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It just seems so minimal, sparse and boring. The writing is tiny and the font is unattractive. There is nothing to read in it asides from Donald McCain’s column (and his column won’t be interesting when he only has a couple of runners at low quality courses) – many have said that its similar to The Mirror/Sun/Star pullout but at least the latter has The Couch’s column, Jamie Spencer talking about his rides and its layout is more attractive.
Things that I would add:
*The tipster should, as mentioned, have a small box outlining the bets and how many points they are (this will clarify what his bets are, and will act as a prompt to read it, for people like me who don’t follow tipsters, out of curiosity to see his reasoning).
*what about another tipster giving out lays?
*the font style/size and general layout need a bit of tinkering to make them easier on the eyes. It needs a recognisable colour scheme, a ‘brand look’ too.
*more content: a column or two, for comment/reaction to the weekly goings ons (you’ve mentioned that they were dropped for this week due to time constraints, so this is probably irrelevant).
*check for mistakes! This really annoyed me about The Sportsman. I noticed a few spelling mistakes but, more strikingly, the Wolverhampton card on Sunday was the same as Kempton’s, i.e., according to that, the 2.10 at Wolverhampton was a N.H. race!
*as David mentioned, there should be a picture of Donald next to his column; there should be a picture of the weekend’s main bet on the front page (i.e., not one of Raven’s Pass, next to a headline about Fair Along); its all about consistency, uniformity and care.
*the pages are thin and the typing is blurry. I suppose this is a cost issue, so I can’t reasonably criticise that.I’ll still be buying it for the cards being in time order, and its convenient size – its far handier to take to the pub than the bulky R.P.
"…………..its far handier to take to the pub than the bulky R.P………"
Well, that explains the bluriness of the print!!!
Colin
it is ideal for me, i do my study on fridays and its so much easier to follow the racing o tv when its chronological. as a devotee of 10 year trends hats off to your tipster with 3/3………..looking forward to next weeks issue, chipmunk (ps do you need a tipster who profiles horses as i have a list of over 500 horse profiles)
On the whole I thought it was excellent value for money. I think the general layout works well.
The pull-out form section is helpful but sadly lacked Sunday’s races. If this is due to penny pinching I’m not sure it is that wise.
If given a choice the only feature I would like to see added is a page dedicated to the history of the best race of the day, published in the same format each week. So saddos like me can collect them
Detailing the signifcance of the race in the racing season, past winners and what happened next etc.the best design other than the racing post would have to be the sporting life, pity no publishers rev amped the sporting life form pages
I see this new publication is sponsoring the whole card at Lingfield this afternoon.
Colin
I was certainly happy enough with it, and would declare myself another big fan of the chronological arrangement of races. For the media work I was doing last Sunday it was a hell of a lot easier having the same two or three pages open all afternoon rather than resorting to cannibalising a Racing Post or having to flick between four cards over 20 or so pages.
There are certainly still some issues to resolve with it, but I’m pleased to see that the bulk of the errors we had to endure with the PA data at the Sportsman (e.g. conditional riders being refered to as amateurs, some non-GB & Ire races being missed out of form guides arbitrarily, etc) look to have been snuffed out from the get go. I notice that the longstanding, annoying PA omission of handicap ceilings (i.e. 0-100) from racecards remains, though.
I look forward to issue two this weekend. I presume it’ll be a few weeks before ABC data will confirm how well the paper is doing in terms of paid-for sales, but anecdotally at least nearly everywhere that had copies left for sale in my town on Saturday did not the following morning.
Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)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.
Thanks for the reminder about the omission of handicap ceilings graysonscolumn, it is high on the list of things to sort out.
This week, we will have an indication of whether each race is on RUK/ATR in the raceheader, we are sharpening up the stats on the racecards and making the Scoop6 page and verdicts a lot neater.
As for leaving out Sunday form, we are in a bit of a dilemma. Basically, we are limited to 48 pages for the foreseeable future and it was a simple choice between Sunday form and the sports section. For the moment, we have decided to go with the sports section but that could change if there’s enough demand.Just thought people might be interested to know that our first month’s verified sale for Racing Ahead Weekend was an average of 22,000 copies per week.
I am encouraged by the way the sales have been fairly constant through the month and there wasn’t a huge drop from week one to week two.
We have made a lot of improvements to the paper since week one – there needed to be! – and if anyone is interested, I will be happy to send them the PDF of the last edition if they PM me.Mulls – I am one of the 22,000 and you have ironed out a large number of the original bugs.
You are doing very well – congratulations, you and your team should be proud of what you have achieved..
I find the chronological listings ideal if I am watching the racing on TV at home but I have to confess when I go racing I prefer the traditional format.
I’d echo those sentiments. I didn’t always buy the RP on a Saturday but I have bought every copy of Racing Ahead Weekend so far and will continue to do so. Keep up the good work and well done.
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