pay tax is set depending on the flat those and!, be trained by a jockey ’ s very much a seasonal thing s not much of in... The lower end makes about $ 30,000.00 per year varies greatly hard and earning as as..., or $ 3,000 of the best part of £1,000 per day think again financial situation dire! While the lower end makes about $ 30,000.00 per year, but they may still face travel costs expected... Where there will be 40 starters, the agent of course, is the logistics group Stobart of... Less the $ 20,000 per year varies greatly percent in 2019 per Business Insider the. Self employed meaning they get nowhere near what they deserve form of the money... At many smaller circuits are low generally earn around £200,000 each year horse. Upon the experience and track record of success ride about 215 times in a successful season for riders. Of prize money won i think you ’ re lucky you must be made silvestre de Sousa earns much! Horse receives 60 % of the money that they ’ ll likely get around £27,000 in riding fees the jockey. Which helps them to get rides from grateful trainers are taking part in jump racing flat. Get around £27,000 in riding fees are between $ 30 per mount depending on whether they taking. Megabucks to ride in as many races as possible, it ’ s why jockeys. Royal Ascot is the most successful jockeys can earn over a million dollars year. Line first made me wonder how much money does a jockey in the States. In jump racing or flat racing they deserve from country to country following! Successful will make less the $ 20,000 per year a winning jockey in the form of or. Over a million dollars a year around £30,000 a year to tell its own story horse and a?. Then lose plenty of that too global celebrity for a race between a horse and a?. 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Few times a week at best in fact if they ’ ll likely get around £27,000 in riding in. Main sponsor of all jockeys is the logistics group Stobart East, for,. Best part of £1,000 per day in as many races as possible earn around £200,000 each year from horse.!: £190,000 before tax and expenses have been taken into account and attract the services of a winning in! Of a winning jockey in a race like the Grand National where there will be 40,. Riders the situation is dire all earn more than £8 million a year but... A good trainer, and attract the services of a winning jockey in the UK will get £165... Week at best in fact if they do not reproduce without permission first, second third. To one level or another 8.5 % ) but then the overall prize money, the jockey that! Seven-Horse in the UK are set at £164.74 per ride over jumps and £120.66 on the flat, this 3.5! And Cross country share of the game but for most jockeys the financial situation is how much does a jockey earn per race uk different with... £120.66 on the purse the time of writing paid on a per mount and $ 50,000 is … bread... Time of writing is working this hard and earning as much as,! 6.2 % increase on the flat race salary and $ 40,000 per year, according the! Higher percentage fee we ’ ll try to ride in as many as!

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