Racing League 2024: All you need to know about this year’s competition

Racing League is back! Seven teams, six Thursday nights, 42 races and £2m in prize money up for grabs; watch all the action live on Sky Sports Racing.

Thursday night will see the first meeting of this season take place at Great Yarmouth with the seven regional teams clashing. This six-week competition will see Team Yorkshire, The North, Wales and the West, London and the South, the East, Ireland and Scotland compete for the next six Thursdays.

What is Racing League?

Racing League was formed to bring a new team aspect to horse racing and hopefully with that a new audience. The first season was 2021 with the competition getting fiercer each year. Each week will have seven races with an optimum 14 runners, two horses from each team competing for points. This format will apply at every course apart from Wolverhampton which will have only 13 runners due to safety reasons.

The star jockeys to date have been Saffie Osborne, who has won the leading jockey title for the last two years in a row. Kevin Blake has opted for a young team for Ireland as they hope to retain their title from last year with Billy ‘The Kid’ Loughnane hopefully having a big impact, while stars like Oisin Murphy, Hollie Doyle and Sean Levey feature across the teams.

This year’s six meetings are:

Yarmouth – Thursday July 25
Wolverhampton – Thursday August 1
Chepstow – Thursday August 8
Windsor – Thursday August 15
Newcastle – Thursday August 22
Southwell – Thursday August 29

How it works?

Every fixture will host seven races of competitive action for you to support your team. Each team will have two runners in each race with 100 points to be won for each race split from first to 10th place and the team at the end of the six weeks with the most points will be crowned this year’s champions. First place is awarded 25 points, second place 18 points and third 15 points.

The team with the most points at the end of the six weeks will be crowned Racing League winners, the same applied to jockeys. Each team has a pool of trainers and begins with seven jockeys.

There is over £2m up for grabs in prize money plus an additional £50,000 to the winning team, £35,000 to winning team jockeys and £20,000 to the jockey that scores the most points.

The Joker

Each team manager will have two jokers to play in any of the 42 Racing League races when there are at least 12 horses running (or 11 when racing at Wolverhampton). The purpose of the joker is to be played when they are confident in their runner as it doubles the points won by the two horses representing them in that race. The double points are not applied to individual jockeys.

The team manager must announce that they will play the Joker directly before the selected race.

What happened last season…

The competition went down to the wire, relying on the last race to secure Ireland the victory from 2022 winners Wales and The West. A treble on the final night for Ireland just managed to end the close-fought battle between the two teams.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing for Ireland. After at the halfway point in the competition they were mid-table and seemed to be struggling. This year Ireland manager Blake has promised to come back stronger.

Saffie Osborne retained her leading jockey title for the past two years, and this year will not be letting it go lightly. Last season she really found great form including a treble on the opening evening.

The class of 2024…

This season will be more competitive than ever as Jamie Osborne wants his title back, Kevin Blake has tasted Racing League success and will not be relinquishing it and Mick Quinn, Linda Perratt, Chris Hughes and Leonna Mayor will be trying to claim the title.

An exciting addition to this season’s team manager’s is Hughes for the East, formerly managed by Frankie Dettori. He has painstakingly picked his seven jockeys and cannot wait to get started in his new role.

Our ambassador Hollie Doyle will take part for the first time this year for Scotland and will be looking to leave a mark. In the same team is this year’s youngest jockey, 17-year-old Tommie Jakes.

Watch the action from Racing League live on Sky Sports Racing