O'Connor's Blog hit a nerve Last Monday’s blog from Irish Times journalist Brian O’Connor produced a flood of comments from racing enthusiasts using this website. The following is one example of how passionate views are when it comes to admission prices: I have read with great interest the posts on this topic. I am lucky enough to have owned and raced some horses around the country. I have been to most tracks, in fact I think nearly all tracks in this country at one stage or another. I often used to go to meetings and look at the number of horses running on a particular day and then look at the crowd. In some instances, I don’t think there would have been any more than 200 paying customers through the turnstiles (and I am being generous). And the authorities wonder why? Attendance fees are too high and the standards which are allowed to exist are deplorable on all fronts of consumer expectations. As a few posts have said, we will be expected to end up paying €20 for a saggy beef roll shortly. What a joke. The racetracks in general try to do their best with what they have, but given today’s situation and today’s standards, their best in my opinion is no longer good enough. I’m speaking generally here, as in my opinion there are some excellent facilities and very good venues, but the rip off culture still exists everywhere. My understanding is the age profile of the attendees is getting older. Racing should be appealing to everybody from an early age. What facilities are there at most venues for a family day? Sweet damn all. Unfortunately horse racing tends to be run by those who were born into racing, and as a result don’t need the extra encouragement to become a racing fan. That may just be part of the problem. I developed my love for racing when I was a young, watching Noel Reid presenting Sports Stadium on a Saturday. We had only RTE1 and 2 when I was growing up, so it was something which bombarded me for a couple of hours on a Saturday. Today young people have more choice, so I’d bet won’t be watching ATR on a winter saturday in December. Racing has to appeal to the young people through a different route. If it doesn’t happen the decline in racing attendances will be terminal. The whole business model of race courses needs to be examined. Until an innovator takes charge we will be left with the same sorry story of falling attendances, an ageing racegoer, to a backdrop of a rip off culture. The free entry should be trialled. With some thought there has to be a “Ryanair” model of revenue generation that can be inspired. What I mean is that the entry can be negligible or free, but there are other ways of generating revenue for the coffers of the racetracks. Now I am not advocating a complete “Ryanair” experience, but rather an examination of other ways of making money from the consumer, than just through the gate. A lot of money was pumped into racing and the prizemoney is better now than it ever was, but outside of the hardcore breeders and owners, do the authorities not recognise that the ordinary owner, doesn’t care that the winner gets €7,000 instead of €5,000. He’d prefer to have more chances with more racing of having a winner. At the lower end of racing it can be difficult to get your horse entered in a race with the balloting system etc.. Without action on this also, the number of owners (syndicates, parterships etc) will fall. Paying monthly fees for a horse that may not run more than 3 times in a season coupled with the fact that you can’t plan your holidays to coincide with your horse running, is not entirely appealing. But that is a whole different argument. Comment by CH — June 21, 2009 @ 10:25 am
