- This topic has 42 replies, 20 voices, and was last updated 17 years, 8 months ago by
.
- Posts
If sex sells, where will it end?.
It will end in death
real stiffs doing the Okey CokeyThee eye lost interest in dog racing
as he broke his ankle falling down the
steps at Wimbledon as he rushed back to his pew.
The swelling started in the middle of the phrase
Let’s get ready to rumble.Safety and appeal of stadia is
often overlooked
Sha Tin wont cure an ankle
but the shiny opium atmosphere certainly helps
to get rid of the old raincoat brigade
and bettin widout the favourite
- Total Posts 17716
70 % of people at Racecourses now are there for the piss up.
Getting back to the question about horse racing, racecourses employ highly paid PR & Marketing types who are allegedly experts in this field.Their ideas thus far appear to be:-
1. As Barry highlights, put on dross racing as supporting act to an 80s or tribute band. Charge £20 plus admission. This approach sold out Sandown in the week and highly popular at Newmarket and Lingfield
2. Sell to the corporate market.
3. Make booze as freely available at £3 plus a pint as you can to 1 and 2 above- employ mobile lager sellers.
4. Family days, beauty contests, best dressed lady etc.
5. Free admission at Towcester- why can they do it and others want £15 or so for a fixture of comparable quality?
Good article in today’s RP about the lost opportunity of Sunday racing. Courses like Epsom and Sandown have given up. With one or two exceptions, low grade racing of no interest to terrestrial TV.
My ideas:-
We are in a credit crunch. Racing will have to seriously compete for leisure time against other attractions and corporate hospitality will be cut back.With specialist satellite TV channels showing racing and Betfair some punters will never return. Look at admission prices and offer value on less busy days.Control the booze- it seriously puts some potential racegoers off.Review Sunday racing. Review fixture list – too much racing- how can you have Lingfield and Brighton on the same afternoon last week?
What about a tribute to that great equestrian lady with a special ladys race.
The Lady Godiva Stakes.
Hayley, Kirsty and co would be worth going a long way to see.
And, as animal rights people do not like whips being used on horses these days, how about a change of rules, with jockeys only allowed to use them on each other.
It would have to be the last race of an evening meeting (some time after the 9:00 watershed).
As in the Timeform Charity Day the winning jockey would get a special prize. In this case the ladys body mass displaced in champagne, this would have to be proven of course with a ceremony in the paddock area.
Then again, may be I’d better retreat in to my fantasy world.
I presume none of this went on your application form to Racing Pulses, did it?
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Grays let me open your eyes
The bikini stakes run over six
furlongs at Arscot brought a lot of the older
racegoers back. In fact the pebbled glasses and
dirty raincoat brigade returned en masse.
to drool their piggy eyes in hog stalls whilst brandishing their pre-war
binoculars – all pre-set for maximum exposureObviously the feature race of the day Godiva on a unicorn had brought in all he kiddies
Unfortunately racing is becoming second to the pop events that tacecourses are putting on.
I personally beleive this is due to the amount of racing that is put on these days coupled with the anount of it which is poor.
If you put on top class racing you will get big crowds, if you put on poor racing only the die hards turn up.
It is the same in any sport.
Football is the same. Look at Man Utd crowds, top class football then look at Accrington Stanley ( no offence to them) crowds. In comparison very poor.
Racing if it is not careful could fall by the wayside in so much it will lose much of its coverage that it gets now in the papers and will become a secondary sport.
Racing cannot live on its past it must try and become modern and give value for money which at the minute it does not do.
- Total Posts 17716
Unfortunately racing is becoming second to the pop events that racecourses are putting on. [i:1w3q8a30][snip][/i:1w3q8a30]
Racing if it is not careful could fall by the wayside in so much it will lose much of its coverage that it gets now in the papers and will become a secondary sport.
Racing cannot live on its past it must try and become modern and give value for money which at the minute it does not do.
I agree that the pop concerts and alternative comedy (alternative comedy at Sandown Park!?) are probably keeping away the very people (middle-aged to elderly, with a little money to spare and spend) that any sensible study of our ageing affluence should be leading them to target. The kind of people the pop concerts attract are (a) highly unlikely to come back for racing only, and (b) likely to be adding pro tem to the growing problems of anti-social and criminal behaviour at race courses.
Racing, though, surely needs to worry much less about declining newspaper coverage. Fewer and fewer people rely on newspapers (apart from the Racing Post) for information, particularly on fixtures and form. Who’s going to care if The Daily Express (or whatever) loses its racing coverage? No: the internet is far more important.
And as we are well aware, tabloid hype of football to the exclusion of just about everything else – whether other sports, news or cultural information – is a self-perpetuating myth which does not reflect reality.
What is that reality? First, football is not the national obsession the machine would have us believe. Anything but! More people per annum go to the theatre than visit a football match, on both individual and total countbacks. Professional opera is both cheaper and easier to get into than the elitist, corporate jamborees at Old Trafford or the Emirates Stadium.
Football is no longer “the people’s game”: it’s an advertising tool, the main function of which is to help the big corporations sell stuff. As live entertainment, it has become business-class elitism. Other sports have comparable or superior ground roots support, yet get little or no TV coverage.
No. Racing needs to change many things, dilution of quality for global betting companies included; but becoming “modern” by imitating or incorporating other entertainments is not even a short-term answer. Racing should be celebrating its difference, its Unique Selling Points rather than trying to kid adolescents (of all ages) that it’s as adrenal as a retro pop gig or as rowdy as a cup final.
As Barry highlights, put on dross racing as supporting act to an 80s or tribute band. Charge £20 plus admission. This approach sold out Sandown in the week and highly popular at Newmarket and Lingfield
Fine by me but Newbury have bumped up the prices for a very decent card this Saturday because some band is on. This is going too far. The £25 grandstand admission is not exactly beyond my means but i dislike being compelled to pay extra for something i dont want. So i wont go…
Unfortunately racing is becoming second to the pop events that racecourses are putting on.
Pruf made a point in his Post article yesterday, lamenting (if I’ve understood it correctly) not why racecourses see the need to put on concerts after racing, but why there is this assumption by them that only the 80s nostalgia acts are enough of a pull.
I’d add to that that the likes of Fairyhouse host music festivals containing lots of contemporary / alternative acts, albeit only on non-racedays.
What is stopping any racecourse taking the plunge and marrying these two entities – some preconception that 20,000 Muse fans will raze the July Course to the ground before their heroes’ set starts? Can’t see it myself.
I think Pruf secretly holds out hope of being able to enjoy an evening on the sand at Kempton, followed by a rare live set by Boards of Canada straight after. I’m right behind him on that one!
If you put on top class racing you will get big crowds, if you put on poor racing only the die hards turn up.
That’s a bit of a generalisation, and the racing experiences of Cartmel and Towcester (for all that the latter is free), plus the huge attendances at many evening and weekend meetings suggests otherwise in any event.
The presence of wall-to-wall Class 4 to 6 races and a £16 entry tariff didn’t put off 5,000+ punters when I visited Windsor a few Monday nights ago; equally Fontwell was absolutely rammed when I went to a very ordinary Sunday afternoon meeting there last autumn. As mentioned in the Southwell, August 11th thread, the Nottinghamshire venue is expecting a sell-out this coming Sunday despite the fare being routinely modest National hunt once more.
It is the same in any sport.
Football is the same. Look at Man Utd crowds, top class football then look at Accrington Stanley ( no offence to them) crowds. In comparison very poor.…yet the likes of Leeds United still commanded decent sized crowds in the third tier of professional football that many clubs above them would envy. Again, it’s an inexact science.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I think Pruf secretly holds out hope of being able to enjoy an evening on the sand at Kempton, followed by a rare live set by Boards of Canada straight after. I’m right behind him on that one!
I fear that a Boards of Canada tribute act – supporting Jools Holland, obviously – is the best we can hope for JG…
LOOK HERE
if you cant selll something
in sixty seconds
it aint gonna sell
unless its
food or drink
or basic instinct
GOT ITDavesmithgreyhounds
Welcome to the forum Dave.
I wish you well with your task of promoting Greyhound Racing but I feel that you have backed a loser.One cannot look how other sports promote themselves and then think what works for horse racing for example may work for Greyhound racing.
The main difference between horse and greyhound racing is that Greyhound Racing apart from the bags meetings are held in the evenings so how could one promote a concert after racing when the last dog race ends after 10p.m.
Since 1994 Bolton, Bristol, Catford, Canterbury, Cradley Heath, Hackney, Powderhall, Ramsgate and Wembley have all closed down along with 29 flapping tracks.
We now face London having just one track but the management there have done nothing to promote themselves the latest move was to cut prize money which will just drive more owners away.
A freind of mine who has owned many dogs including Fire Hight Dan the Derby finalist and winner of ‘Greyhound of the year’ due to his dog winning many Opens has recently disposed of 28 greyhounds as he faced every increasing costs and although he lives in Brighton has raced all his graders at The Stow.
So who is to blame for the current state of Greyhound racing?
It is the bookmakers.
Horse racing receives 10% of bookmakers gross profits which this year will be around 90-100 £million.Greyhound racing receives money from a voluntary levy with some bookmakers refusing to pay a penny. The ones that do pay contribute just 0.6% which at the last call was £11.5 million in 2007.
In that year Ladbrokes and Hills received a £1 million to improve the stadiums they own.
This was despite Hills posting a pre tax profit of £285 million that year.A little while ago I posted that Hove had just 47 punters attnding a BAGS meeting there despite free admission. The reason why no one goes is that no one can get a bet on apart from the odd tenner.
Two bookmakers I know who used to stand there both had the contracts terminated for not betting to the average overounds that Corals (the owners) demanded.Both these guys used to buy every race video along with the trials videos and they both used to study them. They were both of the view that if Dog A was ‘drawn’
inside or outside of Dog B or Dog C they overall would get the results more right than wrong.Some track managements know this as well and another disgace is that some tracks have now stopped selling race vidoes. Yet anyone with any interest in horse racing can view and re view any race at their leisure.
I have been lucky enough to have owned a few Greyhounds in the past and it used to be an exciting night out and a cheap sport to support as one race a fortnight used to bring in enough money to keep the kennel bill low.
The sport has been raped by bookmakers and has never been in such a sorry state.
Seagull thank you for that informative ample post
It is interesting about the sale of videos.
Would it not be that there is just not enough demand for them ?
I worked out track bias at a miserly 5% in the days
when I munched the odd dog biscuit or two.
Of course a very wet hove with the old grass
was a difficult scenario for the form men
as the six dog literally had wings.p.s. the word ample was removed
from Colin’s post above.
An excellent read and
the removal added to the intrigueGamble,
Either:
1) all the video sellers do their accounts simultaneously on the same day in the middle of summer and suddenly realised it wasn’t worth the candle
OR
2) Someone leant on them all at the same time
Where’s your money going? The odds are the krone brewery to the dregs of a can of tesco value lager on one of the selections.
Glenn good to touch base with you.
I don’t bet big brewery amounts
these days but the small drips
are adding up.
You are very lucky never to have gone
down the dog route – far better to own your
own – you’ll at least get a smile back.
There is something very earthy about a dog meet,
the same sort of feel you get
eating chips out of the Sunday sport..
The hot breath combined with
the mauling atmosphere of the betting ring
used to feel like an opium filled bear pit
with the dogs choosing which bear
to devour in an enthralling minute.
That rumbling feeling has gone.I occasionally travelled free toilet class
to get there. A true dog man would attend his meet
whatever the cost, however my fall changed everything
and I cursed the sixes from then on,
and wished I had taken a tumble earlier.Nick Faldo and I are chalk ‘n cheese,
however he is worth listening to,
and in a British Open interview with Lineker,
a poor Faldo imitator, he quietly addressed the importance
of concentrating on what you are good at.British racing take note
and buy into the Faldo doctrine
Concentrate your efforts first and foremost
on putting on good racing fayre.
Do this before booking up the Pretenders.
Bucket races and some bucket faced
jockeys of late haven’t inspired the product,
so get rid of them. Put them on the same
train as the stiffs doing the Okey Cokey…Read Seagull over the page,
to see the exact state of
the flatcap industry.
Just put jackets on the big bookmakers
and get them to race round their own overound.Last time i ever went Greyhound racing was to a Thursday lunchtime meeting at Sheffield as my planned days racing at Hereford was off due to a digger i think cutting some turf up.
What amazed me with London is that their is no promotion in the centre of the city which itself is prime selling to the thousands of people who go their for holidays.
On the streets you can buy Theatre tickets so why not Greyhound tickets and also why not at Underground Stops as Wimbledon and Walthamstow have grand bus and tube links.
It does seem at times as if the people who are running the sport are deliberatley trying to run it in the ground but it is worth noting how the London scene is dwindling yet the Northern and Midland scene is getting more and more popular.
Just put jackets on the big bookmakers
and get them to race round their own overound.That is the answer to the growler guy’s question.
Substitute a hare for Slimey, Hooodwink and The Joker’s souls and get them to chase ’em around the track after them. It”ll be standing room only. The Meedan woman from the den has already forked out fifty bags for the rancid toms concession – five guineas a pound.
inside or outside of Dog B or Dog C they overall would get the results more right than wrong.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.