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Interesting piece by Marcus Townend in today’s ‘Daily Mail’ where he quotes Towcester Racecourse General Manager Kevin Ackerman as saying that since the course introduced free admission in 2003, attendances have increased by 113%. The course has also seen increases in Corporate and Conference income of 177%, commission from food and drink outlets up 222% and annual turnover up 270% to a predicted total for 2009/2010 of £1,782,987.
Surprisingly, no-one from ‘Racing for Change’ has been in touch to ask how the Towcester business plan works, nor have any other tracks…..Powered by Linux
Ackerman’s scarf is a disgrace though!
Nottingham is a track that is crying out for an initiative like this. For some reason, the people of Nottingham don’t want to attend in great numbers, even at a tenner a pop for a midweek gig. There was one meeting last year where I may as well have been bouncing around on the moon.
The course deserves better:- The track is fair, you get a good spread of winners at all prices, the food and drink prices aren’t excessive and the big Newmarket yards love it – you regularly see ‘faces’ in the paddock – and of course, we’re visited by some beautiful horses. Importantly, there are a similar number of fixtures to Towcester (unless there is a bias toward Sunday attendances at the Northamptonshire track).
They’ve got nothing to lose.
When I went to Notts I paid a bit extra to get the club admission and I really enjoyed it but it was quiet. If they made it free and charged say #8 for club i’d probably still pay it.
Being a massive advocate and regular attendee at Towcester I can only reinforce what a cracking idea it is. The Friday night meeting in the summer is busier than Cheltenham if you were measuring per square metre. In fact it is the busiest meeting i’ve ever been to. Not everyones cup of tea but I love it!!
I went to Nottingham in July when York,Ascot and Chester raced on the same day and it was busy but certainly not jam packed and it was a very nice day out.
Its a bit like the July Course for me and very nice too with some nice facilities and if you do the Saturday meets then you could stick around and go to the Dogs next by the 2f pole.
Those Saturday meetings seem to be how the course makes its cash. The Kilverton Meeting in May is the highlight of the year and they raise the prices accordingly. That’s fair enough – Towcester charge a premium for Boxing Day.
The problem is the nine or ten meetings in the autumn (which both of you would love, incidentally.) and the August Tuesday evening one. Tumbleweed City last year.
I love those meetings more than Southwell and I never miss one. Lambourn and Newmarket turn out in force with their good juveniles and tasty maidens. There is a horse of Ralf Beckett’s called
Desert Sage
which ran in October behind a million dollar Godolphin talking horse and in front of a magnificent Johnston Royal Ascot horse which hacked up at Southwell a fortnight ago. I’ve got mates with their own picks from those maidens, yet, its selfish of us to enjoy the emptiness of the course and these top quality animals slipping in under the radar.
The course charge a tenner and there can’t be more than 500 people there tops. Nottingham is a city of rascals and rogues, most of whom love a good skive, and if it was free, they’d attend in good numbers more than making up for the loss of the irritating tenner in bets and extra services.
The Towcester model is a clever one. Yet who’s taking note?
The Towcester model is a clever one. Yet who’s taking note?
Well it’s to be sincerely hoped Racing For Change
have
bothered to take a look at those figures along with those courses due to stage the week-long experiment with free entry. As I remember writing on here sometime or other, if anything quantifiable is to be learnt from the ‘free week’ then surely it must include comprehensive audit-worthy comparitive figures; and Towcester have supplied just that, well done them
Otherwise the whole experiment will be pointless, and we’ll be driven barmy by vacuous statements such as ‘we had a good crowd in today and the bar-takings were up’
The more I ponder it, the more I believe that free – or substantially cheaper – entrance fees would be one of the Great Leaps Forward RFC are seeking, rather than the portfolio of soft shoe slow shuffle in the dark and tread on your partner’s toes ideas they’ve dreamt up thus far
Mr Drone, Nottingham are the next course to join in that momentous Free Entry week.
The evening meeting on the 27th April will be free to enter. If its a sunny evening and the Nottingham Evening Post get behind the promotion, I anticipate a really big crowd. We shall see.
On the negative side, Newmarket’s 2000Gns festival is priced up at £40 for the Premier Enclosure,
£25
for the Grandstand and £10 for the Garden enclosure.
Using Premiership football as the benchmark (as is Newmarket’s wont), just doesn’t wash. You can drive to White Hart Lane, park up on a side street, walk to the ground, fork out thirty quid for a seat, shout a bit, have a sing song, watch a game of football and then go home.
In racing, £25 is just the
beginning
of the day’s expenses. It’s a fundamental difference.
On the negative side, Newmarket’s 2000Gns festival is priced up at £40 for the Premier Enclosure,
£25
for the Grandstand and £10 for the Garden enclosure.
In racing, £25 is just the
beginning
of the day’s expenses. It’s a fundamental difference.
There may (repeat may) be a case for allowing the existing ‘premier’ meetings to charge any premium price they believe they can get away with as, if you can stomach unreconstructed free-market forces, they will in all likelihood suck in near-capacity crowds whatever they charge – Guineas, Chester May, Ebor, Cheltenham Festival etc. Being ‘special’ events folk seem to blithely accept they will endure a rapid emptying of wallets; from inflated entrance fees through three-sov racecards, four-sov lager and five-sov burger ‘n’ chips to the raceday surcharges levied by cash machine vendors and hackney carriage operators
I don’t approve of it, but if folk will pay it then…
Your point about entrance fees in racing being just the start of the day’s expenses is well made of course. My belief is not only would free entrance obviously allow the racegoer to spend the money saved on-course, but it would also impact psychologically in that the feelgood factor created by getting ‘something for free’ would actually encourage folk to spend significantly more than the just the brass saved at the turnstiles – ‘well it’s cost nowt to get in so let’s treat ourselves to a proper lunch’ sorta thing: the happy punter spends money happily
The National Railway Museum in York charged a fairly hefty entrance fee of around £7 (if memory serves) but went free-to-all several years ago. I have it on reasonably good (unofficial) authority from someone who works there that increased spend on food, drinks, memorabilia, special events etc from the burgeoning hordes gleefully piling through the ‘I’m free’ open doors has more than made up the loss in turnstile take.
Out of interest Max did you ever tread Colwick’s hallowed turf when fences got in the way?
I and I believe a significant number of other NH bores rued its passing as it seemed a jolly good and very fair to beast-jock-and-punter chasing track. Newmarket trainers have long used it as a prep course for their blue-bloods, but the same was true of NH trainers from hither and yon who prepped many a bred-in-the-tweed novice chaser there
Out of interest Max did you ever tread Colwick’s hallowed turf when fences got in the way?
I and I believe a significant number of other NH bores rued its passing as it seemed a jolly good and very fair to beast-jock-and-punter chasing track. Newmarket trainers have long used it as a prep course for their blue-bloods, but the same was true of NH trainers from hither and yon who prepped many a bred-in-the-tweed novice chaser there
Correct on all counts. I believe Sue and Harvey Smith made noises to the tune of lobbying for Colwick to re-embrace (SIC) jumps racing (either permanently or during Doncaster’s closure, I can’t remember which), but I’m not sure whether they got especially far with that.
It did enjoy a short-lived revival as a jumps venue of sorts, being used for pointing in 2001 and 2002. The Grove & Rufford and the Blankney both moved there from Southwell ahead of the 2001 season, though the Blankey didn’t get chance to hold its meeting before foot-and-mouth intervened.
This proved a short-lived venture – the Blankney moved on to the longer-established course at Garthorpe in 2003, at the same time as the Grove & Rufford decamped to the then-new course at Welbeck, on land owned by Lady Anne Bentinck of Strath Royal and Speaker Weatherall fame.
With the good Lady’s passing in 2009, the future of this venue beyond its annual meeting a fortnight on Sunday is unsure, so with another new venue potentially required maybe it won’t be too long before a hunt executive is off to request another dose of Colwick?
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.
Good stuff GC. Had no idea the pointers had been trundling around there this millennium
Nor did I realise Lady Anne had finally shuffled off; she was I believe the last in direct tail-descent from the Dukes of Portland, so who has inherited the Welbeck and other expansive Portland estates I don’t know. Some unknowing fifth cousin three-times removed eking out a modest life in semi-detached suburbia I rather hope.
Bentinck and Portland: names deeply woven into racing’s fabric
Drone, I saw one jumps meeting at Colwick Park though my recollection of it is very hazy. They used to play local league football on the fringes of the backstretch and we got a good view of the fences and hurdles next to the pitches.
Often a substitute (or a lino), I had plenty of time to mess about near the obstacles. Seeing the fences up close was very enlightening and, along with several expensive falls in the early days, moulded my preference for the flat as a punting medium.
With its elegant stretches, deep, luscious turf, – rarely with much jar – and spacious, sweeping bends, Nottingham would make a decent jumps track.
I remember David Nicholson blowing his top at the decision to excise NH racing. The Nottingham executive said at the time that there was no local market for National Hunt, but as I’ve said earlier, flat attendances at Colwich Park hardly shake the Richter scale anyway and jumping is far more popular now than it was when the jumpers were originally exiled from the Colwick venue. They should look again.
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