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As good as the meeting is, surely Sandown are taking the mick in charging £40 to enter their premier enclousre for this Saturday’s fixture? I’m sure the meeting will be a sell-out and the course will call the day an overwhelming success, but I’m sure there will be more than one serious racegoer like myself who will now think twice about attending.
Haven’t been a paying customer there in years. Their ticket prices have been farcical for a very long time. They offer nothing in the way of value for money.
- Total Posts 438
The closest Premier League match on Saturday is a dozen or so miles up the road, at Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea face Birmingham City. The cheapest tickets cost £52 and the most expensive are seventy quid. Which represents better value: watching a load of overpaid prima donnas hoof a ball around for ninety minutes or enjoying an eight-race card which brings together the best of both flat and National Hunt racing?
I know where I’ll be.
- Total Posts 17716
If I meet with Sophia Loren I pay.
An extraordinary display of greed by Sandown.
That’s around £5 or £6 per race!
Still, as has been suggested, there will probably be more than enough mugs around prepared to pay the price. We British love to be ripped off, never happier than when paying well over the odds for things, whether it’s sports events, houses or cars.
I’ll give this one a swerve, I think.
It may well be steep but it is market forces.
If you owned a venue and you could fill it charging £40 a head, what would be the business sense of charging £20 a head for the same number of people?
As for value for money compared with Chelsea, that is easy.
Taking the cheapest Chelsea ticket that works out at 58p per minutes action and for the top price tickets 78p per minutes action.
Taking the RP standard times for each race the £40 Sandown admission equates to £1.49 per minutes action and the £28 Grandstand admission equated to £1.05 per minutes action
Coincidentally, I’ve just been trying to decide what Olympics tickets to go for. I can get tickets for the Olympic Stadium for a day which will feature 10 separate track and field events (admittedly the qualifying stages) for anything from £20 a head to £150 a head. Cracking value IMHO for a once in a lifetime experience for most people. Even better, my two children (will be 2 and 4 next summer) get in for £2 and £4 respectively.
It may well be steep but it is market forces.
If you owned a venue and you could fill it charging £40 a head, what would be the business sense of charging £20 a head for the same number of people?
As for value for money compared with Chelsea, that is easy.
Taking the cheapest Chelsea ticket that works out at 58p per minutes action and for the top price tickets 78p per minutes action.
Taking the RP standard times for each race the £40 Sandown admission equates to £1.49 per minutes action and the £28 Grandstand admission equated to £1.05 per minutes action
Racing is a wonderful, social day out. It can not be compared to attending a football match, where you are generally confined to a particular seat / area.
There’s much more to the day than just the ‘action’. Witnessing these incredible specimens up close is a privilege and the atmosphere less hostile. I would much rather look at dozens of beautiful thoroughbreds than Didier Drogba and company, but that’s just my opinion.
Sandown boasts a rare, high-class mixed card featuring eight races, including two graded chases, the Sandown Mile (won last year by Paco Boy) and the Group 3 Gordon Richards Stakes.
There will be a parade of National Hunt equine stars, including Ballabriggs, Big Bucks, Alberta’s Run, Zarkandar, Master Minded, Denman, Long Run, Bobs Worth and Captain Chris.
The weather also looks very promising.
We all hold different opinions on the term ‘value for money’, and I agree that it makes business sense to charge the advertised price.
If I arrived at 12:30 and left after the last race (5:20) then I would have paid between £18 – £40 for five hours of entertainment and enjoyment.
Yes, there are additional costs but, like any other sport, the budget for food and beverage is down to the individual.
- Total Posts 438
Paul: your value for money comparison with football is fundamentally flawed. Firstly, it assumes that the only "action" during a day at the races lies in the races themselves (what about paddock inspection, trophy presentations, etc?); secondly, your calculation is based on the hypothesis that football matches contain ninety minutes’ worth of "action". I can only surmise that you’ve never been to one.
Lighten up chaps – I was being ironic in the post about comparative value for money.
There is, of course, an intangible which cannot be quantified in terms of value and both Tuffers and Borasic are spot on with what they say.
I personally think £40 is too steep for the Sandown Premier admission on Saturday, especially when you consider you do not get much more in Premier than you do in Grandstand.
- Total Posts 17716
Firstly I’ve been to this particular Sandown meeting more often than any other sporting event in the UK.
Five hours entertainment? I’m a huge racing fan but I will never make that claim. The entertainment section of a day at the races accounts for 40 minutes or so if you include watching the pre parade. The rest is a social occasion. Many such events do not cost anything and provide a bigger variety of better value and quality catering options.
The free event held by my local community for the Royal Wedding will contain vastly more in the way of entertainment than any day at Sandown. The food options will be vast, affordable, of high quality and accessible.
The old compare this to that routine is tired and an accountants view of value justified by the returns to the businesses they work for. They are not reflective of value to the customer. Pricing is increasingly exclusive. Why should we be worried about how many underprivileged youth get into Oxford when many from that sector of the community will never be able to afford to go to a major sporting event?
Chaps , its easy , if you think its a bit steep (and it certainly is)..just dont go
This year I reckon some courses will struggle , the larger rich ones will keep ripping punters off , so the solution is , vote with your feet and if enough folk do the same , then they (greedy bustards ) will have to change their pricing
cheers
Ricky
- Total Posts 17716
As for value for money compared with Chelsea, that is easy.
Taking the cheapest Chelsea ticket that works out at 58p per minutes action and for the top price tickets 78p per minutes action.
Taking the RP standard times for each race the £40 Sandown admission equates to £1.49 per minutes action and the £28 Grandstand admission equated to £1.05 per minutes action
Only if your definition of
action
excludes foreplay.
Throw in pre-parade, paddock and winner’s enclosure and we get much better bang per minute than anything Premiere Div. football could dream about.
depending if your a jumps fan,it works out at a tenner a race as after the jumpings finished i go home as do others.
also isnt it a bit sad that we will see all these top horses in the champions parade but out on the track in the big race it looks to be another poor renewal.also isnt it a bit sad that we will see all these top horses in the champions parade but out on the track in the big race it looks to be another poor renewal.
I totally agree, the big race is unrecognisable to its heyday of being the Whitbread Gold Cup, we no longer see the likes of Desert Orchid "raising the roof".
I’m also no fan of the flat, meaning there will only be four jump races, so paying £40 for that isn’t value to me.
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