‘Horse racing never stops’: TAS founder Gary Crispe and son Stephen on the firm’s future
Gary Crispe tries not to look at the RAS share price, but his son struggles to take his eyes off it as the family behind the racing form guide data company look to ride out current challenges.
The final months of 1981 will forever be known as the sliding doors moment in the life of Gary Crispe.
The civil engineer and economist got accepted to do a prestigious Master’s degree at Harvard University. But having grown up in a family steeped in racing, he decided to follow his passion.
With three children under six, he moved from Brisbane to Canberra to join forces with Warren Block and the legendary Don Scott as racing manager and chief handicapper of the Superform ratings service.
He never looked back, preparing the handicapping standards, the form and ratings analyses that were included in Scott’s many books.
Crispe was also involved in the development of the Wizard Form guide, then the largest privately circulated form guide in Australia.
“Horse racing never stops. It is 24/7. If you are going to do it, you have to do it properly, because your customers and your clients actually demand that,” he now says.
In 1998 he co-founded a firm called Racing and Sports with IT professional Robert Vilkaitis, which over the last 25 years has become the foremost provider of data to the horse racing industry globally, now with a presence in 30 countries.
If you are looking at a form guide in almost any country where horse racing is big, it is likely Racing and Sports - whose holding company, RAS Technology Holdings (RAS), listed on the Australian Securities Exchange last year - provided the data behind it.
RAS offers wholesale Data, Content and Distribution, Wagering Technology and Services, Specialist Data Services and Digital and Media services to the likes of Entain Group’s Ladbrokes, Flutter Group’s Sportsbet and Betfair, Tabcorp, Bet365, the Hong Kong Jockey Club and Racing Victoria.
Ahead of the float, Gary’s son Stephen stepped into the CEO role after many years working in intelligence agencies and private organisations in the UK, US, Europe and Australia. The RAS chairman is former ACT chief minister Kate Carnell.
The float raised $29 million, including $14 million to fund the group’s international expansion plans in the UK, Europe and America, and secured the support of UK gambling behemoth Entain which took a 10.3 per cent shareholding as part of the institutional offering for the listing.
“The wagering technology side of the business is really where we are seeing the majority of the growth. That is around using our DNA in data to drive the trading and pricing capabilities, as well as leading to a full, turn-key solution which is going to be our Wagering 360 platform, a white label platform for operators looking to enter the market,” Stephen says.
RAS recently announced its first major partnership in the UK, a long-term contract with the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) that will see the RAS overhaul the GBGB’s database capabilities to help the governing body monitor and record all greyhound racing fixtures in the UK.
It has also struck a $5 million, five year deal with Entain to provide the British group with new thoroughbred content from major racing jurisdictions.
“The last 12 months has been massive, with the deployment of funds to largely bring on key resources to help grow and scale the business here and in the UK. Its been a big year in setting the foundation and the groundwork for what comes next,” Stephen says.
“The business has really taken a massive leap in maturity in terms of the culture, the way we operate, the way we are building technology and deploying that into global markets.”
Not an easy path
Gary Crispe tries not to look at the RAS share price, but his son struggles to take his eyes off it.
The float in late November through Ord Minnett issued 19.3 million shares to investors at $1.50 each.
They are now trading below 60 cents, more than 60 per cent below the issue price, after falling to as low as 40 cents at the end of May.
Its local institutional shareholders such as Washington H Soul Pattison are smarting, like many who invested in a rush of ASX floats in the second half of 2021.
The listing saw Gary and Robert cash in part of their substantial stakes in the company, netting the pair a $11.5 million windfall.
Together they each still hold 52 per cent of the stock and Gary remains chief commercial officer, while Robert is chief technology officer.
“I suppose it is difficult not feeling like you are letting people down. But I know the business today is stronger than it was when we actually listed,” Gary says.
“It is not an easy path that we are charting at the moment, when you are trying to break into countries like the UK and the US and you are a small business from Australia.
“But I think that we have the right people to be successful and I’ve remained confident that the people that backed this will get rewarded down the down the track . . . That’s why I’m still actively involved. Because I want to see that process through as much as I can.”
Stephen says while he looks at the share price every day and is accountable for it, he is also confident about the company’s growth agenda.
He jokes that while Gary and Robert took money off the table at the float, it was “back-pay” for the 20 years of over-time they put into building the business from their homes in Canberra suburbia, one of the few global firms to have emanated from the Nation’s Capital.
Indeed his father says the “buck always stopped” with him or Robert, which carried consequences.
“Customer service has always been the number one mantra for me. If you talk to our clients, that is the feedback we get from them all the time. For bookmakers running a business, minutes mean money. When you translate back to the personal situation, you are never off the job. That impacts the wife and the kids,” Gary says.
“We used to take Robert’s youngest son to the office when he was 3 years old.”
Gary’s eldest son, who is also named Robert, studied graphic design at university and in the early days of RAS, did the graphics for its first website.
While the 46 year old now works outside the business, his younger sister Angela - who is now 45 - has worked as a lawyer at RAS for many years. Stephen, who is 44, is the youngest of the three children.
“I think it’s fair to say the business never owed a dollar in its life. We were profitable from virtually day one and we have never borrowed any money . . . We had to scrimp and save to make things work and my wife Rosalie was a very big part of that as well, running the family home, the budget and things like that,” Gary says.
In 2000 he joined the iconic global ratings agency Timeform as its Australian handicapper, which brought him into the orbit of his cousin, the now late legendary Australian cricketer-turned commentator Richie Benaud.
Gary regularly attended many of the major international racing carnivals, including Royal Ascot where he used to meet Benaud.
“I probably knew him as well as any of the family did because he was pretty aloof. But he loved Timeform ratings. When he knew I was doing them for Australia, he reached out to me quite a few times,” he says.
“When our paths would cross at Royal Ascot, I would try to talk to him about cricket but he would always change the conversation to racing.”
Tough times
The toughest moment for Gary’s relationship with his youngest son came in 2007 when Stephen unexpectedly quit working in the family business to move to the UK.
Like his father, Stephen had been a self starter, forging his age on his first job application when he was 14 so he could pump petrol at the local service station.
“I was very sad at that time. But I knew it would be better for him in the long term and hopefully he would come back to the business at some point to run it,” Gary says.
Stephen returned to Australia two years later to confront the most difficult personal crisis of his life, the divorce from his wife when their two daughters were less than three years old.
He jokes now that he only got through with the aid of “lots of whiskey”. But he’s dead serious when speaking of the support he received from his father and mother.
“It was a tough time for me. I leaned on Gary a lot and that brought he and I really closer together. Having good and bad support can often lead you down different paths,” he says.
“You just have to grit your teeth. I am really glad I had mum and dad there. They supported me and got me back on my feet. I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.”
Gary says he and Stephen are “best mates”, which helped him support his son through the darkness of those years.
“When Stephen was going through some very tough times, I really admired the way he did that. I don’t think I could have done it. I think he showed tremendous character,” he says.
In 2011 Stephen built an IT consultancy providing services to government and private clients. The business had 40 staff and annual turnover of over $8m when it was sold it for a profit eight years later in a process that took 18 months to complete.
He returned to RAS in 2020 and has been on a trajectory to take over as chief executive since. His daughters are now aged 13 and 15, plus he has a four year old from his happy, second marriage.
He says he now wants to honour the culture built by his father and Robert his business partner.
“I’ve got a huge amount of respect for Gary. My mantra was come in and run this business, help mature it, help grow it, look after our shareholders, look after the share price. But also, it is looking after Gary and Roberts’ legacy,” he says.
“Once you lose that intangible, intrinsic value that’s built into a business through founders and other key members, the business falls apart.”
Stephen reckons he’s taught his father to not be so hard on himself, given anything less than perfection has always been hard for Gary to take.
“He’s built this great thing. Now he can sit back and enjoy a bit of that and let others carry the can,” he says.
Gary says his most important teaching for his youngest son has been the value of integrity and sticking to your word.
“It doesn’t have to be a truckload of paper. But if you don’t have integrity, or you break your word, you have nothing. I’ve done handshake deals with people in this business and those deals are still current today,” he says.
Over his 72 years, he’s also never believed in any substitute for hard work.
“I used to say to Robert when we were there working at midnight every night after 18 hour days: ‘Rob, when we are successful, people are going to say ‘Look at that pair of lucky bastards’,” he says.
“But luck played no part in it.”