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How is the Racing Ahead Weekend doing, Mulls?
Are the original sales figures being maintained?
Colin
It’s going well thanks Colin. We’ve had a slight dip from the early weeks which you would expect but we’re still ahead of expectations and holding nicely at the 20,000 mark.
It was firmly the intention in the first place for The Sportsman to be taken by the major bookmaking outlets: it was very much part of the original business plan.
But, one by one, the bookmakers who had expressed considerable early interest backed off.
That might have been a good time to have put The Sportsman on the back-burner – before much damage had been done other than to the careers and personal lives of a handful of individuals and less than £1m in investors’ money – but that is easier to say with hindsight and was not a decision I was ever party to.
The RP got itself together when the Sportsman was on the horizon but reverted to being average when the threat disappeared.
It was a real shame that The Sportsman didn’t succeed but it was never likely to given the people who were at the very top of the organisation.
The first front cover was a killer – every newspaper and media outlet in Europe gets those bookmaker press releases and no experienced journalist ever gives them much attention. To splash on one was absolute madness.
You must have huge sympathy with the foot soldiers who produced genuinely innovative racing coverage which more than matched the RP on the tipping and analysis front.
I highly doubt whether there is a market for another daily trade paper. Being involved with Racing Ahead, I at least have some idea of how much such an operation would cost and the numbers don’t really add up.
That said, there’s every chance that the Racing Post won’t be able to continue in its current format – ie with the coverage, resources and costs of a national newspaper.
No daily racing paper can survive without the 20-odd thousand guaranteed daily sales from the betting shops
Within five years, there won’t be papers up on the walls in most betting shops, it will be display screens. These are already used in Europe and are like plasma TVs only much, much sharper. The technology is developing and soon these will be as clear as newsprint and cheap to install.
Once these have been rolled out, will the likes of Ladbrokes pay around £2m per year just to put the Racing Post on their walls? There will be many more outlets to provide colours and form to these screens than the expense of paying for the Racing Post.
For once, it seems Trinity Mirror played a blinder in disposing of the paper for somewhere near its top price – although they could have got even more.
So it might be a case of enjoying the one trade paper while it lasts – and certainly their currently free website.
The weekend is a slightly different matter, as Racing Ahead Weekend has proved, but another daily looks highly unlikely.Well, people still buy regional & national newspapers, even so they could get their news from a number of other formats: ie: internet, telly and radio.
I do not think the RP will go down the crapper. As a punter, I much prefer reading form on print than searching screens for info – including computer screens.
Zip
I thought the decision to cover stocks and shares was a mistake.
The original horse racing layout was difficult to get used to but later that was as good as anyone elses.
There was no need for a start up newspaper to have expensive central London offices.
Someone I was associated with and who has spent thousands advertising with The Racing Post telephoned The Sportsman and e mailed them twice he was requesting the advertising rates. They never were sent.
I though the team of writers employed were exellent.
There was no need for a start up newspaper to have expensive central London offices.
Absolutely no need at all. For those who didn’t know, we were in the building next door to Betfair HQ, an impressive glass-panelled structure hard up against the banks of the Thames in Hammersmith. As a statement of intent it was certainly audacious, but it’s not as if we were bringing in the same sort of money as our next door neighbours to justify that sort of outlay on an office – quite the opposite, in fact.
The local pubs were very nice, though.
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.
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Someone I was associated with and who has spent thousands advertising with The Racing Post telephoned The Sportsman and e mailed them twice he was requesting the advertising rates. They never were sent.
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That was my experience too.
Mulls74,
Glad to hear the RA paper doing well; congratulations.
Do you have any plans to make this a daily paper in the future?
Has it improved since the first 2 weeks? It looked more like something you’d expect from A Level students early doors. I’ve not bought it since.
Has it improved since the first 2 weeks? It looked more like something you’d expect from A Level students early doors. I’ve not bought it since.
There is one way to find out David – don’t be such a Yorkshireman and buy a copy
The paper has changed quite a lot since the early weeks. Hopefully for the better – with the Irish cards, neater form and more stats on the racecards. We’ve smartened up the general layout too.
I’m sure there’s lots of room for improvement and we’re always open to suggestions.Although I only ever bought a couple of issues of The Sportsman, I do remember its ‘Four Horsemen’ and version of Pricewise (name escapes me) columns being well received and developing quite a following, so when the warning signals were sounding about the viability of the hard copy version, I think they missed a good opportunity to have a bash at developing a full-blown .pdf online version as a replacement, with the eventual introduction of a modest subscription perhaps. The concurrent website was piss-poor, as was the forum.
Incidentally, any paper that decides to ‘headhunt’ Geoff Lester deserves to flounder
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