The success of partnerships over the past few years hasn't escaped the notice of anyone in horse racing. Not only can people now invest hundreds of dollars and get a piece of a Derby winner, but the owners with the deepest pockets in the sport can get together and get shares of more high-priced horses than they could do alone.
But while much has been made about the difficulties of retaining breeders in racing-be they breed-to-race or commercial breeders-other than the odd foal share, the partnership model hasn't really caught on in breeding.
That is changing with the introduction of Taylor Made Premier Mare Packages (Taylor Made PMP), a way to replace what Mark Taylor calls “the legacy category of Taylor Made customers.”
The PMP program is currently comprised of 18 mares owned by 40 breeders. Of those, Taylor estimates that 20 are brand-new to horse racing, 10 were previously in breeding and left it, and 10 also own mares on their own.
Three decades ago, says Taylor, “There were a lot of car dealers, a lot of people that maybe owned banks or were in oil and gas. If you look back at the '90s and early 2000s, and said, `what's Taylor Made looking for in terms of a core customer?' We were looking for a car dealer that falls in love with this game and wants to allow us to build them a five-to-20 mare broodmare program.”
Those people are becoming increasingly hard to find.
“That generation of people is dying off,” he said. “The ones who remain are in their 90s, and in many cases selling out, and the new wealthy generation isn't as interested in horse racing as their predecessors. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to find as many of those kind of people that want to go full out, who might invest somewhere between one to seven or eight million to breed horses in a big-time way.”
But just like the Oakland As couldn't afford to replace Jason Giambi with one player in the famous scene in Moneyball, the Taylor Made crew has discovered that those breeders can be `recreated in the aggregate.'
“There are 350 million people in America,” says Taylor. “We're having a harder time finding people who are willing to put in that one to 10 million dollars, but there are tons and tons of people who could put in a couple hundred thousand.”
Brad McNulty is one of them.
Brad McNulty (center) with King Charles, Tom Marquand and Donnacha O'Brien at Royal Ascot after Porta Fortuna's win | Horsephotos
A commercial insurance broker in Indianapolis, McNulty and his wife, Lissa, follow horse racing all over the globe. They have spent wedding anniversaries at Longchamp and the Curragh, love to go to the Derby and Breeders' Cup, and build every vacation around racing. The one caveat they agreed upon was that they would never own a racehorse.
But McNulty thought he just might be able to get around that rule by arguing to Lissa that owning a broodmare was different. Surprisingly, he said, she agreed, and so he invested in a couple on his own. He found it a discouraging experience.
“You want to play at a high level,” he said, “but I didn't sell 10 McDonalds or two internet start-ups,” he said. “Most of the people in the horse business are people like me. I have a nice job, I'm a partner in a commercial insurance company in Indiana but I don't have the means to go play at a high level like I would enjoy. I found that out pretty quick when I was trying to find a nice broodmare, and couldn't afford to go to the best stallions, so you're playing at a level where you can't get ahead. Expenses just eat your lunch.”
That could have been the end of his exercise in breeding-another person lost when the struggle of trying to profitably breed mares at a lower level is challenging, at best.
But he came across Taylor Made when he was selling those broodmares and their offspring.
“I'd walk around sales and there's a reason they're at the top of the list,” said McNulty. “Just like their motto says, `With us you're family.' They treat everybody with respect.”
McNulty was so impressed with them, he argued for another exemption to the “no horses” rule with Lissa once they got out of breeding. Racing partnerships.
“I started looking at different investments, and then I jumped into Medallion,” he said.
They had immediate success, being one of the investors in Porta Fortuna and were on hand when she won races at Royal Ascot in 2023 and 2024. With his past interest in breeding, it was easy to slide over into Taylor Made PMP.
In PMP, people buy into individual mares and sell their offspring. The power of the group allows them to buy more expensive mares and invest in more expensive stud fees to increase their chances of commercial success. That sounded like a pretty good deal to McNulty.
Says Taylor, “(The partners) are going to be commercial breeders and they're going to get involved in the whole process–picking the mares and the stallions and trying to breed a great horse. It's a passionate pursuit. That was how we would've described our ideal customer 15 to 30 years ago.”
Each mare is an individual unit that is syndicated. “Some people might say, `Hey, I've got a hundred thousand. Put me in one nice mare, and that's going to be my thing,'” said Taylor. “She's going to be my little business unit. I'm going to learn the whole process. We're going to play this mare out, see if we can breed a really nice horse and develop long-term value.”
Mark Taylor | Keeneland
As an added benefit, Taylor Made provides a concierge service and full access to the farm. “They've got open access to Taylor Made,” said Taylor. “They got friends coming in for Keeneland, they've got friends coming in for the bourbon tour. All they have to do is pick up the phone and say, `Hey, my buddies are coming in. Can you give them a farm tour? Can you set them up with hotel and dinner reservations? Can you put together an itinerary or some other stuff they might want to do?' We're seeing ourselves more as full-service experience curators with a horse farm at the core. And what we're finding is there are a lot of these people that think it's a great bang for their buck. This is really fun. Breeding horses is really cool. And yeah, it's got ups and downs and heartaches, but that's what makes the highs so high. It's not easy.”
As for McNulty, he's a walking Taylor Made advertisement.
“If you don't like having King Charles hand you a trophy at Royal Ascot?” he says. “Don't like winning at Keeneland or Belmont? Medallion isn't for you.” He's not only equally passionate about PMP…he's also off to a hot start.
“Lissa and I loved being breeders, but you're going to the sale hoping to halfway to get out on a weanling or a yearling,” he said. “Because we were in Medallion, three or four years ago, Alex Payne said to me, `we're doing this premier mare program.' He said, `we have a Tapit mare, Diamond Ore. She's a half to Arrogate, and she's in foal to Charlatan.” That sounded pretty good to McNulty. The group paid $750,000 for her after she RNAd at the 2022 Fasig-Tipton November sale, and sold that Charlatan yearling for $550,000 at the 2024 Saratoga Sale, recouping a sizeable portion of their investment on her first foal. She's now in foal to Nyquist. “I couldn't afford to go to Nyquist on my own,” says McNulty.
McNulty is also a partner in an American Pharoah mare, Space The Win, purchased for $115,000 at Keeneland January in foal to Maclean's Music. “We are bullish on American Pharoah mares,” said Taylor. “His daughters produced the top two finishers in the Grade III Santa Ysabel this week, of course he is the broodmare sire of Barnes. River Thames looks to be the next big-time horse for Maclean's Music. This is the type of mare that we felt was slightly undervalued at the time she went through the ring.”
Also in the PMP program is Twinkling, the dam of the seven-time graded stakes winner Skippylongstocking (Exaggerator), purchased as he was emerging as a good horse. She sold an Authentic filly in Keeneland September Book 1 last year, and has a Not This Time yearling filly to sell in 2025.
The program both buys horses privately, and raises money to target mares they feel are undervalued at sales. Their purchases have cost between $115,000 and $750,000. They own In A Jif, the dam of Cogburn, who is currently in foal to Into Mischief, with an Epicenter yearling on the ground who will be pointed towards Keeneland September.
Taylor Made typically takes a share in every mare they syndicate.
“We're losing one category of breeder, so we've got to come up with a new one,” said Taylor. “They're not quite as uber-wealthy, maybe, as some of the ones we had before, but they can still be part of something really special.”
For McNulty, who now owns parts of three mares, it has been just that-special.
“It has been great to be in the business, and Taylor Made helps you understand all of it. You just sit back and enjoy the fruits. They treat you like family. It's both tangible and intangible. You can go see the horse, touch the horse, see the farm. That's the tangible part. And the intangible is the investment side. Anybody I've taken down to Taylor Made, they want to be a part of it, too.”
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