- This topic has 15 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 10 months ago by
.
- Posts
Here’s a piece I wrote on the subject. Free entry for midweek meetings? More bands? Racing only tickets on band nights? What’s your view?
How are courses supposed to do a “racing only” ticket on band nights, Simon?
Who’s going to throw everyone out after the last race?
I don’t really see much else courses can do, other than:Reduce prices on run-of-the-mill days.
Don’t promote drinking and throw out anyone causing problems.
Do more to explain what to look out for in the paddock (the horse is the star).Value Is EverythingI’d rather they just don’t hold concerts on racing days. Most of those who turn up don’t give a damn about the horses and those that do are basically discouraged.
Newbury is (along with Salisbury), my nearest track and it riles me that if I want to go to their decent summer Saturdays (ie: the Hungerford) that I have to pay triple the price because there’s a band or DJ playing afterwards that I really couldn’t care less about.
Hence, I haven’t seen the Hungerford in about 5 years.
I won’t get too drawn into the racecourses promoting drinking because I find it most annoying. I’ve witnessed a mass brawl at Newbury between drunk Cardiff and Swansea fans and I’ve also had someone try and pinch my binoculars.
I’d rather they just don’t hold concerts on racing days. Most of those who turn up don’t give a damn about the horses and those that do are basically discouraged.
Newbury is (along with Salisbury), my nearest track and it riles me that if I want to go to their decent summer Saturdays (ie: the Hungerford) that I have to pay triple the price because there’s a band or DJ playing afterwards that I really couldn’t care less about.
Hence, I haven’t seen the Hungerford in about 5 years.
I won’t get too drawn into the racecourses promoting drinking because I find it most annoying. I’ve witnessed a mass brawl at Newbury between drunk Cardiff and Swansea fans and I’ve also had someone try and pinch my binoculars.
I understand that brawl was a pre-organised fight. Not sure Newbury could’ve done much to stop it. Although often seen coach loads worse for ware before even entering the racecourse. Was that was true that day?
Keep them out!Am equi-distant between Salisbury and Newbury myself, Charles. Gave up my Newbury membership this year.
Value Is EverythingWont ever happen but a simple enough solution would be that everyone pays full price for a meeting with a band on afterwards and you get a part refund on the way out if you leave before they start.
The bands and the extra cost entailed has stopped me going to Haydock. I and many others are not interested in tribute bands, Haydock encourages drinking and is filled with intimidating people, even in the expensive enclosures. A pity.
The BHA needs to invest in a long term strategy to get more people, especially the younger generation, genuinely interested in racing. It needs to sell the sport using all platforms having worked out correctly which things about racing make folk fans of it (we all know what they are) and promote those things consistently. It also needs to calculate accurately which things put people off going racing (an example might be confusion regarding dress code/where one can stand) and eradicate those things.
All racecourses should follow the strategy decided upon at the higher level by doing the same things to attract paying spectators with minor wriggle room for each course to exploit any positive idiosyncrasy it has.
The aim is to have more folk paying to go racing than there are now and to have virtually all of them attending because they are very interested in the sport. That is why people pay to watch football and rugby matches, Wimbledon, The Open, etc.
Trying to attract paying customers by employing an uncoordinated and piecemeal approach, often incorporating things other than the actual racing to entice spectators is an incorrect plan. In general it is not proving successful in increasing the number of racing fans and, certainly judging by this thread, it is alienating existing racegoers who it is essential to retain.
In reality it’s not easy now, because racing has to compete with so many things that it didn’t have to do before, whereas the essential product has remained the same.
The sport needs a narrative. Nobody is interested in Liverpool V Barcelona in a pre-season friendly but billions will watch if it is a Champions League match. Nobody would watch Van Gerwen V Taylor if it wasn’t a tournament or a Premier League match. That’s how Darts reinvented itself. Only us anoraks know the prestige of The Eclipse – to everyone else it is just another horse-race. It needs to be part of something like a bigger Championship that would involve horses, jockeys and trainers. Plus give the public a chance to win big money on a Saturday or rolling over during a season. Will never happen though.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Racing does pretty well. There is no real market in attracting gambling addicts now and as judge rightly says the actual numbers slavishly following the sport has dropped a lot on the flat especially. Keeping the crowds bouyant is an achievement
Facilities count a lot in this day and age and some courses could look ascots excellent attention to detail as a template.
I think racecourses do a lot of the right things.
It is the racing product that is the possibly unsolvable problem.
So many races in these days of wall to wall racing have absolutely no meaning in the scheme of things. They are largely totally forgotten within a few minutes of the next race starting.The 6 races at a typical flat meeting last a total of about 10 minutes.
Of those 10 minutes about 2 minutes could be called exciting if there is a contested finish.
At courses like Newmarket the final 2 minutes is all you are likely to see yourself at all, exciting or not
That is in a racegoer time of say 5 hours, 2 hours total traveling time and 3 hours of “racing” – or more accurately non-racing. So the actual racing is about 3% of the total time. At a football match the action for most would be over 40% of the total time spent.
No professional is going to waste so much of his working time when he can watch most all meetings on tv. If bookmakers will not accept bets then he must also have ready access to the exchanges. So course apart from fast pictures do not cater for the professionals that might be more interested in he races than the bars.I would guess some 95% of racecourse attendees are just out for an outside social event in pleasant surroundings. They may go once or twice a year or never again. Not many actually have a bet at all and those that do it is a £5 as they have no real clue about any of the horses they have never ever heard about. Desert Orchid was an exception and he had a mass fan following, and Frankel to a lesser extent (2 major attraction horses in 30 years that were allowed to race many times) but the general public remain totally in the dark about the actual racing.
The BHA/racecourses take the attendance to mean that these are all racing fans and the sport is healthy – largely they are deluded.The media is a major contributor to the problem. Progressively it has moved away from racing into other sports, particularly football. Gone are the days when, for newspapers and TV, the Derby, Oaks and a host of other big races were headline news before the race; buy a newspaper today and you’ll find the racecards squashed up into half a page and little or no comment. Racing is no longer the headline it once was.
Music nights??? My ‘local’ track has them once a year, I haven’t been since that nonsense started despite having been a regular there.
Nobody is interested in Liverpool V Barcelona in a pre-season friendly
Tell that to the thousands of us who were at Wembley last August when LFC (who I support) beat Barcelona 4-0.
With regards to attracting newcomers to racing, I’ve been saying for years that racing is seen as an anachronism by many. In days gone by, the horse was an integral part of daily life; now that it has been supplanted by the car, horses simply don’t interest the vast majority of people. Add the covert snobbery and racism endemic to the sport and it’s hardly surprising that racing doesn’t attract many younger people.
The 6 races at a typical flat meeting last a total of about 10 minutes.
Of those 10 minutes about 2 minutes could be called exciting if there is a contested finish.
At courses like Newmarket the final 2 minutes is all you are likely to see yourself at all, exciting or not
That is in a racegoer time of say 5 hours, 2 hours total traveling time and 3 hours of “racing” – or more accurately non-racing. So the actual racing is about 3% of the total time. At a football match the action for most would be over 40% of the total time spent.
No professional is going to waste so much of his working time when he can watch most all meetings on tv. If bookmakers will not accept bets then he must also have ready access to the exchanges. So course apart from fast pictures do not cater for the professionals that might be more interested in he races than the barsI would guess some 95% of racecourse attendees are just out for an outside social event in pleasant surroundings. They may go once or twice a year or never again. Not many actually have a bet at all and those that do it is a £5 as they have no real clue about any of the horses they have never ever heard about. Desert Orchid was an exception and he had a mass fan following, and Frankel to a lesser extent (2 major attraction horses in 30 years that were allowed to race many times) but the general public remain totally in the dark about the actual racing.
The BHA/racecourses take the attendance to mean that these are all racing fans and the sport is healthy – largely they are deluded.Other than the highlighted bit about “professionals” who, in pre-racing channel, pre-exchanges and off-couse tax days might have constituted a small percentage of the attendees aren’t your words really just ’twas ever the case’?
‘A Day At The Races’ has always been much more than just the races themselves which, as you say, constitute just a small part of the experience. The majority of racegoers have always approached the day as a jolly way to while away an afternoon in novel, pleasant surroundings: wandering, wondering, looking, chatting, eating, drinking and perhaps even a bet to amplify the fun
It’s so different to other spectatator sports in which the ‘action’ is everything and is the sole reason to attend
There’s been much debate here on TRF over the years concerning the promotion and marketing of racing: the horse and the race in isolation, and it won’t work because you either get it or you don’t: deep appreciation or complete indifference, infatuation or disinterest
If the BHA do believe that healthy attendance figures equate to a healthy sport then they are indeed deluded. A robust number of the indifferent disinterested public will always ‘go racing’ as it’s ‘a day out’; and the majority enjoying the experience wouldn’t know or care if the current bloated edifice had collapsed, other than perhaps a vague ‘there doesn’t seem to be as much racing about as there was’
We, the appreciative and infatuated do know and care; but we are small in number and inconsequential
Drone, I’m with you on the ‘get it’ or don’t assessment. Here’s a blog post of mine from last week:
The Racing Post has extensive coverage of the problem racing faces in attracting new customers. Since I first took an interest in the sport, a million words have been written in pursuit of a solution to this marketing challenge. Coral’s Simon Clare sums it up best: “Racing deserves to be more popular and racing could be more popular – we just can’t work out how.”
Well, here’s an idea…
Potential fans can be plied with every marketing trick in the book but in the end, you either get racing or you don’t. It’s not Marmite: plenty people are happy to have the odd day out at the races, but the ones you’ll hold and keep for life are the ones who “get it”.
I don’t think you can crystallise the “it” that’s to be got. I suspect that much has to do with the challenge of sharpening your skills to such an extent that you can compete with and sometimes outdo the experts in picking winners or identifying future champions. It’s a personal challenge. You can seek mentors and read Timeform and the Racing Post and TV analysis but there are nuances that can only be learned, not taught. Skills can be developed that are so exquisite those who possess them cannot describe them in words.
One thing I’ve noticed is that committed racing fans often show similar personalities, typified perhaps by optimism and a ready sense of humour. I’d happily bet that if we were all given a psychometric test the results would show many other shared character traits. And therein lies a potential solution.
Supposing 10,000 of us volunteered to take part in extensive psychometric testing? We’d end up with a highly dependable profile of the personality of someone who “gets it”. Armed with this data, the marketers could target those who fit that personality profile.
I think Drone is largely right but if you want a new audience of those genuinely sucked into the complexities of the sport they you need to make it accesible
That is why they should have made Racing Uk free to air. ATR does a decent job but RUK would gradually entice at least some channel hoppers.
The stupid subscription model could only have been designed by accountants with the imagination of a bollard and the marketing skills of theresa may
Keep them out!
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.