William Hill pull out of Galway Plate sponsorship William Hill bookmakers will not renew their sponsorship of the Galway Plate in 2010. The English firm has been associated with the famous race for four years since 2006, but have declined the option to brand next year's race. David Hood, director of racing with William Hill explained their reasons: "It’s an unfortunate casualty of the times, based purely on the economic environment within Ireland currently. "The various trading restrictions on bookmakers within the country, coupled with the financial climate means maintaining a sponsorship of the size of the Galway Plate has become vastly disproportionate to the size of our business in Ireland. "We wish the next sponsor to have the honour of backing the Plate every success and hope that they will enjoy race week as much as we have." John Moloney, Manager of Galway Racecourse commented: "For the past four years, it has been a privilege to have an organisation as world renowned as William Hill attributed to the Galway Plate. "Never before in the history of the Galway plate have we seen the national and international interest in the race from trainers, owners and the media, due in thanks to the efforts and work of William Hill in offering such an attractive prize fund of €250,000 for the Plate. "We are of course ever conscious of the tough economic times that we are currently faced with and we can only again offer every thanks possible to William Hill for their support of the Galway Races to date and wish them every success in the future".
