Jockey Christophe Lemaire told French media that “in Japan, horse racing is the second most popular sport, right after baseball,” a remark that sparked discussion on the “Nanademo Jikkyo G” (live-sports chat) board.
The thread split over whether horse racing or soccer is actually more popular. Some backers pointed to the fame of the Arima Kinen (the year-end Grand Prix race) as evidence for racing, while others pushed back with “nobody would watch it without betting on it” and “is it even a sport to begin with?”
On the popularity of horse racing in Japan, he explained: "Japan is a country where horse racing is massively popular — it's the second most popular sport after baseball. About 6 million people watch racing every week, and it gets huge coverage on TV, in newspapers, and other media. The jockeys are very well known. You might walk right past one on the street without noticing, but say the name and people instantly recognize it. Trainers' and horses' names are famous too. A horse in good form or a top jockey becomes the star of the moment. Almond Eye was on the level of a world-famous athlete, and since she's the winningest horse in Japanese G1 history, she naturally became a legend."
98AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:42
Re: #2 Maybe that was true back in the 1990s
4AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:10
If you count horse racing as a sport, it's absolutely bigger than soccer
7AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:11
I get that he's trying to say it's popular, but isn't sumo actually above it?
8AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:11
A nation of gambling addicts — someone fix this double taxation already (Japan taxes racing winnings both as "miscellaneous income" and again via the payout structure, a frequent complaint)
9AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:12
Once you've bought a ticket, you're locked in watching for sure. That's the power of horse racing.
12AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:12
I wonder how many years of a normal company's tax revenue the JRA rakes in from a single year of race meets. Though with jockeys mired in scandal after scandal, the people involved might be rotten to the core.
62AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:26
Re: #12 Even Urawa Racecourse alone pays something like 2 billion yen in taxes every year
13AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:13
Lemaire used to show up at Panasonic Stadium (Suita) back in the day — does he still go these days?
15AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:13
Wouldn't it make sense for horse racing to be right after baseball? Though sumo's in the mix too.
16AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:13
There's a chance horse racing is actually #1 🤔
17AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:14
If you couldn't bet money on it, wouldn't nobody care?
18AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:14
If you ask who's more recognizable — the current top horse in the JRA or the current top player in the J.League — the horse probably wins
26AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:15
Re: #18 The J.League survived 30 years on Kazu alone, don't mess around 😤 (Kazuyoshi Miura, the league's ageless veteran star)
34AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:17
Re: #18 Jockeys are probably better remembered by name among the general public, honestly. Racehorses retire after three years at the most.
20AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:14
If soccer-loving Lemaire is the one saying it, it must be true
21AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:14
As far as fan behavior goes, he's not wrong — you don't see racist banners at horse racing, and you don't see fans surrounding the team bus
25AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:14
My image of soccer is that it only really gets exciting during the World Cup
27AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:15
Like others here have said, I don't think of it as a sport. The jockeys riding the horses are definitely athletes, sure, but horse racing itself is gambling, not a sport. It's like saying horseback riding is Japan's second most popular pastime.
28AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:15
It's on terrestrial TV more than baseball or soccer, honestly
29AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:16
Horse racing's economic impact is definitely #2, no question
32AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:16
Is horse racing actually a sport though? 🤔
39AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:18
Re: #32 It's a sport — the whole point is determining the strongest horse
40AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:18
Re: #32 It gets covered in the sports section of the paper, so it's a sport (weak logic, I know)
61AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:26
Re: #32 Jockeys genuinely risk their lives out there, and it takes core strength, not just fingertips. Sure, there's an element of depending on the horse's raw ability, but I'd say it counts as a sport. Though watching it isn't really "watching a sport."
63AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:26
They've got a soccer league that draws 13 million fans a year, and people still wildly underrate how popular soccer is in Japan
70AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:29
Re: #63 Because nobody knows the winning team, let alone the top domestic player
69AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:29
I heard the J.League is at risk of losing out to Korean baseball in attendance
76AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:32
Re: #69 How bad is Korean baseball's attendance then, seriously 😩
75AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:31
The Arima Kinen has basically become a national event — it draws more attention than baseball's All-Star Game or the Japan Series
78AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:32
Re: #75 That's probably just because you like horse racing — the general public isn't that into it. Nobody actually knows who won.
81AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:34
Re: #75 Even people who never follow horse racing otherwise will place a bet just for the Arima Kinen. Meanwhile soccer went and moved the Emperor's Cup final off its New Year's Day tradition slot — what a dumb move that was.
85AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:36
I don't know if it's above or below soccer, but does horse racing really pull in 6 million viewers a week?
88AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:37
Re: #85 TV ratings run around 5%. For a G1 race, that's probably about right.
95AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:40
It's not a sport, it's just gambling. The number of people who'd watch a race with no money on it and go "wow, that was exciting!" is a tiny minority.
97AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:41
Re: #95 Soccer has the toto lottery too, you know (toto = Japan's official soccer betting pool)
114AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:46
Re: #95 I've never bet on it and I still enjoy watching. Even human track and field — basically a worse version of horse racing — is popular, so of course horse racing is entertaining on its own.
103AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:44
Re: #97 There's definitely a good chunk of soccer fans with zero interest in toto who just watch the matches
112AnonymousAug 25, 2026 17:46
Re: #103 That's becoming more common in horse racing too these days — credit to the JRA's efforts
Background and Key Points
Japan’s racing authority, the JRA, has genuinely become an entertainment juggernaut over the past 20-plus years — no small feat for a country with a horse-racing tradition barely a century old, imported and formalized only after the war. It runs on a state-sanctioned pari-mutuel model (the same betting-pool structure as the toto soccer lottery one poster mentions), which is exactly why the “nobody watches without betting” line keeps surfacing: JRA revenue and attendance are inseparable from the wagering, unlike gate-driven leagues such as the J.League. The Arima Kinen fan-vote Grand Prix, cited repeatedly here, really does pull casual bettors who ignore racing the other 51 weeks of the year, which is precisely why its popularity is hard to compare cleanly to a weekly sport like soccer.
The thread’s actual fault line isn’t “which is bigger” so much as “does gambling-driven attention count as sport popularity at all.” Boosters point to jockey name-recognition, wall-to-wall terrestrial TV coverage, and tax revenue as proof of scale; skeptics counter that none of that measures genuine sporting interest, only betting-market liquidity — hence the recurring jab that racing is closer to “horseback riding as a pastime” than a competitive sport.
What nobody in the thread lays out is the actual measurement problem: JRA weekly viewership and J.League season attendance aren’t comparable metrics to begin with, one counts broadcast eyeballs on betting races, the other counts paid stadium tickets, so both sides are arguing past each other with numbers that were never built to be stacked side by side. Readers unfamiliar with Japan should also know sumo, dismissed here in passing, has its own separate claim to the “after baseball” slot that this thread never resolves.
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