Racing needs to grow up and do business with a Fred Done-owned Tote

The Tote's future at Britain's racetracks will be a source of speculation now the Betfred betting chain has taken over its running. Photograph: Julian Herbert/Getty Images

In a sense it seems fitting that a process beset by false hopes and broken promises for a decade or more should conclude with racing flushed by embarrassment. It came down to a two-horse race to own the Tote, and there was no need to get involved, but racing's leaders still decided to walk up to the betting window and stake what credibility they had left on one of the rival bids. With grim predictability it lost.

It is pointless to spend much time going into the miserable history of the sale of the Tote, of how a process that started out with a proposal to transfer the ownership of the whole operation to a racing trust turned into the sale of a nationalised asset. Of how the EU got involved and how racing offered £320m, significantly more than Fred Done's winning bid, several years ago, only to be told that the Treasury – apparently staffed by people who do not know the deal of the century when they see it - wanted £400m instead. And then how it all came down to a speculative bid from City people versus a more solid offer from a bookmaker, and racing weighed in with its City mates because it could not bear to do business with a bookie.

It is pointless because it is now history, though whether the various grandees from the British Horseracing Authority, Racecourse Association and Racehorse Owners' Association who supported the rival bid led by Sir Martin Broughton will see it that way is another matter. After all racing people have long memories. The sport is still full of people who were not even born in 1961 but still hark back to the legalisation of betting shops and complain that racing "missed its chance" to get an off-course Tote monopoly; and the scars from this process are still raw.

The anti-bookie prejudice runs deep, thanks in part to the Levy system, which has forced racing and betting to square up as adversaries for the last 50 years when it should be in the commercial interests of both sides to maximise betting turnover.

There have been suggestions, for instance, that some racecourses might refuse to do business with a Done-owned Tote. That would be one of the most stupid and wilful acts of spite that even the sport of racing has seen.

There was a clear hint too in a leaked email sent by Ian Barlow, the RCA Chairman, to his members earlier this week that the tracks are working on "the development of our own betting business" in anticipation of a victory for the non-preferred bidder.

The area of expertise of the executive who seems to be charge of this project is . . . media rights. Done, on the other hand, has spent most of his adult life building up . . . a betting business. But that is not good enough for some, perhaps many, of racing's rulers, both at the courses and beyond. It seems that they might prefer to go it alone, regardless of the fact that they cannot compete with Done's watertight monopoly on pool betting, rather than share any success – not to mention the burden of much needed investment – with a bookie.

One politician who has taken a close interest in the whole process suggested yesterday that it was time for racing to "grow up" and accept that it will need to do business with Done whether it likes it or not. If it can do so, then the Tote's progress towards a point where it might make a significant contribution to racing's future finances could start immediately.

But are they capable of growing up? Do they even want to? The decision to throw in their lot with the Broughton bid suggests that, when it comes to accepting commercial realities, many of racing's administrators have not even reached adolescence. If they cannot start acting like adults, and quickly, it might make more sense to get a fresh set of administrators, with a less cluttered outlook on business and life
.