Feast and Famine in the Fixture List: Programme Planning will be a Major Test for the BHA’s Collaborative Tripartite Board

If you’re keen on racing as well as other sports, then last weekend was positively exhausting. You can have multiple TVs on around the house and still have no chance of keeping up with Wimbledon, the Tour de France, first Ashes Test and Scottish Open as well as the onslaught of a totally Flat-dominated Saturday of Ascot, Chester, Hamilton, Newmarket, Salisbury, York and over in Ireland, Tipperary. Hardly surprising that the pundits had an alliterative field day, calling it all “Midsummer Madness”, “Feast and Famine”, “Surfeit of Stuff” and “Clearly Crackers”. Ladbrokes termed it “Groundhog Day”.

And then, incredibly, on Sunday there wasn’t a single Flat turf meeting in either Ireland or the UK. You scratch your head as to why, in mid-July, the choice is really moderate NH racing at Perth, Sligo, Southwell, Stratford or, if you’re really desperate, the all-weather at Dundalk.

As always at the moment in racing, it seems as though some stakeholders gain but others definitely lose. Such is the support at some of the tracks that York on their Magnet Cup day (which, full credit to them, they’ve been running now for over half a century on this day) had 40,000 attendees, Chester (with a pretty ordinary card) 28,000, Ascot 20,000 and yet the top meeting, with the July Cup, at Newmarket had a paltry 14,000 and only 37,000 over all three days of their top midsummer fixture.

We all know that Saturday betting turnover matters enormously, as it drives the levy and is ultimately such a big contributor to prize-money. All the betting operators were extremely critical of the weekend clashes, which led to many punters giving up due to racing overload. Some of the sponsors such as Bet 365, who had supported the Bunbury Cup at Newmarket, were naturally disappointed with the turnover. Trainers and jockeys faced a logistical nightmare. All in all, an indictment of the way the current fixture list and programme plan operate.

Tactically, although not necessarily as simple as it sounds, the obvious short-term requirement is to separate some of these meetings. In particular, the Newmarket July meeting over recent years has moved to the weekend and it should go back to a mid-week slot. John Smiths day, with its huge support and tradition, should be the anchor Saturday meeting. And then it is important to look at the weekends either side and see whether they can be strengthened. In fact when you look at this weekend’s fare, it is certainly not particularly impressive and again illustrates the need to balance the fixture list.

Strategically though, it is not sufficient just to tinker around with a few race days and a few meetings. The whole of the programme, end to end across the year, needs significant review. Indeed if I put my former management consultancy hat on, it is a classic for data analysis of meetings, racecourse attendances, betting turnover and the needs of the racehorse population in the context of the total amount of racing in both in the UK and near neighbours. Mathematically it is possible to work out the absolutely optimal pattern that maximises the total revenue and margin of British racing. That can be compared against the current arrangement and a migration plan determined to move the current, inherently ineffective system towards the optimal one ….. and yes, I can already hear the sound of pigs taking off from the runway.

As always this is not just a logical exercise. If you’re generous it involves give and take on the part of racecourses, and if you’re not, it is at the heart of the need for the BHA to take more control over British racing from certain stakeholders and, in this example, specifically the racecourses. The tracks need to give up power, in other words. I’m sure that is an implicit assumption behind the behavioural dynamics of the new tripartite board representing the BHA, the Horsemen’s Group and the Racecourse Association. Success or otherwise will certainly be one of the prime tests of how well the collaborative model can work in practice.

It could be harder to solve than the Greek debt crisis!?! We wish everyone well around the negotiating table.

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What Should Racecourses Do to Increase Attendance, Boost Revenue and Encourage Positive Customer Behaviour that Enhances Everyone’s Experience of and Pleasure in Racing?

Today’s blog follows on from a three-part series I did after Newbury’s Hennessy Day denim débacle (regular readers know how much I like alliteration), when they managed to antagonise lots of customers – including my wife. Very much a PR fiasco. Whether or not it led to the sacking of the former joint MD Steve Higgins is not known, but they now have a new and much more experienced CEO in Julian Thick (former MD of Aintree). As I also flagged up in the last blog, Newbury, like most racecourses in the UK, is facing many financial challenges as well as declining attendances.

Indeed, as I put pen to paper (or more accurately, fingers to keyboard), I’ve just read that the Racecourse Association has gloomily reported that over the last ten years, the average raceday attendance has dropped by 1,000. While that doesn’t sound a lot, it certainly does when you put it into the context that on most race days there are 5,000 or fewer attendees, so it is a 20% decline in an increasingly competitive sport and leisure marketplace where customers have a range of opportunities to spend their hard-earned.

Since Hennessy Day, I’ve probably had more discussion with owners around this subject (all triggered by the denim disaster at Newbury) than any other. Obviously there are no magic bullets, and it is a very challenging area, but here is a summary of views.

• Offer an exciting product. Alas, it certainly looks as though there is far too much racing in the UK, with a lot of it complete dross. It may make money for certain courses, and put money into the bookies’ satchels, but at a risk of fundamentally eroding both the integrity of racing (most of the scandals occur in Class 6 races on the all-weather) and its aura of glamour, panache and excitement. What should change over the next ten years?
• Keep and foster your customers. No business can afford to lose customers. It is much harder to acquire new ones than retain the ones you already have. Irritating, antagonising or offending them through poor service, bad racing, ill thought-out initiatives or just simple neglect is inexcusable. Do racecourses have really effective customer retention strategies?
• Know who your customers are. In my consulting career, when I worked for fmcg companies as Diageo and Reckitt Benckiser, I was impressed by the quality of their marketing and the incredibly detailed analysis of what, in the jargon, is called “customer segments”. They weren’t just selling to “drinkers” or “householders”, but to literally hundreds of different types of people, backgrounds, ages and preferences. Huge investment was made in differentiated sales and marketing campaigns aimed at these well-defined segments. Do racecourses have such modern and professional campaigns mapped out? I’d love to see one. Indeed, a few years ago there was a woefully pathetic stereotyping of racegoers into a “Bill and Ben” type of categorisation, “Bill” being the old-fashioned racegoer vs. “Ben” as the trendy adherent of social media – a fatuous and totally inadequate segmentation. 
• Invest in modern marketing. This naturally follows. I’m sure there are some brilliant marketing people in racing, but I haven’t come across many. The few I have met at racecourses have been distinctly ordinary. A few questionnaires and a bit of direct mail doesn’t cut the mustard. How do racecourses select and remunerate their sales and marketing staff? I fear, poorly.
• Invest in frontline staff training. Friendly, well-informed, professional and helpful staff hugely enhance the racecourse experience, while their opposites detract from it. The “best” racecourses in the UK seem to get this right, but alas they are definitely in the minority. I’ll do some more blogs on this subject. All too often the staff are boorish, ignorant and unhelpful. During the Newbury débacle I just about lost patience with staff who hid behind responses such as “It’s the new rule, and there’s nothing I can do about it”. How much investment is made in racecourse staff training? If staff behaviour and training is compared with, say, the leading leisure businesses such as Disney, what conclusions would you draw? I fear the answer would be that far too many of the people employed on racecourses are just not up to the job. 
• Sort out the bars. This is a good example of frontline failure. Amateurish bar staff and completely inadequate routines for serving drinks very quickly is the norm at racecourses. How many times have you heard racegoers complaining while desperately trying to get served between races? Substantial income is lost and customers irritated.
• Sort out the stands and facilities. All too often, racecourses are a strange mish-mash of different stands and facilities that lack any consistent identity, where very different types of customer with different needs collide. If there are different segments, there are clearly different requirements in the various facilities. I have no problems with courses such as Newbury trying (with apologies for the jargon) to “premiumise” their product, but that needs to be done in a way that strongly reinforces both the product and the behaviour that you are trying to engender. At a personal level I love Newbury’s Wine Vault, but then why have second-rate, very loud live music immediately adjacent to it?

That’s it for the moment. I’m very aware that I’ve done no more than scratch the surface. Future blogs will pick up some of these issues in more detail. In the short term, though, I’m looking forward to discussing some of this with Julian Thick and his co-directors at Newbury on what I’m hoping will be a superb day’s racing, Betfair Super Saturday, 8th February. 

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.