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Thursday being by far the highest crowd at 30,000+ ..
Really? You could have fooled me. Gaping holes on the Grandstand steppings; empty boxes in the County Stand; not a soul in the old Bustardthorpe Stand; grass aplenty to collapse on in the Course Enclosure; nary a shoulder nudged around the paddocks; and the Lady’s in Red and bar/catering staff rueing their twiddling of thumbs.
Like you I’ve been attending for many years and until fairly recently used to attend all three Ebor (and Dante) days, and although the memory does play tricks I find it hard to believe there were 30,000 there on Thursday
Still the turnstiles don’t lie do they…
Drone, I’ve also been a regular visitor for the whole of the Ebor Festival for many years now although I was limited to just the Wednesday this year … and, like you, I was surprised by the reports of crowd figures … particularly when they announced that the Ebor day crowd was almost identical to last year … obviously in the days of the 3 day meeting the crowds were much bigger but I can’t recall ever having as much room to move freely from paddock to grandstand … no queues at the Tote windows and it wasn’t even that difficult to get a drink in the bars … still, as you say, the racecourse executive have nothing to gain from exaggerating crowd stats, have they ?
I have to say that, after sitting through yesterdays fairly poor Saturday cards, it would appear to make sense for ‘racing’ to take advantage of the Saturday leisure pound and time by putting on some decent fare.
It does seem sad that some of those great midweek days are being ‘lost’ to the weekend as I think, in the process, they lose some of the very atmosphere that made them special days in the first place.
BUT, it makes sense for racing, as a business, to put their best product out there on the days that will maximise the return.
It’s usually bad form to use a personalised example in a debate, but hopefully, someone will agree with me somewhere.
Horse racing is my favourite activity bar one. Unfortunately, my family and friends don’t share my passion and choose, like hundreds and thousands of other British people, to attend football matches on a Saturday. I go with them, despite not being all that interested (in matters on the field: the craic off is a different matter).
Because of this, I have only ever seen four or five "live" Grand Nationals, Greenham Stakes, Cambridgeshires etc, races staged on a Saturday during the football season.
Because of short-termist R4C dogma – recanted brilliantly by your good self, Corm in the post above – the Ebor will soon be added to my list of lost races.
I haven’t missed an Ebor since 1986. Its a magnificent race, a real gem, full of heritage, story, tradition and excitement and I feel sad this morning that I can no longer be part of that.
Sooner or later I’m going to lose my passion for horse racing because of Racing For Change and the greedy people who run British racecourses.
I’ve felt the passion dwindle this year. Yesterday, I had a series of football bets before the game and no horse racing bets.
That’s a first, a lifetime first.
The game has become too difficult, granted, but much worse than that, in their pursuit of money and their unnervingly sinister zeal, the BHA have messed around with centuries old tradition – the very thing which attracts many people to horse racing in the first place, including me.
I can only assume I am not important to the horse racing authorities and after a while, that realisation starts to get to you. It starts to grate.
Other people seem more valued – the people prepared to pay £25 a ticket for York’s grandstand for reasons other than to watch and bet on horse racing, for example. Rod Street’s chosen market.
Yet, when all his chosen market – men at Primark, tattooed ladies, lager-guzzling coachloads, walking hat-stands, coked-up party animals, JLS camp followers and brain dead watchers of tribute acts – have gone elsewhere for their thirty quid fix in a couple of years time, who will be left?
Who will be left when the people who care about horse racing have gone elsewhere too?
Surely Max you’ve got to agree that putting your best races on when
less
people can see them/attend/participate is silly. Having a race like the Ebor midweek and then on Saturday, when you have a much bigger potential audience, putting on nothing very exciting or interesting at all is surely missing a trick.
I’m a traditionalist too. Similarly to yourself my interest was kindled by afternoons bunking school watching Chester’s May meeting, the Craven meeting, Cheltenham. What great days those were, fondly remembered every one. When I could afford the not insignificant costs of an 800 mile round trip my first ‘live’ racing days out were to York for the Ebor meeting and Epsom for a (Wednesday) Derby.
But things change. I started going to the Derrby in 1985 and have been every year since. The decline in atmosphere and attendance during the late 1980’s and, in particular, the 1990’s, was noticeable. That has, to an extent, been reversed by the move to Saturday, a move I initially opposed on grounds of tradition (forgetting, conveniently, that the Derby had been perfectly successful at weekends in the ‘traditional’ days of yore).
Like it or not, racing is in the business of entertainment. Racecourses have to put bums on seats, betting turnover has to be maximised. While you could (quite legitimately) argue that there are many ways of skinning a cat and that some of the current strategies may not be in the long term interest of the sport, on this issue I’m behind them.
If you have a shop you don’t put your best product out the back where no one can see it. No, you stick a great big sign on it and place slap-bang in the middle of your shop-window.
I find myself agreeing with both sides of this debate , I am , or at least I always like to think I am , a traditionalist and I don’t like change for changes sake alone. However I don’t believe that is the case here and I agree the big races should be Saturdays now , it’s inevitable and it’s not the end of the world. The Ebor is not big enough to be better off midweek , that’s no disgrace …as has been mentioned , the DERBY couldn’t hack it on a Wednesday . Royal Ascot and Cheltenham set the standard here. None can compare . As discussed elsewhere racing is in decline , the financing a fiasco , big changes are approaching , smaller courses will find themselves on the endangered species list . That is also inevitable. Racing for change often leaves a bad taste in the mouth but unfortunately with or without it , racing is changing anyway …. Like a landslip or like Coastal erosion seems to be the only choice left.
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If you have a shop you don’t put your best product out the back where no one can see it. No, you stick a great big sign on it and place slap-bang in the middle of your shop-window.
Any shop selling their best product on just one day a week would probably be out of business within a year; what happens then?
Racing for Change want people to go racing; I want people to love racing. Max is right, however. I am, alas, part of a dying breed.
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10% of something is better than 100% of nothing, isn’t that what they say?
Racing 4 Change are under the impression that attempting to penetrate a larger weekend audience engrossed in football, rugby union, rugby league, cricket and perhaps even tennis, athletics and speedway, is in some way preferable to cracking a more impressionable midweek population that has little more than Chris Moyles, Greg James and Scott Mills to entertain it.
Football on a Saturday is a tradition for millions. Rugby on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday is a tradition for millions. The Ebor midweek
used
to be a tradition for many; is it of sufficient stature to break the (in some cases) 20 or 30-year-old habits of many more?
Racing 4 Change don’t understand people, they don’t understand marketing and, more importantly, don’t appear to understand horse racing.
Racing will be changed under their administration, but not for the better.
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No, Corm, because the Ebor hasn’t yet moved from its current midweek slot – it was a pre-emptive
used to
, meant to illustrate Racing 4 Change’s desire to take away from an established audience to give to one that, as yet, doesn’t exist.
Your shop-based product placement analogy doesn’t work either, as we’re talking about two different stages of the developmental and promotional process. A shopkeeper would indeed struggle to sell his best stock if it were kept out of sight, but if he erected a sign saying ‘best stock, top quality and now reasonably priced – see Carlos in the dungeon’ the rest of his establishment would be empty. However, if he was unlucky enough to be flanked by Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Ikea, he’s not going to sell anything no matter what the sign says (unless he’s selling cars, of course, in which case he’ll probably be fine).
To look at it from another angle, how would regular customers of a shop react if they turned up one day expecting to take advantage of the annual August sale, only to find that prices were at their usual level and were set to remain that way? Would their business be retained if the shopkeeper decided to host the sale on a September weekend, when the lures of days out, supermarkets and shopping centres presented themselves?
The shopkeeper would, in no uncertain terms, be b*ggered. And so it will be for racing, should it continue down its current path.
Racing
is
, metaphorically, selling cars, in relation to football.
Saturday is the day when the leisure spend is
exponentially higher
than any other day. It is a VASTLY bigger market. After everyone is off to the football and the rugby, and all ten of them of to speedway, the remainder will still dwarf a Wednesday or Thursday market.
Yes, there is lots of competition, but everything points to racing being able to hold its own when it puts on quality sport.
You know the best place to open a restaurant AJ? Over on the side of town where there are no other restaurants and therefore no competition? Wrong, you build it right there in amongst all the other successful restaurants. Why? Because that’s where the market is. And the weekend is where the leisure market is. Racing, to thrive, needs as much of that is it can get it hands on.
The Saturday attendance at Royal Ascot (held up as the great midweek meeting and outcry when Saturday was added)) is HIGHER than on any other day.
The Derby has been revitalised by a Saturday switch.
Channel 4 Racing viewing figures are higher at the weekend.
I’m not saying you
do away
with quality midweek. What I’m saying is that you make sure there is attractive racing on EVERY Saturday. and to do that racing may need to consider a few changes and let go, however sadly, of a few sacred cows.
I’ll repeat, having the Ebor on a Thursday and then having a poor Saturday card IS like having your best stuff at the back of the shop.
Just a passing thought. I noticed that quite a few of the Ebor horses that didn’t get into the race ran yesterday, and ran very well [eg Lady Eclair]. Many of these horses have had the Ebor as their target for quite a while, and would have been primed to the moment for that race. Will they juggle the fixture list a bit so that there are a few decent handicaps for them to gain a bit of compensation in, or will it have an effect on the horses entered for the Ebor. I suppose it’s bothering me because it has become my second favourite race [after the National].
I agree with Cormack on this one.
If you think tradition is of the upmost importance I totally respect that. If you don’t want to attend big race meetings on a Saturday because it’s going to be full of drunks, I respect that too.
But I’m really not having this argument that moving big races to a Saturday will hurt them because of competition with other sports. I’d say the majority of people still work Monday to Friday and that the majority of those have no choice in the matter.
If people go to football or cricket or shopping or do DIY that is a choice they make. They can choose to do something else. You can’t choose the demands of your employer.
I personally don’t think racing will benefit from moving to the Ebor to a Saturday. For whatever reason, it isn’t a race that grabs people’s attention like the Derby or the Guineas. However, I think having a multiple day meeting that doesn’t span at least one day of the weekend is missing a trick. If not the Ebor itself, how about the Juddmonte? That’s a ‘big race’ with quality horses isn’t it?
Corm, is Newmarket’s "Champion’s Day" a success? R4C don’t seem to think so. Just over 15,000 people attended last year. Was that meeting worth amalgamating? That was a nice mostly weekday meeting sacrificed to dogma.
Your other points are debatable. For example, the country’s most profitable restaurant is in the middle of nowhere with only trees and farm animals for company. The Derby may well have developed in the exact same way by staying on a Wednesday due to the overall, across the board rise in horse racing as a leisure pursuit. Ascot has always had a Saturday meeting (called "The Heath meeting") and attendance increase is almost totally explained by Silver Ring picnickers there to see the Queen.
But, there you go. You and the Weekenders are going to win the argument, so I’m aware I’m wailing into the wind. I hope you and others don’t complain either when the Ebor is no longer the Ebor, but the Brantano Staying Handicap.
Anthony, if working people were
that
interested in horse racing they would take annual leave. Or get another job. And try explaining your loyalty to an employer when the foreman is standing in front of you with redundancy letters because the contact centre is moving to Kuala Lumpur.
But if you are going to move a race to the weekend, as has been pointed out, a big handicap like the Ebor is the race to do it with. The Wokingham and Stewards Cup have been success stories, (he says begrudgingly) in a way the Dewhurst move is not.
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