What a difference a year can make. Basher Watts spent part of the Derby weekend in the Jockey Club box at Epsom chatting to fellow guests Princess Zahra Aga Khan and her trainer Francis Graffard about the controversial stewards’ enquiry involving their respective fillies in the French 1,000 Guineas at Longchamp.
Skip back 12 months and the only chance of the trio exchanging words on a racecourse would have been if the Princess and Graffard had made the unlikely choice to order a crepe or waffle from Watts’ mobile catering unit.
It was only in June last year that Watts took the plunge and abandoned a job which he didn’t like too much – but which paid the bills – to follow his horseracing passion.
It was a calculated gamble, a ‘’leap of faith’’ as Watts describes it, but he emphatically backed a winner as a dizzying sequence of events testify.
In August last year, Watts had the first runner in his syndicate’s colours when Shes Perfect won a fillies’ maiden at an evening meeting at Haydock.
That daughter of Sioux Nation, the apple of Watts’ eye, was recently the subject of an unsuccessful offer of £2.2 million from a Japanese breeder after finishing first past the post in the French Classic in May, only to have the prize taken from her in the stewards’ room.
It was drama that was first joyously, and then agonisingly, captured on camera and played out in the social media world which Watts inhabits so infectiously that many of his followers have now become clients.
The situation has snowballed so successfully that Watts – or Bash to his friends – now has nine horses spread among three trainers and between 600 and 700 clients split between his syndicates and the Basher Watts Racing Club, which has no horses but from as little as £17.50 a month organises days at the races and trips to stables for like-minded racing fans who, just like Bash used to be, are looking for friends to enjoy their hobby with.
Watts is seriously guilty of understatement when he says: ‘‘It could not be going any better.’’
The 31-year-old has also done what fortunes previously spent on marketing has often struggled to do in the past in this sport – engage and bring people into racehorse ownership who would not have known how to become involved or, even worse, felt intimidated and unwelcome by what can seem an alien world.
Quite simply, Basher Watts has shown what can be done when racing and social media work harmoniously in tandem.
As we meet in the owners’ room at Bedford Lodge stables in Newmarket, the base of trainer Charlie Fellowes, the man entrusted with seven of the nine horses in his string, Watts outlines how one of the racing’s most iconic moments lured this novice into the sport.
“The roar of the Cheltenham crowd – that’s what got me hooked”
Watts, who has just added Rebecca Menzies to his trainer roster and has a National Hunt prospect in the Ben Pauling stable, says: ‘‘None of my family have been brought up around horses and I wasn’t taken racing when I was younger. I was around 17 or 18 when I saw my first thoroughbred up close.
‘‘I went to the 2011 Guineas meeting at Newmarket with a friend and we saw Frankel win the 2,000 Guineas on the Saturday. Then, the first bet I ever placed was £10 on Blue Bunting to win the 1,000 Guineas at 22-1. That weekend is the first memory I have of racing. It was a fantastic and I just got the bug from there.
‘’I had no idea what was going on, but I am a bit of an adrenaline-seeker. I love those exciting moments and the buzz. The big turning point was the first time I went to the Cheltenham Festival. The roar when a horse jumps the last, that’s what got me hooked.’’
Watts, who graduated from Buckinghamshire New University with a Business Degree, expanded his racing education when taking on a marketing role at Huntingdon racecourse, but when the desire to work for himself became too hard to resist and Watts left to launch his mobile catering business as The Food Dude, it was as a syndicate owner himself that he started to learn more about the sport.
As a member of the Millennium Racing Club, which supplied Watts with his first winner courtesy of the Fergal O’Brien-trained Une De La Seniere, and then with small shares in syndicates run by Nick Brown, Watts began to wonder if he might be able to set up on his own.
However, it still seemed a far-fetched concept until Watts started chronicling his days at the races on social media videos called ‘An Honest Day’s Punting’.
Watts recalls: ‘‘For 18 months it was in the back of my mind that I would love to start my own syndicate, so I used being part of them to learn and see whether I could make it work. But it wasn’t until I started posting content on social media that it was ever going to be a possibility.
‘‘I was just an average racegoer, as I am now, but people seemed to enjoy my content.
It can be hard for someone in their twenties to find mates who you can talk racing with and also go racing with
‘‘With ‘An Honest Day’s Punting’, I was showing my stakes and the winners and losers so people could see I was just like them. Often, I would not back a single winner. It was not fabricated to make it look better. I think a lot of people related to that and I built up quite a lot of trust.
‘‘I started it just to find other people who loved the sport. It can be hard for someone in their twenties to find mates who you can talk racing with and also go racing with.
‘‘For me, horseracing is the best sport in the world, but it is also one of the most niche sports.
‘‘If you stop 100 lads in the street and ask them who won the Premier League last season, 90 to 95 would tell you it was Liverpool. But if you stop 100 lads and ask them who won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, you would be lucky if five could tell you.’’
Watts also began posting on social media about his owning experiences. He recalls: ‘‘I did ‘An Honest Day as a Racehorse Owner’ following the horses I had a one per cent share in. It was the stuff you normally don’t see, from the horse being saddled to the jockey talking prior to the race.
‘‘I had loads of people ask me, ‘Who do you recommend for a syndicate and where do I find good one?’ and saying, ‘I would love to get involved but don’t know how’.
‘‘One day, just as I was about to serve at an event with my catering company, I put a quick video up saying it had always been my dream to have my own horse and telling people to let me know in the comments if they would be interested in joining me. Luckily enough, I had loads of people interested.
‘‘All the owners are through social media, with the older demographic more through YouTube. The older ones send me a nice email whereas the youngsters drop me a WhatsApp. I absolutely love having a wide variety of people involved.
‘‘When you see some syndicates, they all seem to be similar ages, but the amazing thing about ours is you have an 18-year-old sat next to a 30-year-old who has just started a family next to someone who is 50 and someone who is retired. I don’t think you would get these people in the same room unless they were sharing one passion. We are all just there for the love of our horse.’’
Unsurprisingly, Watts did not follow a conventional path in the purchase for €30,000 of his first horse Believe The Storm; he contacted someone he had met during a tour of the Irish National stud while on a friend’s stag weekend!
He explains: ‘‘I realise now how naive that sounds, saying to a random Irishman who I had only met once that I wanted to spend €30,000 on a horse, but I feel I am a very good judge of character, and you have to make mistakes to not get things wrong in the future.
‘‘I did everything wrong with Believe The Storm. He cost me hundreds of pounds every month because I charged way too little, but I learnt that for my next horse.’’
Watts chose Fellowes to train the son of Make Believe – who didn’t make his debut for 18 months but has won once and finished second twice in three runs – partly because he used to drive past the trainer’s Bury Road stable on the journey to Newmarket from his home in Dereham in Norfolk. But there was also logic behind the choice.
‘‘It was the best decision I ever made. I now consider Charlie one of my best friends,’’ Watts says. ‘‘If I had gone to a yard with 150-200 horses, I might not have got the one-to-one time that I get here with Charlie. Also, some of the old-school trainers might not want an owner who pushes a camera in their face. I am also learning as I go and sometimes ask stupid questions.
‘‘Charlie embraced that – now I run his social media. He’s young, enthusiastic, ambitious and a fantastic trainer.’’
For every horse in his syndicates, Watts has two WhatsApp groups, one for formal news updates and one to facilitate chats and discussions between fellow owners so they don’t feel like strangers when they meet at the track.
the amount of red tape and administration to get a syndicate going is ridiculous.
His background means Watts can view racing with objectivity and he admits he has experienced some frustrations. It annoys him that he cannot always gain paddock access for all his syndicate members, especially on days when some paddocks clearly have capacity.
‘’There is nothing more depressing than an empty parade ring. Tracks should be encouraging owners to go in there,’’ Watts says.
‘’We are in a tough spot and it has not been helped from within – there is a lot of resistance to change. I just know from becoming an owner the amount of red tape and administration to get a syndicate going is ridiculous.
‘’It took me six weeks to get a bank account open with Weatherbys. I remember saying to them on the phone I can get a Monzo account in five minutes. Things are so stuck; racing needs a new vision moving forward.’’
Great British Racing recently launched its latest marketing campaign for the sport, backed by £3.6m of Levy Board funding. What impact it will have remains to be seen, yet Watts understands there is a way forward if you hit a sweet spot.
“To get anyone to really connect with what you are doing, you have to communicate the feeling and that is why so many people have got on board with what I do. I am a very emotional character. When a horse wins, I am in tears,’’ Watts says.
‘‘People feel that emotion. I feel a lot of the marketing campaigns are very boring. It is tick-box and doesn’t communicate the feeling of racing.
‘‘I know friends who have gone to an Olly Murs show at Newmarket and when I ask them about the racing, they’ll say they had a picnic in the car park until it finished and then went in to see the concert!
‘‘We are getting people through the doors and spending at the bars but not really interested in the sport. Yet the majority of people I speak to will be in their twenties and I see their enthusiasm.
‘’Racing always seems to be reactive rather than proactive. It got to the point where attendances fell so badly at the Cheltenham Festival they had to do something. It shouldn’t be like that. It should be attendances are good, how can we grow them or maintain them rather than waiting for it to get so bad you have no choice.’’
There is little doubt the success of Basher Watts Racing is built around Watts’ personality. He is an engaging character. His personal touch is his big selling point, something he is aware he needs to maintain as he considers how big his operation ultimately might become.
Of course, he wasn’t named ‘Basher.’ His real name is James, but Basher stuck after his great grandfather gave him the nickname when he was loud and bullish as a toddler. It has worked in his favour as he makes an impact on the world of racing.
‘‘You don’t forget Bash; you’d forget James quite easily,’’ Watts says with a smile. ‘‘Everything I do I am just being myself. Take me or leave me, hopefully you’ll like me. People are watching me live my dream and I love it.’’
“The feeling we had was worth more than money”
The exploits of Shes Perfect, who cost €50,000 at the 2024 Arqana Breeze-up Sale, thrust Watts into the spotlight. The filly passed the post first in the French 1,000 Guineas in May, only to lose the prize when the Longchamp stewards deemed Kieran Shoemark’s mount had hampered Zarigana, who was promoted to first place.
A subsequent appeal by Watts and trainer Charlie Fellowes was dismissed by France Galop.
Watts says. ‘‘The thing that made it so painful was that initially we didn’t know there was a stewards’ enquiry. It wasn’t until after the winning photographs and Charlie had been interviewed that the TV presenter said, ‘You do know there is an stewards’ enquiry?’
‘‘We are not a massive organisation who can spend half a million quid. We spent €50,000 on Shes Perfect and hoped to get lucky. I could be doing this for 40 years and might never get that again. That was the bit that got me.
‘‘I didn’t think she had done anything wrong and still don’t, especially when you look at the drone footage and rear-camera footage.
‘‘It was extremely tough to take but I felt responsible for the mood of the whole syndicate. I said to them that if someone had said we would be second in a Classic at the start of the day we would have bitten their hand off and that we have one of the best fillies in the world.’’
Clearly, someone agreed, with a £2.2m bid for Shes Perfect received from a Japanese breeder before she was ninth to Gezora in the last month’s Prix de Diane at Chantilly, her stamina running out on the step up to a mile and a quarter.
The offer was overwhelmingly rejected after Watts put it to syndicate members.
He says: ‘‘Only one out of her 38 owners said yes. Everyone else said absolutely no chance. You get involved with horseracing with a tiny dream that you could potentially get one like her. That feeling we had for 15 minutes at Longchamp was worth more than money.’’
Shes Perfect’s defeat in the Prix De Diane has not altered Watts’ view. The filly has an entry in the Group 1 Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket’s July meeting and Watts is looking forward with trademark positivity.
He adds: ‘‘The overwhelming feeling was a sense of pride to have a runner in the Diane. You really got an understanding of how huge the occasion was. The race didn’t go how we wanted and you always hope to be more involved than we were, but we all had an absolute blast.
‘‘She has come out the race safe and sound and we now know to stick to a mile. She has an entry in the Falmouth. I would love to see her there – but we will see how she is.’’
