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gc .. 2009 .. there loads more racing than there was say, three years ago. I don’t think that the sponsorship money is going to be there for 2009 never mind 2010. Are they allowed to run races with no sponsor, why would they?
gc .. 2009 .. there loads more racing than there was say, three years ago.
Not significantly. The total of races run rose up to 2005 but it’s been pretty much the same since.
Whatever, there’s clearly no shortage of horses to run and owners to run them. Ultimately it’s up the owners because most of them are happy to pay for their racing rather than their racing paying for itself, and ’twas ever thus.
I watch novice events and lower class races round Scotland and the north, and see many horses which haven’t got an earthly of winning their races. But the choice lies with the connections as to whether they should run or not, and I would presume connections get something out of their regular visits to the racecourse.
I can remember various periods of my life when the country has gone through an economic downturn, but there was never a shortage of those prepared to own and enter horses. Look back to the 70s and the pre A/W days when there were plenty of Div 1 and Div 2s of the novice hurdles and on many occasion Div 1, Part 1 and Div 1 Part 2 ….. Many of the horses that would have filled these races now go All Weather racing but I don’t see that we are the ones who should demand an end to their fun. Many may not be keen on low class racing, but I don’t remember seeing any ‘racing enthusiast rules’ which say we have to go and watch it, nor that we must bet on it.
I find this thread inordinately depressing, though it seems to keep happy the group of doom-mongers that inhabit this forum.
Excuse me while I exit to throw myself off the Forth Bridge, but hey, there’s racing at Kelso tomorrow, and I couldn’t miss that!
Rob
According to today’s RP, Arena have announced staff redundancies across all business areas at Doncaster
This may be of interest to some who haven’t seen it.
The Government has been forced to break a manifesto pledge to sell the Tote after admitting that current market conditions made it impossible to secure a good price for the bookmaker.
More than a decade since a sale of the Tote was first mooted by the Government, Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister, told Parliament today that he had concluded that pursuing a sale was “not appropriate”, given current market conditions.
In a statement, he said: “I have therefore decided that the Tote should be retained in public ownership for the medium term, and brought to the market when conditions are likely to deliver value for the taxpayer and racing.”
The minister’s decision is understood to have been reached after a report by Goldman Sachs concluded that the business was likely to fetch no more than £200 million to £300 million in an auction, against a target of £400 million. Analysts said that a price at the bottom of the range would have been the likeliest outcome.
In March, the Government, which pledged to sell the Tote in its 2001 manifesto, was forced to end protracted negotiations over a £320 million sale of the Tote to a racing industry consortium after doubts about the consortium’s ability to fund a deal.
The Government’s attempts to offload the Tote to the benefit of racing were fraught with problems. An early attempt to do a sweetheart deal with racing was blocked by the European Commission on the grounds that the knockdown price being mooted was tantamount to state aid.
After the ruling, the Government asked PricewaterhouseCoopers to value the business and negotiations over an estimated £400 million deal were started with the industry.
Several attempts later, including one involving funding from Lloyds TSB’s private equity arm, the racing industry came back in September last year with a £320 million offer.
The consortium, which included Tote management, was led by the Racecourse Association and the Racehorse Owners Association. However, its ability to raise the funding necessary to satisfy the Government’s price expectations were affected by the credit crunch.
The Government had hoped to secure a higher price in an open auction, and Gala Coral had been installed as the early favourite to secure a deal. But the continuing deterioration of financial markts has once again scuppered its chances of getting a good price.
The Tote, formally known as the Horserace Totalisator Board, runs 540 high street betting shops and 59 kiosks on race courses and has an exclusive licence to run pool betting in the UK.
Last year, it reported a 13.6 per cent rise in operating profits to £29 million and handed £20 million back to the racing industry. Group turnover rose by 12.1 per cent to £2.48 billion, and the internet division increased gross profits by 45 per cent. The group has more than 4,000 employeesEvery cloud has a silver lining – it is good to have some positive news from the current financial crisis.
I’ve often thought that the half an hour between races schedule doesn’t do racecourses any favours from a business point of view. Unless you’re the sort of racegoer who spends the whole meeting in the bar, there’s never really time to sit down for a pint or a bite to eat other than before racing starts. I reckon if they increased the time between say the third and fourth races to 45 minutes they’d get a lot more money through the tills in the bars and eateries.
Couldn’t agree more. The worst thing about going racing.
I must confess when writing race reports at the track it is so much easier when there is a 35 min gap as opposed to a 30 min gap between races – that extra 5 mins can make the difference between a stressful and stress free afternoon – especially when there are large fields.
…or when you’re dealing with a jumps fixture, where races are for the greater part longer and eat into your between-time.
Most point-to-points I’ve been to in recent times favour the 35 minute gap between races – in a medium in which no race is shorter than 2m4f, and over 90% are a minimum of 3m, I’m eternally grateful for that.
It’s handier still if the presiding hunt decides to do a parade of hounds (or, as happened when I went to Guilsborough last April, a parade of hounds + Amicelli) halfway through the meeting. To most of the racegoers it’s 20 minutes’ worth of Hunting Act-bashing, but to me it’s 20 minutes’ worth of catching up, writing up, or – if it’s Ystradowen again – unpeeling my reams of sodden paper from each other!
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.
Interesting to note that The Curragh have put their proposed re-development on hold, directly giving the current crisis as a reason.
For a copy of their statement:-
http://www.ors-racing.co.uk/CurraghHold.html
It will be interesting to see if they can reclaim their fixtures back.
It’s a shame really about the Curragh. The place is in dire need of a major facelift. The plans as they were though did seem to be a bit over the top. E100million for a place thats only properly full for one day a year is a bit ridiculous given the poor standard of facilities at some of the other tracks around Ireland.
Would imagine all the fixtures will be reinstated. No point in having the place lying idle all summer.
While I agree that 100 mill was over the top, I feel they are making another mistake now. They should scale down their plans and go ahead on a smaller scale- the present facilities are so decrepit as to surely becoming dangerous soon and more and more expensive to maintain. It’s typical that they cite the difficulty in filling the corporate boxes as a reason for not going ahead: anyone relying on corporates to prop up their business plan in the next ten years is going to go down in flames.
Wonder how the Aga feels now having given them 10 million to develop the racecourse?Looks like HRI are battoning down the hatches. Was to be expected I suppose.
Just found these stats for 2008 on the International federation of Horseracing Authorities.
Im not sure what they prove, but here they are anyway.
Betting turnover for 2008:
France up 4,8% to €9.2billion
US down 7.16% to US$13.6 billion
Ireland (on-course) down 18.2% to €231.0m
Sweden up 0.9% to €1.247 billion
Germany (tote) down 18.8% to €38.5 million
Japan down 0.4% to €21.2 billion
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