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Shortly after Cloudy Glen held on at Newbury last Saturday, Venetia Williams excitedly described on ITV how thrilled she was to win “another Hennessy”. On RTV, the late Mr Hemmings we were assured would also have enjoyed winning “The Hennessy”. Back on ITV, “The Hennessy” was mentioned another half-a-dozen times , with AP at least managing to stick to it’s ‘Ladbrokes’ moniker!
When Timeform dropped it’s Racehorses annual, there was a great comment on here about them not understanding the value or purpose of the product they had. I wonder if Hennessy have made a similar mistake with their sponsorship?
Hennessy are owned by two massive companies – LVMH & Diageo – who know their marketing backwards so no doubt they’ve done their sums. But there’s sixty years worth of sunk-cost brand building with The Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup and obviously a bucketload of goodwill, all aimed at a real target market. As Saturday proved, the result of this is clearly still hugely resonant. Six years on, I think they’ve made a mistake.
Mike
They still seem to be getting the benefits of the sponsorship without paying for it, so possibly it was a very savvy move!
I think it was a shame the sponsorship ended though, and agree that it would still appear to be a good fit. I suspect there are now enough people who are strongly anti-racing though that non-industry sponsors will become rarer still, especially established brands.
One has to assume horse racing, especially NH no longer fits their ‘market’; I’m guessing that urban/city life is the market for them nowadays, not a countryside based sport.
The issue is these iconic races are best known by their long standing sponsor names; Whitbread, Mackeson, Hennessy, etc there doesn’t seem to be an actual ‘race title’. And all have been taken over by bookies….Which is never a good sign in my view. Aren’t there any big non bookie sponsors out there, for what were prestigious races?Although Randox as we now know had connections to Rose Paterson at Aintree and Albert Bartlett are connected to Ronnie Bartlett who has owned several good horses over the years.
It’s the businesses with no racing connections we need to find.
There’s the “‘ere, d’ya wanna buy a second hand car?” Derby/Oaks/Coronation Cup. Can’t immediately see a direct racing connection with Cazoo, but they have ‘portfolio’ of sponsorship deals across various sports.
Lack of non-industry sponsors seems to me to be another factor in racing’s irreversible decline from the mainstream to niche activity.
Well there were four non racing-affiliated race sponsors at Hatdock today and no less than seven at Wincanton tomorrow!
Mike
Kelso’s Borders National on Sunday is sponsored by Persimmon Homes, and has been for a few years and the course has a number of long term ‘non-racing’ sponsors such as The Ship Inn, Dalkeith who have sponsored every year for as long as I can remember. At the last meeting sponsors included, Bruce Farms, Paxtons, Belhaven Brewery, the previous meeting Simpson Malt and Edinburgh Gin, and there are various family sponsors of races.
Even Persimmon Homes has a racing connection Rob as it’s founder(and still president) was Duncan Davidson, father and main backer of Rose Dobbin.
There are plenty of small sponsors it’s just the big races that seem unable to attract the big companies.
On a side note are Steel plate and sections still on the go?
I’m aware that there is a ‘connection’ but Persimmon Homes are hardly dependent on racing. If you work hard enough yuou could probably find many sponsors have soem sort of connection to racing, but then it’s networknig and that’s what it’s about.
The NSPCC Schools Service sponsor a couple of races at Kelso every year. That money is donated by their major owner and supporter Raymond Anderson Green, but they are hardly a ‘racing organisation’.
Rotary Club Of Ascot sponsored at their local course this year, and you don’t get much bigger than the parent organisation Rotary International.
With the showcase races,the first sponsor will generally get most mileage. The classic example would be the Massey Ferguson, the American tractor manufacturers having relinquished sponsorship on their Cheltenham December race forty years ago, but the name still used by many when referring to the event which next week will have its umpteenth sponsorship since.
Although that’s certainly possible, Cancello, I suspect that most people use the names of the sponsors that were in place when they got into racing.
I will be fifty next month and, like many others on this forum, grew up with the Mackeson, Massey Ferguson, Hennessy, Whitbread, etc. These are still the names I use, and I would think that a lot of others of a certain age would too.
Started with the Massey Ferguson for me too but according to Wikipedia it was originally the December Gold Cup.
“Tradition” is very personal and biased as a notion – there’s a teenager somewhere who will be steadfastly calling races by today’s names 30 years hence.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"“Even Persimmon Homes has a racing connection Rob as it’s founder(and still president) was Duncan Davidson, father and main backer of Rose Dobbin.”
patriot,
A tangential observation is that Davidson named his company after the 1896 Derby winner. (That would be Persimmon without the Homes.)
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