declining racecourse attendance.

​In today’s (May 2nd) Racing Post, Lee Mottershead quite rightly bemoaned the drop in attendances at our biggest meetings. Without dwelling on the point, Lee highlighted the rash of uncompetitive, small field sizes for what should be informative races, both flat and National Hunt. He emphasised the drop in attendance from the *pre-covid years, without referencing the impact all the fearmongering and propaganda has had throughout the population, especially to the elderly. There are still people who believe that covid remains all around us and perhaps will never be normalised.
The drop in racecourse attendance is not, though, a black and white issue. I don’t think it is appropriate to compare the numbers who attended, for example, the King George meeting at Kempton last Christmas with figures for the years *pre-covid. And this is a problem that will be on-going. In fact, it may get a whole lot worse!
The cost of fuel is rising at a speed that is unprecedented in my lifetime. This time last year, I was using, approximately, £50 of petrol per week. Now it is close on a £100. The cost of petrol alone will make racegoers think twice about travelling very far to a race-meeting. Petrol and diesel, of course, are just one notch on the barrel of rising prices, including, I suspect, the cost of admittance to a racecourse and all the goodies on offer once the racegoer is through the turnstiles.
I have long-argued the point that contrary to public opinion, horse racing is a working-class sport underpinned by the rich, the wealthy and the fabulously wealthy. Those at the coal-face of the sport, stable staff, jockeys, trainers and betting-shop staff, are all working-class. Even the likes of Matt Chapman is working class; he works every hour of the day, it seems. He is certainly more working-class than those at their desks earning blue-chip salaries at the B.H.A. Yet the sport is manufactured to suit the small majority who are by many millions of pounds far removed from the coal-face of the working class. It is a truth that needs to be acknowledged.
The race programme also hinders any solution to the problem. If I lived, for example, equal-distance between Southwell and Wolverhampton, when both racecourses race on the same-day, albeit one during the afternoon and the other in the evening, I would have to choose which one to attend. If they raced on consecutive days, I would be able to attend both race meetings. So often you see Lingfield racing on the same day as Epsom, Chelmsford or Sandown. Newcastle on the same day as Hexham. Nottingham on the same day as Wolverhampton. Back in the day this would never have happened as there was a department at the Jockey Club described as ‘race-planning’.
If Lingfield race on the same day as Kempton, for instance, race-goers have the choice of two venues and those who decide upon Lingfield for whatever reason become punters lost to Kempton. One small part of solving this decline in racecourse numbers is sensible race-planning and not allowing racecourses executives to stage racing whenever they think best for them and sod their near neighbours. The Horse Racing Industry needs to be thought of holistically, as one big potentially juicy orange and not cut-up according to who has the sharpest and largest knife. I read today that in sixty-years Rugby Union may not exist. If horse racing’s stakeholders do not get their act together quickly and act in the general good of the sport, I prophesise that we may not exist as a professional sport in a decade or two less than that.
It should also be said that though small field sizes may be of little good for betting turnover, small fields are a godsend to those owners who continue to patronise the sport. An owner with a horse of limited ability, if his trainer is on the ball, will be more likely to pay his bills on time if his horse jumps around to finish fourth of four in a £10,000 Kempton handicap, than he is if he finishes eighth of nine in a handicap at Ludlow. We must remember not to throw the baby out with the bath-water when we debate declining attendances and uncompetitive races.
To use Kempton on Boxing Day as an example again, what the course doesn’t have now what it had ten and twenty years ago is a Kauto Star or a Desert Orchid. This is due, in part, to all the big-named chasers being trained in Ireland. The King George this year could be a cracker when you consider all the possible horses that might turn-up, yet not one of them is a household name and as such have no pulling power.
The situation will improve. In all walks of life there are peaks and troughs, with the trough this time around caused not by the sport but irrational decisions made by a government in league with outside forces. Racecourses must be more inviting, that’s a given. It must be a venue for all-comers, for the informed and those new to the sport. It just needs a marketing guru to come along to spice things up a bit. Though, of course, the horses and racing must always be at the heart of the day.