ENGLISH TEXTS metry of the much lamented Highflyer, by whom and his wonderful offspring the celebrated Tattersall acquired a noble fortune, but was not ashamed to acknowledge it.’ Tattersall passed the business on to his son Edmund who left it in his turn to his son Sommerville Tattersall. When the lease at Hyde Park Corner was up the company moved to Knightsbridge Green and bought premises in Doncaster and Park Paddocks in Newmarket in 1869 and 1870. The final sale in central London took place in 1939 but it was not until 1958 that the major yearling sales moved from Doncaster to Newmarket. In the first part of the twentieth Century the two most important commercial stud farms, Sledmere and Burton Agnes were both in Yorkshire and Tattersall’ s yearling sales were held at Glasgow Paddocks in Doncaster at the time of the S t Leger meeting. The Aga Khan III’ s entry into the market in 1921 and 1922 sparked one of the first bloodstock booms when George Lamton bought yearlings on his behalf including the Queen Mary Stakes winner Cos in 1921 and the following year the Classic winners Diophon and Salmon Trout, as well as Mumtaz Mahal, a flying filly herself and foundation mare for her owner and his family’ s stud farms. Mumtaz Mahal topped the Tattersalls Doncaster sale at 9,100 guineas, about 500,000 guineas in 2025 sterling. Tattersalls remains a privately owned family com- pany, and the dominant force in European bloodstock sales. In 1985 it took over the Ballsbridge sales in Ireland which became Tattersalls Ireland. In recent years it has acquired a stake in William Inglis & Son, Australia leading bloodstock auctioneers, and bought Brightwell’ s which held auctions at Ascot and Cheltenham. The company’ s turnover fluctuated with the business as a whole reaching a new high in 2007 of 245 million guineas. The worldwide recessions of 2008 were a setback, and this figure was not matched in real terms until 2017 when it reached 331 million guineas. Covid was another difficult moment to pass, and the next record turnover came in 2022 when it reached 413 million guineas. In 2025 turnover was 421 million guineas, in real terms 11 % down from the peak of 2022. In recent years, the company’ s principle yearling sales of October 1 and October 2 have accounted for around 45 % of its annual turnover, and the December sales of yearlings, foals, and breeding stock about 30 %. Comparisons with their competitors depend of course upon currency fluctuations, but its share of the European select yearling market has remained somewhere between 50-60 %. Sterling has been weak in recent years, it has lost about 20 % of its value compared with the euro since Brexit in 2016, but as few of Tattersalls’ major buyers receive revenue in sterling this has probably helped the company. The choice of Sheikh Mohammed to base his family’ s racing and breeding operations in Newmarket has obviously played a role in maintaining this dominance. The company has lost ground in some parts of the business, Europe’ s leading two year old in training sale is now held in Deauville by Arqana and the Goffs November foal sale in Ireland has a higher turnover than the Newmarket foal sale, but the core of the business remains the select yearling sales. Political upheaval in the Middle East will always cast a shadow over the bloodstock business, and for Tattersalls especially there is the question of what happens to Dubai’ s bloodstock interests after Sheikh Mohammed, but Tattersalls has survived many wars, recessions, and upheavals in the past. Robert J Goff was appointed official auctioneer to the Irish Turf Club in 1866 but the company which bears his name has been through many changes of ownership and structure since. In the early 1970’ s it was a small private company, on the verge of bankruptcy, which held its auctions at Ballsbridge on premises owned by the Royal Dublin Society, but when these were sold to the Allied Irish Bank in 1974 the auctioneers need a new base. The current Goffs complex at Kill in Co Kildare was built due in part to the backing of John Finney of the Kentucky auctioneers Fasig Tipton and in January 1975 Jonathan Irwin became the company’ s new managing
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