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Don’t agree with the proposal. The prize money goes to owners and who knows whether they will reinvest in Ireland, the uk, put it up their noses or simply spunk it up the wall
Don’t believe this will result in course closures either. No reason to do so
The Irish may be ‘coming over here and taking our money’ but surely some of it is reinvested anyway and there is also the simple fact that Cheltenham wouldn’t be what it is without them (perhaps Irish racing wouldn’t be what it is without Cheltenham). Yes, I know it’s a one-off proposal but it seems unnecessarily harsh to me.
One or both governments may end up making the decision for us anyway of course.
Or, equivalently, continue with three or four a day but have couple of blank days per week. A 5-day ‘racing week’ Tuesday-Saturday for example
It wouldn’t take much co-operation with our friends across the Irish Sea to ensure that if they want blank days too then they could be different than ours so there is still racing every day.
With Sunak and Hancock in racing constituencies, you’d expect some kind of government bail out when the well eventually runs dry.
…with accompanying playing to the audience once again from the latter, q.v. the triumphalism of Hancock’s Tweets upon the resumption of racing in June, which misread the proverbial room somewhat.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Sunday racing is a relatively new innovation on the calendar.
Sunday racing in Britain celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in just eighteen months time, Friendsheep, and is fewer than three years younger than artificial surface racing. You’d hope people had worked out by now how to programme and develop it to optimum effect.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Whenever the argument comes up about “too many meetings”, it tends to ignore the fact that racing’s income is derived from the number of meetings, and we need to acknowledge that there is a place for races which are tailored to satisfy the needs of the (generally moderate) equine population.
Arguably more races need to be framed to give our lesser lights a better chance of a run! The menu needs to be balanced, and excellence rewarded, so I quite see how some more prestigious events would want to gravitate to weekend slots. You don’t need to bet on them if you don’t want to, but I often think it is easier to spot the least-bad horse in a bad race than the best horse in an elite event.
I also think it is important not to lose sight of the fact that racing is best enjoyed live, in normal circumstances, so there is a case for EXPANDING the number of weekend meetings, perhaps at the expense of some weekday cards.
These should be fairly distributed around the regions, to give the best possible chance for the general public to go racing when they have free time and want a day out. When a casual racegoer fancies a day at the races but the nearest meeting on a Saturday is a 3 or 4 hour drive away, they just don’t go. When things return to normal, a better geographical spread of meetings at weekends would encourage attendance.
Sorry to have wandered off-topic, but regarding the funding model for racing, it seems evident (to me) that a revision of the Levy is the most pressing need.
For the year ended 31 March 2019, the Levy Board received funding of £84.4m total income, with Levy receipts during the year falling £12.3m from the previous year.
However, in the “Annual Turnover of Horse Race Betting Great Britain 2008-2019”, published in June 2020, it was reported that the turnover from off-course horse race betting in the United Kingdom amounted to 4.2 BILLION POUNDS in 2019. Anyone with a calculator can work out that the Levy Board received only around 2% of that vast turnover. The Levy should not be based on profits, which good accountants will ensure are pitched at a level the bookies are comfortable with.
In contrast to the £84.4m racing has to fund an entire industry, in 2018, Denise Coates, CEO of Bet365, was paid £323 million. That included a 50 per cent share of a £92.5m company dividend. It is surely untenable that the contribution from the entire betting industry to racing is just over a quarter of the remuneration paid to one CEO from a single betting company?
Whenever the argument comes up about “too many meetings”, it tends to ignore the fact that racing’s income is derived from the number of meetings, and we need to acknowledge that there is a place for races which are tailored to satisfy the needs of the (generally moderate) equine population.
Arguably more races need to be framed to give our lesser lights a better chance of a run! The menu needs to be balanced, and excellence rewarded, so I quite see how some more prestigious events would want to gravitate to weekend slots. You don’t need to bet on them if you don’t want to, but I often think it is easier to spot the least-bad horse in a bad race than the best horse in an elite event.
Very much agree with the above, not least the last line, even before considering that my single biggest win last year came in a 0-55 classified at Chelmsford. I’ve never been convinced that a mooted reduction of moderate races would result in a commensurate reduction of the number or percentage of moderate horses, but rather just hide more of them out of sight.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
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