Worrying Trends in Racecourse Attendance in the UK. Time for Soul Searching, Re-think and Renewal?

Off to Dublin at the weekend for the sensational Festival at Leopardstown. This was a highlight of the racing year for me in 2018 and I enjoyed it even more than Cheltenham, Aintree and the York Ebor meeting. Every race was exciting, field sizes huge, prize-money massive, but what really made the difference was the animated, knowledgeable and passionate crowd, which was a joy to behold. There seemed to be a huge buzz in Ireland, probably helped by the sensational victory against France in the rugby. This year it’s England’s turn to raise the excitement levels. I’ll be watching the end of the game in a super wine bar, The Grange in Foxrock, and the atmosphere is bound to be electric. Bring it on, and may my liver survive! It could be detox next week.

There have been other passionate racing moments over the last month. The story of Andrew Gemmell, owner of the new Stayers’ Hurdle favourite Paisley Park, and his love of racing despite being blind from birth, was uplifting. Emma Lavelle is a popular mid-tier trainer and everyone I know would be delighted to see her win at the Festival. My pleasure was heightened by the fact that the horse was bought by our good friend and agent, Gerry Hogan, who has been involved in many of our NH purchases. It’s a tough life for the majority of trainers, and it’s lovely to see the lesser lights win big races. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people will be rooting for Presenting Percy in the Gold Cup, and for Phi Kirby’s stable, star Lady Buttons, when she takes on Altior in the Champion Chase. I’ll also be cheering on the trio of Dunvegan, Articulum and Derrinross at Leopardstown as they all come from small yards.

Racing without passion, emotion, rousing stories, cherished horses and animated crowds is a soulless experience. Unfortunately there are far too many racecourses and racedays which only provide joyless fare. Over the winter I’ve been to all the all-weather tracks to watch moderate horses fight it out in the cold and dark. Truly dismal. Indeed I had an unwelcome “first” at Southwell a week ago when I stood in the paddock as the only owner present for my race. Clearly all the other owners had given up hope. The horse disappointed and I left almost immediately, having been on the track for less than 20 minutes. Driving home, I reflected that I would be embarrassed to take a new owner there, as I can’t believe they would stay in the game for very long. Southwell have actually improved the facilities for owners recently, and their O&T bar is a most pleasant and cosy room, but surely what really matters is the total raceday experience that lifts the spirits rather than depressing them. I’m afraid winter all-weather racing, and for that matter many other turf days, completely fails to do that.

So when the raceday attendance figures for 2018 were published recently, they weren’t a total surprise. Back in 2015 the BHA published growth targets for racing against a 2014 baseline, one of which was for racecourse attendances to reach seven million by 2020. They have however declined for each of the last three years, with the most recent total 5.77m, the lowest this century. Average crowds fell to 3,924, with the median figure a mere 1,567. Racing may still be the #2 sport behind football in spectator terms, but there is no escaping the reality that it looks as though racecourses are going to undershoot on their 2020 attendance goal by 1.25m.

After these figures were published, social media was full of negative reactions and prescriptions: far too much dull and dreary racing; uncompetitive, small fields; weak product on too many racedays; high cost and over-charging; declining loyalty of local customers; expensive food; failure to provide modern facilities and easy access to the internet, etc. As an aside, I didn’t see any references to horse welfare and the use of the whip, a subject to which I will return and which has been blown completely out of proportion. At the moment racing is concentrating too much on too many of the wrong issues.

There is one major encouraging trend which is that the big festivals and “marquee days” appear to be doing very well, and sometimes it’s easy to think everything in racing is rosy when you attend a big day at Cheltenham or Leopardstown. One obvious route for racecourses is to identify the fixtures that they can develop into mini-festivals. I’d even propose that the Racecourse Association develop that strategically and identify festival fixtures across the country for every week of the year.

It’s not as though there hasn’t been a strategic approach to improving attendance. Back in 2015, “customer growth objectives” were developed, with racecourses committing to develop a stronger partnership with the then new broadcaster, ITV; the creation of a digital-led “Come Racing” campaign promoting a “kids go free” message; best practice guides for racecourses; RCA’s leadership of an “Insight = Growth” project with data warehousing and bespoke planning to attract new customers, secure earlier ticket sales and increase customer retention. To be fair, several aspects of this strategy have been quite successful, particularly improvement in advance ticket sales to over two million.

However, there’s no escaping the conclusion that the overall strategic plan has failed to meet its objectives. There is now a new Chief Executive at the RCA and it’s time, again, to revive and renew the strategies and plans to boost attendance. My own plea is that strategy is not just a technocratic activity. It must contain initiatives that bring passion back into the sport, rather than just running it as a money-making, levy-generating, gambling-enhancing activity. We need strategy with soul.

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“Come Friendly Bombs and Drop on Kempton Park” (amongst other courses), with Apologies to Sir John Betjeman

There’s a super book by Chris Pitt entitled A Long Time Gone, which examines the history of racecourses which have closed down. If you ever enter a pub quiz on the subject it is a must-read: “Which track had the Grand Nationals during the First World War, one of which was won by Lester Piggott’s grandfather?” (Gatwick); “Which track has the record of the world’s longest continuous bar?” (Bromford Bridge, Birmingham); “Where does John McCririck want his ashes to be scattered?” (Alexandra Park); “Which track provided the turf for Ascot’s National Hunt course?” (Hurst Park). Easy, eh?

It now looks as though Kempton Park could well be added to the list. Just before I went on holiday, an announcement was made by the Jockey Club that they want to sell off 200+ acres and close down the course, raising at least £100m which together with extra injection of £400m+ over the next decade will unlock the potential of Sandown Park, build a new floodlit all-weather track at Newmarket and put substantial extra sums into prize-money.

I must admit that I didn’t give it a huge amount of thought while on holiday, with the attractions of chilled South African chardonnay and the gorgeous vistas on the Cape blotting out British racing for a while. So I was rather surprised when I got back to find out that the proposal had generated an enormous amount of invective and controversy. I should probably nail my prejudices to the mast before going any further – I have a top 10 of courses that I really dislike going to, and in alphabetical order they are Chelmsford, Ffos Las, Kempton, Lingfield, Newcastle (A/W), Plumpton, Southwell, Towcester, Wolverhampton and Worcester. I wouldn’t mind any of Sir John Betjeman’s bombs landing on these courses. The owner experience is dreadful at all of them, and with the exception of the King George VI on Boxing Day, Kempton is one of the dreariest, most soulless places that can be envisaged.

Increasingly, I think, racecourses are segmenting into three groups: the top tracks with fabulous facilities and festivals; the bottom tracks where quite frankly it doesn’t matter whether there are any customers or not, as their profitability is to do with betting and media rights; and then those in between which have a strong local following even when the experience is somewhat lacking. Kempton I would put firmly into the category where attendance doesn’t matter, even though I’m more than prepared to accept the counter-argument that substantial investment might be able to change that. But even then, if I had a choice between a souped-up Kempton or a transformed Sandown, I know where I’m going.

What have the Jockey Club actually proposed?

• Close Kempton and sell the land for housing: dispose of 230 acres with the potential for building 3,000+ homes, raising at least £100m. It is uncertain whether Spelthorne Borough Council is in favour of this, but in line with national planning policy over the next 20 years they have got to find somewhere to put 15,000+ additional dwellings. Seems an inviting proposition to me.
• Transfer the Kempton fixtures: disperse 13 prime jumps fixtures to other courses around the country, both small and large, and particularly in the north. This spreads the benefits of the meetings to other tracks and the Jockey Club have also promised further investment at these courses. The King George VI would go to Sandown. Of course it wouldn’t be the same race, but I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be a spectacular Christmas event. Surely many of the great names of the past could just as easily have won at Sandown: Arkle, Captain Christy (and I can still see so clearly in my mind’s eye his thrashing of Bula by 30 lengths in the 1975 race), Desert Orchid, Kauto Star and now Thistlecrack.
• Substantial ongoing investment: starting with a transformational rebuilding of Sandown, its facilities and track and building a new A/W course near The Links at Newmarket. The Sandown proposal sounds particularly exciting, as it is a course which has looked pretty jaded for a while. They want it to become London’s premier dual-code racecourse. In addition to the £100m+ from the sale they are going to raise and invest a further £400m (presumably from profit and / or bonds similar to that which funded the £45m Cheltenham transformation) over the next decade, with over half of that money going into owner prize-money: an increase of 54% on the previous level over 10 years and which is very welcome at £25m per annum.

What’s not to like about this? Clearly a lot, as the press / social media reaction was 99% against all of it, the arguments being: the Jockey Club remit / Royal Charter is to be a guardian of racing and protector of courses (Nicky Henderson in particular described the role of his father in setting up Racecourse Holdings Trust in the 1960s that bought Cheltenham, Market Rasen, Nottingham and Wincanton and then United Racecourses that brought in Epsom, Sandown and Kempton); National Hunt can’t afford to lose such a course, that has very reliable ground, and Sandown is too vulnerable to wet weather; Londoners need local courses; it will disadvantage trainers in the South-West and Lambourn with much further travel for the A/W; and it erodes the heritage, heart and soul of jumps racing. Phrases such as “absolute disgrace” and “cultural vandalism” have been freely bandied about. Lots of heat under lots of collars.

When I read about all of this, I wondered how many people had actually been to Kempton to experience its dubious delights. With the notable exception of the King George meeting on Boxing Day, there is no particular reason for wanting to go there. I can’t see why one wouldn’t take horses to similar tracks, such as Huntingdon and Newbury, or further afield Aintree, Doncaster, Haydock or Southwell. I accept that the ground at Sandown in the middle of the winter can be poor, but so many NH trainers are now avoiding the depths of the winter to concentrate on the two “shoulders”, so it is not quite the problem it is often made out to be. In terms of the all-weather, if you look at this strategically, where would you want courses to be – near Newmarket, Lambourn and Middleham. Having a course at Newmarket seems to me an extremely good idea, although many argue that HQ should only be about top quality horses. I don’t have the statistics but I wouldn’t mind betting there are several thousand horses who don’t fit that description and are regularly seen out on the Heath. Presumably lots of these will appear on an A/W surface.

This controversy is bound to run and run, and there will be a huge amount of negotiation and fine detail to develop. As you can tell, I’m firmly in support and I believe that Simon Bazalgette and his colleagues at the Jockey Club are to be applauded for taking a strategic perspective that I am convinced is in the best interests of racing. It will strengthen the long-term financing of the sport and be good for owners. I hope they succeed.

I am always interested to hear your views so please do leave a comment. If you can't see the comment box at the bottom of this post then navigate to the post using the right hand navigation or click here > and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look forward to hearing your views. Thanks very much for sharing them.