Thurles Racecourse Closure Sparks Warnings on Future of Smaller Irish Tracks Johnny Ward expects more racecourses to follow Thurles and to be forced to close in the coming years. Speaking on this week’s Irish Angle show, Johnny Ward insisted Thurles is worth saving but warned further tracks will follow suit with racecourses becoming “more reliant on off-course betting turnover”. The news of Thurles' closure came as a major shock to the racing industry last week, with Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) also on the back foot as they released a statement in the hours that followed. Future of Racecourses Depends on Betting Turnover “For me, Thurles Racecourse is absolutely worth saving,” Johnny Ward explained. “Speaking to people around the industry, only a small number of people, in recent years, since the latest media rights deal was done, the future of racetracks is entirely in the hands of the betting on those racetracks off-course. “The information I was getting was that racecourses are going to close over this because there's just not enough turnover on these particular race meetings when they race. “We've seen major turnover decline in Britain, a staggering turnover decline in the short term. “In Ireland, what will happen is that there will be some racecourses that are not financially viable. “To be honest, as sad as I would be to see some racecourses go, I think that probably is just a bit of a necessary evil, and there's too much racing as there is. “I wasn't expecting it to be Thurles, to be quite honest. Maybe I should have put two and two together and expected it to be Thurles. “It’s maybe a bit lost on people who don't live in Munster, but Thurles is a big, big part of the south. “Thurles, for me, would be a big, big loss. It races so regularly, and the ground up until basically the worst of the climate crisis we've had, has been really reliable. It had that schooling aspect to it as well. “Thurles has been a massive, massive part of the jumps calendar. So for me, if we lost one or two of the summer tracks, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Thurles is a track that is intrinsic to the National Hunt calendar in Ireland. Explaining The Media Rights Deal “There's a new media rights deal currently in play whereby the money a racecourse gets is somewhat linked to the betting turnover,” explained irishracing.com editor Vincent Finegan. “Now, it's not fully linked to it, and it's on a staggered scale, but as we go down the line, it's going to be more and more linked to that because that's where the money is, out of betting. “So, that's where the media rights money is coming from and that's the way it's divvied out. “But the problem we have here is we look at Galway last week, another festival this year, where the crowds are up. They were up nearly 10,000 on the week, betting turnovers way up on track as well, up 13% with the bookies in the ring. “Basically attendance is up at these major festivals in a big way, and they're dropping off at the smaller meetings. “Therefore, the smaller meetings are going to get less of a return from media rights. So, they're going to struggle as we go forward. “There is a case for saying you're probably right that down the line we will lose one, two, three, four, five of these smaller tracks. That's a bit unfair, isn't it? Because they're needed in the industry as well. They're very important.”
