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Again, from a selfish perspective, reducing some of these 5 and 6 meetings a day Flat meetings in the height of summer would be the way to go I think. Return night racing to 3/4 nights a week instead of 6.
Ivory towers or customers, Paul?
No place for ivory towers and, let’s face it, cutting the number of fixtures alone is not going to solve racings problems, the issues are more fundamental.
Totally agree with you the sport is mismanaged and the biggest problem is there are too many disparate entities, all having different priorities.
As a slight aside, there was an interesting comment from a racecourse manager recently where he admitted they actually make a loss from racing, their profit comes from non-raceday activities. That is quite worrying ….. how long before they forget about the racing and just operate as a conference centre?
Whilst I’m sure it also has its faults, the model I like most of all is the Hong Kong one where the Hong Kong Jockey Club looks to own everything and they seem to manage the sport very well …. perhaps the reality is different but from afar it looks very well run. OK they only have two courses to operate but we must have people in this country with the business acumen and ability to run racing as a cohesive single entity.
The trouble is there doesn’t seem to be the will and the various factions seem more interested in just looking after their own particular vested interests.
Without a radical structural change racing is going to suffer a slow, lingering decline and when it does sink into their thick sculls it will be too late.
Forget tinkering with irrelevances like RFC, get some fundamental changes sorted out and soon.
Just wonder whether anyone is an "expert" on this?
I’d say the trilaterals are, but they keep very quiet.
Are they ever going to tell us the levy generated by these under threat meetings or is the answer too embarassing to disclose?
Not sure it is selfish, DJ…
Common sense dictates that punters in general would probably rather have one AW card to concentrate on a blank winter’s evening than 3 (instead of 2) evening cards on a day like today.
I’d be interested in how much the quantity of racing affects turnover.
For example, if there were two rather than three cards tonight what would the effect on turnover be?
TDK?
Also could you do away with 7 race cards? Not sure how many there are but that might be another angle to approach it by.
You need races to generate levy, which generates prize money, which generates interest in owning which provides the horses for the races. Among that lot there will be a perfect balance somewhere. A job for the mathematicians.
BUT… it’s clearly not just the number of races which will allow maximisation of the levy. They need to be of a certain type to attract turnover AND to maintain general interest levels in the sport.
Don’t have that data to hand cormack, but I’d be surprised if the levy didn’t do better with 1 winter evening meeting + 2 evening meetings on a day like today v 0 winter evening mtg + 3 today.
At long last they’ve got the right idea, but they’ve only done half the job.
With funds for prize money next year going down from £52 million to £37 million, a fall of 30%, but fixtures only being reduced by 16%, then the sums have yet to add up.
A reduction of at least 500 meetings is required for next year, which would still leave 1000 fixtures which is more than there were 25 years ago.
Cormack, your idea of doing away with 7-race cards would presumably be accompanied by a 14% reduction in admission, parking and racecard prices?
Ah, that’s another kettle of fish entirely Venusian. I’d say that racecourses wanting to put on 7 race cards should have to attract the extra prize money via sponsorship.
So where does this leave the general punting public?
Happier as there will be less dross racing (assuming the racing that faces the chop IS the dross)?
Sad because there will be less betting opportunities?
Bereft because of less opportunities to actually go racing?
What too for racecourses? Less fixtures = less turnover = less profit = less investment = poorer facilities = lower gates = even less turnover = even less profit = even less investement, etc, etc.
Perhaps if JLS could clone themselves x 52 they could fill the void? Betting could be linked to decibel levels of girls screams? Or number of six packs on display at any given moment in time?
The age of austerity is upon us.
Perhaps it would be more equitable to take the fixtures off those tracks that are most reliant on owners and the Levy board for funding ?
http://www.racehorseowners.net/league_table.html
By my calculations from June 1st 2009 to May 31st 2010, Wolverhampton have hosted 97 meetings. According to the ROA website, Arena Leisure has contributed £60,096 towards prize money for those meetings. That works out at £619 a meeting. I don’t know how much Wolverhampton are getting for their picture rights for each meeting, but it must be more than £619 surely ?!…so where is that money going ?
If it is AW winter meetings than bear most of the brunt of this, from a selfish perspective, will be disappointed.
Until Great Leighs made its unwelcome entrance the daylit winter AW season had a sensible, welcome, distinct and coherent structure: one meeting per day running in parallel with two or three NH meetings. A clearly defined focus for those who specialise in winter AW with a manageable number of – for the most part – regular and familiar horses; and a near-guaranteed source of levy when NH falls foul of the weather
So by all means (please please) do away with the Great Leighs ‘replacement’ fixtures but ensure one (and no more) AW meeting is run every afternoon during the Turf close season
Saturday evening floodlit Wolver always seemed to me to ‘have its place’ as once again it was distinctive, whereas the smattering of standalone floodlit Kempton AW on weekday winter evenings seem wholly unneccesary. So why not introduce a once or twice-weekly evening double header at Wolver and Kempers, say Friday and/or Saturday. A weekend surfeit of riches for the winter AW fan who has no interest in NH, and a jolly good excuse for the LBO amusement arcades to shut up shop at sundown on the other winter evenings
Regarding summer evening meetings: there really should be some coming together of minds of the BHA and Irish Authorities, as today like yesterday we have the bizarre scenario of four evening meetings. No one this side of the Sea could or should expect the Irish to reschedule their fixture list as it is pleasingly frugal, but for gawd sake BHA let the axe fall on at least one of our evening meetings on these days
An idea that wouldn’t suit me, and is probably full of holes, but, if the big 3 gave a tenner a shop 6000×10 == £60K a night to kempton/turf tv, they could race whenever.
The owners of the BHA are:
– Racecourse Association Ltd
– Racehorse Owners Association Ltd
– Thoroughbred Breeders Association
– The Licensed Personnel Member (being jointly the National Trainers Federation, the Professional Jockeys Association, and the National Association of Stable Staff)The BHA’s 2009 accounts say:
===================
“Out of a total of 1,490 (2008 – 1,503) fixtures in the published fixture list for 2009,
243 were fixtures (2008 – 254) at racecourses who had bid for the right to stage them through an open and transparent auction process.”=============
Which 250-odd fixtures would seem prime candidates for the chop if the prevailing consideration was a) to have a quiet life, through b) trying to ensure the least scope for arguments as between the racecourses ?
The owners of the BHA are:
– Racecourse Association Ltd
– Racehorse Owners Association Ltd
– Thoroughbred Breeders Association
– The Licensed Personnel Member (being jointly the National Trainers Federation, the Professional Jockeys Association, and the National Association of Stable Staff)and therein lies the problem!!!!
There are differing opinions as to whether there is too much racing.
Personally I think there are too many fixtures, to a point where having a full time job, I can’t keep up with the form. Some newspapers went through a period of not publishing all fixtures.
The converse argument is that the bloated fixture list keeps stable staff in work and provides opportunities for small owners and small time jockeys to win a race (even if prize money levels are such that they are basically racing for rosettes as Richard Hannon snr puts it)
I would welcome an off season for NH racing at some point.
The "twilight" AW fixtures seem pointless to me.(I am not anti AW as such and feel that they provide a guarantee of racing during the winter when NH racing is threatened by the weather).
There is some desperate turf racing at places like Brighton.
I feel that some other criteria should be used to cull fixtures rather than blanket blank days e.g. Sunday or Monday.
Monday nights are traditional and well supported at Windsor and probably keep that course alive.
Whether we like it or not, Sundays are now important leisure entertainment days. Shops, supermarkets, leisure centres, garden centres are all open. Other sports e.g. football, rugby, cricket, motor racing, athletics, ice hockey all routinely schedule fixtures.
Many of the top racing in Ireland and France takes place on Sunday, whereas in the UK the Sunday fare is lower grade and often gimmick family days“Out of a total of 1,490 (2008 – 1,503) fixtures in the published fixture list for 2009,
243 were fixtures (2008 – 254) at racecourses who had bid for the right to stage them through an open and transparent auction process.”Were the bids in the form of guaranteed prize money levels or payments to the BHA? Just wondering who loses the money if these fixtures are culled en masse.
The contradictions of the current fixture list were evident when Ruth Quinn announced the 2010 version.
Although total horse numbers are currently down by 2% compared with 2008, the demand from the horse population for opportunities to race continues to exceed the opportunities provided by the fixture list, as illustrated by the fact that there were over 6,500 eliminations in the first half of 2009… However, there is a real question over whether we should be running this number of fixtures, at the times they are running, with the current central funding, in order to maximise the return to the sport.
Inevitably, however the axe were to fall there would be victims. All the support activities are staffed to cover the current level of fixtures.
Anthony Cosgriff, the young Australian steeplechase trainer, despite the doom and gloom circulating over UK racing, is coming over here to train. His entertaining blog can be found on the RP.
British acquaintances sseemingly scoff at his madness, but he argues that more racing provides more opportunities for more horses to earn
some
prize money and as such is not as much of a problem as it seems.
I’m with DJ, btw. It would be just playing to prejudices to hammer artificial surface racing. How soon we forget the rescues of last January.
Actually looking at the attendence figures for winter Sundays they seem to hold up quite well with the 2010 Jan / Feb / Mar averages per meeting being 1453, 1834 and 2491 respectively, so perhaps in hindsight winter Sundays could be left alone.
Indeed Sundays do seem to attract good crowds, looking at the 2009 figures, 13 courses had their biggest attendance figures on a Sunday, in the case of Yarmouth it was 85% higher than their second best meeting.
Also most courses seem to have Sunday attendances in second or third spot.
Perhaps the figures for Sunday would be even higher if, as suggested, the quality was improved?
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