THEY say if everyone is thinking the same, then somebody isn’t thinking.

Throughout his business career, Kia Joorabchian has never been afraid to go against the grain and view things a little differently than others, an approach that has taken him quite the way in the world of football - and now horseracing.

Whether it be giving Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher a grilling when he feels the Premier League footballers he represents have been given a raw deal in the media, or changing between trainers and jockeys more frequently than many owners typically might, the 51-year-old sports mogul doesn’t stick to convention for the sake of doing so.

Born in Iran and hailing from a family with involvement in the motor trade, Joorabchian and his family emigrated after the fall of the Shah in 1979, spending time in Britain and Canada before settling in England. He studied chemistry and business studies at the University of London for a period, but went on to pursue a number of businesses in different sectors, including the stock market and fund management sector.

Funnily, though, it was a chance meeting with none other than Pele’s agent that opened his eyes to the potential viability of a career in football.

He represents several high-calibre clients. Though a quick glance through the Google results when searching his name flags up a few footballing controversies down the years, the man who famously brought top Argentine players Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano to West Ham in 2006 clearly has a rich level of involvement in the game.

Earlier this year, it was indicated that his football agency firm represents at least one player in nearly all Premier League teams. Big business indeed.

However, it is Joorabchian’s upwardly-mobile horseracing ownership vehicle, Amo Racing, that leads us to this conversation in the week he chased a first Royal Ascot victory.

The five-day spectacular is the meeting he craves success at more than any other, and a lifelong ambition for Joorabchian was achieved on Thursday when Amo’s Valiant Force became the joint longest-priced winner in Royal Ascot history with a 150/1 upset in the Norfolk Stakes. For good measure, he made it a double with King Of Steel in the King Edward VII Stakes yesterday.

Heading into the Royal Meeting, Amo’s increasingly prominent purple and white silks sat third in the British owners’ championship standings for 2023 on just shy of £800,000, behind only the Coolmore partners and Godolphin - and ahead of Juddmonte and Shadwell. Fair returns for an outfit that only notched its first winner in 2018.

“My first love is football, it always has been, but I’ve always loved racing too,” he says.

“I had my first racehorse 20 years ago but unfortunately those weren’t the best circumstances for me. I felt hard done by, with how it had been dealt with and how the horse had been sold to me, dealing with very experienced professionals. Normally when you get a bad taste in your mouth you shy away from things but I didn’t do that.

“Ever since, I’ve been quite passionate about racing as a sport. I think it has humongous group potential as a sport. There are so many elements and factors that make the sport more tactical and interesting than meets the eye.

“This is a sport where individuals can participate. Not all individuals can participate in a football game in terms of ownership, playing or coaching but everyone can actually get involved in racing.”

When including runners in all partnerships where Amo Racing is listed as an owner this year, there have been 76 individual runners represent the organisation in Britain, as well as a further 10 in Ireland. According to Joorabchian, approximately 30% of his horses are trained in America, giving an idea of the overall scope of his operation. A first Royal Ascot win this week was savoured with all the passion and emotion of scoring the winner in a Champions League final.

“We had been trying for a long time at Royal Ascot and kept getting beat but we got back up after getting knocked down,” says Joorabchian. “We work all year round for days like that.

“I think we might be one of the only groups from outside the norm to have come into racing. People wouldn’t normally do that. We’re hoping to prove to people that it’s possible to be done. We’re having a tough time because Goliath, in this particular case, is extremely big. David is struggling to compete but we’re giving it a good crack.”

Irish interests

One jurisdiction where Amo has made a decent impact in pattern company is Ireland.

As well as a Group 2 win with Crypto Force (trained by Michael O’Callaghan) in last year’s Beresford Stakes, the purple and white silks have struck on these shores with the likes of Go Bears Go (Dave Loughnane) in the Railway and Phoenix Sprint Stakes and Raadobarg (Johnny Murtagh) in the Irish Lincoln. British-based trainer Alice Haynes has also made successful raids for Amo to win listed events with Lady Hollywood and Fix You.

However, Joorabchian unexpectedly transferred Crypto Force from O’Callaghan’s Curragh yard to John and Thady Gosden in the aftermath of the Beresford win, and Raadobarg has departed Murtagh to run for George Boughey in the UK.

This season, Amo’s select Irish string appears to be almost exclusively trained by Adrian Murray, who has a close association with trusted Amo ally Robson Aguiar. That team was responsible for Tuesday’s excellent Coventry Stakes third Bucanero Fuerte and surprise Norfolk winner Valiant Force.

“We’ve cut down on our Irish racing, to be honest,” says Joorabchian, an Arsenal supporter at heart who insists he now supports his players as opposed to a specific team.

“One, it’s very difficult for us to manage it and, in fairness, I think the O’Brien factor is there too. Aidan, Joseph and Donnacha are fantastically super trainers who are doing great but their abundance of talent is so high that it’s very difficult to compete in Ireland.

“We also very much target UK racing because I’m based here and I get to see the horses at the races. Even with the US, we’re not targeting the west coast and are keeping it on the east coast to have the horses where I can visit.

“One thing I realised last year - that was very difficult for me - was that I never could get the chance to visit Michael O’Callaghan or Johnny Murtagh’s yards to see the horses we had there. I never really got to watch them run in Ireland because I’m so busy and that’s one of the main reasons it didn’t work for me. I can’t see them or feel them.

“I feel bad because Michael and Johnny did a very good job for me and it was nothing personal. I like them both and wish nothing but the best for them, but I’d like to be there when these horses run and experience it. When you participate in purchasing them and paying your training fees, you want to be able to watch them.”

Eyes on America

The American market is appealing to Joorabchian. Boosted by a win in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks with Affirmative Lady in April, Amo’s US wing has already earned over $1.4 million - including 12 winners and $810,478 in prize money from just 51 runners in 2023.

“We’ve had some nice stakes winners and we’re very close with our horses there,” he says.“It’s something we’re absolutely looking to increase, while having a more balanced field between there and Europe. We’ll try to have more horses in the US eventually and less in Europe.

“You see the sport is growing in America because the rewards are much greater in terms of prize money than here. Business is growing quite quickly, whereas the growth is slightly slower in the UK.

“Racing can be quite hard on the horses there, so they have to be tough and sound. The prize money has no comparison, though. When you win over there, or even come second, it makes the operation far easier to work. You’re struggling in Britain to have things work when you’re collecting £3,500 for winning a maiden. You can’t make it pay even if you’re winning multiple races.

“Take a weekend around Kentucky Derby time this year when we had seven or eight runners, including three winners in the UK and a second in America. The American runner made four or five times the money on their own than the three winners in the UK. It’s a good wake-up call. It makes you wonder how that is possible.”

Digital vision

Joorabchian has been making his own efforts to tap into racing’s commercial potential by funding the ambitious Omnihorse project, a platform that involves individuals purchasing a connection to a real-life racehorse by using cryptocurrency to buy digital certificates.

These certificates, called non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are tradeable and will apparently provide the basis for an online multiplayer horseracing game called Omniland that is currently being developed.

However, there was some media discourse at the beginning of last month that the project perhaps hadn’t caught fire to the degree expected yet. Joorabchian insists a full launch has yet to happen, and that time is needed before any assessment can be made on the innovation.

“There was a pre-launch, but the actual platform does not actually get launched until July so you can’t judge it yet,” he says.

“Once this is launched, you probably then look in 18 to 24 months as to how successful or not it has been. You can’t put a team together in one transfer window and win the Champions League - look at how long Manchester City had been trying to do that.

“I’m not sure why you would think that any business or sport would need to take off straight away or is a failure. These things need time.”

Speaking of top football teams, it was revealed last week that the Premier League could be set to introduce a new salary cap in a bid to even the playing field. According to reports, the move would restrict spending on player wages to the amount the bottom team are paid in television revenue.

Joorabchian says he would be in favour of racing introducing its own version of the Financial Fair Play regulations that have been rolled out in football. He is keen to grow interest in the sport and introduced prominent footballing clients such as ex-Liverpool stars Philippe Coutinho, Lucas Leiva and Pepe Reina to the racing industry.

Financial Fair Play

“I definitely think that racing could get bigger and thrive from more people coming into it,” he says. “The less people feel that it’s dominated by two or three groups of people the better.

“I often talk about American sports and the nature of them, where the spread of different teams winning championships is generally diverse. Every year, someone different can win it. That US system gives each fan a dream that it could be their year at the start of each season. You cannot forget that it’s the people who make sport what it is - not the other way around.

“You need much more transparency and people won’t like it, which is natural when you’ve been run by a bureaucratic group of people who are happy with the system and don’t want to see it challenged. Challenging it is not always easy, but if you limit people on certain things while creating a financial fair play system it will help any sport. It’s factual that it would bring more people in.

“I’ve tried to do my bit in bringing quite a few of my footballers into the game. I’ve tried to get them more excited and show you can make an impact, although every time we’re beaten they text me asking if I’m definitely sure that we can actually compete!”

On several occasions during the conversation, Joorabchian refers to a ‘David versus Goliath’ dynamic when it comes to Amo taking on some of the world’s most well-established racing operations. While they may be some way off the very top of the mountain in terms of the resources at operations like Coolmore and Godolphin, they have still become pretty significant players in their own right.

That was never better illustrated than when King Of Steel was narrowly denied in the purple and white silks by Coolmore’s Auguste Rodin in the 2023 Derby, filling the same position as Mojo Star in the same race in 2021. Even when speaking before King Of Steel’s sublime Royal Ascot success on Friday, Joorabchian indicated he would embrace the “great challenge” of another clash with the Epsom hero in future.

Sales impact

Amo’s presence has also been growing in the sales ring too. Crypto Force was bought for £900,000 at the 2022 Goffs London Sale, recent Surrey Stakes winner Olivia Maralda (part-owned by Philippe Coutinho) was a 460,000gns breeze-up buy last year and, in 2021, Amo and Robson Aguiar signed for 425,000gns yearling-buy Tony Montana.

A yearling brother to Savethelastdance (Galileo x Daddys Lil Darling) and fillies by Gun Runner and Omaha Beach were acquired at Keeneland last September for $575,000, $475,000 and $400,000 respectively, along with a $550,000 two-year-old acquisition by Into Mischief earlier this year.

All in all, Amo Racing - jointly or outright - signed for a total of 28 purchases at public auction last year, 19 of which went for six-figure prices.

With such significant figures at play, just how big could the burgeoning operation expand to become?

“We have to be realistic,” urges Joorabchian.

“The big guys are very big and they have extreme amounts of wealth behind them - we don’t have that level of four or five billionaires behind us. We don’t have the extreme number of horses and the number of mistakes we can make is far fewer than the big guys. They can make multiple mistakes and carry on but we can’t do that. We have to be wise and work very hard.

“One of the things which has come across is that my team don’t sit back. We work our rears off. It’s at all levels, including our pre-training team. People are up at four in the morning and work until seven or eight at night - sometimes they can do 20 lots. They do things that are unheard of in terms of their commitment and dedication. That is what it’s going to take for us to compete and fight at the level of the big guys.

“We won’t reach that level because we don’t have the same abundance of talent they can afford to buy, but we’ll continue to give it our best. We’ve been second in the Derby twice in the space of three years and those are the moments we thrive for, the moments we live for. If we carry on, I think we’ll compete.”

Joorabchian might not have expectations to be top of the table but his quality team are giving him every chance of hitting the back of the net at racing’s biggest events.

Who knows, a momentous Royal Ascot breakthrough might well light the fire for an even bigger assault on global racing’s giants. Powerful ammo incoming.