BEST of the BETS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/racing/2018/08/21/focus-glamour-events-leaving-racing-purists-questioning-future/

By Sam Dean
21 AUGUST 2018 • 8:14PM

There are just 250 miles between the racecourses of Brighton and York, but on Wednesday it will feel like they are on opposite ends of the sporting spectrum. As York opens its doors to more than 15,000 bright-eyed customers on the first day of the Ebor Festival, Brighton will play host to its usual collection of regular punters, clutching their form guides in one hand and a betting slip in the other, at its midweek afternoon of racing.

The contrast seems obvious, given the respective size of the events, but the divide between racing’s glamour and its grassroots, its part-time punters and its die-hard purists, seems to be growing wider by the year. In an evolving industry and changing landscape, there are no shortage of racing aficionados who are questioning their future in the sport they love.

These purists were out in force at Brighton on Tuesday, where the afternoon sun had leaked through the clouds and the sea breeze massaged the air. This was a fine day for racing, and a welcome chance to earn some money, while basking in the August sunshine. Take a step back, though, and the wider concern is that it is precisely these type of events that are struggling to attract customers as racecourses instead divert their attentions towards a different sort of audience, and a different type of occasion.

All this has been brought into sharper focus following last week’s news that the owners of Towcester Racecourse were putting the business into administration as a result of “trading difficulties”. Towcester has been a pioneer of free entry at racecourses, and in 2014 became the only venue to host both horse and greyhound racing.

Clearly, such ventures have not proven as successful as hoped. But it would be unfair, given its idiosyncratic approach, to see Towcester’s problems as indicative of the wider challenges faced by the sport. That said, there is no hiding from the truth that Towcester’s difficulties have come at a time when so many racecourses are reconfiguring their approach in order to keep up with a new cohort of race-goers.

Those customers are likely to be in place at York on Wednesday, as they have been for so many of the UK’s biggest days of racing in recent years. The efforts to diversify have in many cases been successful, and the big showpiece events are becoming ever more popular.

“It has been going on for a long time, but racecourses are certainly getting more adventurous in what they put on,” says Paul Swain, the brand and experience manager at the Racecourse Association. “They are doing different things, more exciting things, as opposed to just conferences and events.”

By most measures, this move away from tradition is working. The Jockey Club, for example, which operates 15 racecourses, last year enjoyed its ninth consecutive year of commercial growth, posting a record annual turnover. In 2017, Newbury’s turnover rose by five per cent, and its total attendance increased by 11 per cent.

“Horse racing is becoming more social,” says Julian Thick, Newbury’s chief executive. “It is a social experience. You are seeing less of the betting racing consumer, and more of the social racegoer. In our business, the big summer Saturdays are by far our biggest race days of the year, and they are fundamental to the profitability of the business.”

Those showpiece events, such as when Newbury hosted pop singer Craig David last month, have become the centrepiece of the calendar, and they have resulted in a seismic change of atmosphere at British racecourses. On days when a musical performance is put on after the racing, crowds can now be overwhelmingly made up of race-goers below the age of 40, and can feature considerably more young women than men.

For the vast majority of these more modern customers, a day at the races provides an opportunity to dress up, drink, socialise and have a flutter (and, as was seen earlier this year, for a minority it can also provide a setting for violence and drug-taking). For these racegoers, it is all about the occasion, rather than the sport.

“This is the sort of crowd you would not have seen at racecourses 20 years ago,” Thick says. “It is a different and new audience, and it has different demands in terms of facilities. When they are here, they will watch the racing and put a bet on it. The betting numbers are strong. They are just a different group of people.”

Even the briefest of glances at the sport’s attendance figures illustrates how the racing crowd has evolved. According to the Racecourse Association, there was a major increase in weekend attendances in 2017, with total crowds on Sundays jumping by nine per cent. The average attendance in August, meanwhile, rose by 18 per cent. Millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) make up 21 per cent of the UK’s population, but now constitute 44 per cent of the British horse racing audience.

And yet for all the success of these sun-soaked summer weekends, there was an overall dip in racecourse attendances across the country last year. The bigger days are certainly getting bigger, but it seems the smaller days are getting smaller. The fall in the overall attendance (from 5.98 million in 2016 to 5.95 million last year) was the result of declining midweek audience, and median attendances for the year fell to the lowest recorded level in 2017.

The worry is that those at the less glamorous end of the sport — such as the bookies who still commit to midweek events, or those middle-aged aficionados at Brighton who have spent decades studying the form guides — have been either shunted to the side or left behind for good as racecourses open their arms to the modern customer. While the glitzy end of the sport thrives, grassroots racing appears increasingly cut off.

Robert Craggs, a regular punter at Newbury, told Telegraph Sport that some midweek events have become a “total waste of time” because attendances are so poor. “They just don’t get the punters in,” he says.

Across 2016 and 2017 at Brighton, there were 20 occasions on which the attendance was less than 1,000. By contrast, the racecourse saw only 13 crowds smaller than 1,000 throughout the entire 1990s.

The waning interest in the more unspectacular elements of the sport are, in part, the result of changing betting habits. The advent of online betting has thrown up more options and more sports for punters to study. “We are taking a 10th of what we took ten years ago,” says Peter Houghton, an on-course bookmaker. “We have had to adapt. Before, everything was on-course. Now, 95 per cent of it is off-course.”

For all this, it remains hard to see the racecourses or the sport’s senior figures being overly concerned by the changing nature of their customers. A far more pressing worry is the government’s plans to cut maximum stakes on fixed-odds betting terminals to £2.

It is feared the change could leave a £50m dent in the sport's finances as a result of the closure of betting shops and subsequent lost media rights and levy. “If there is a substantial reduction in the number of shops, that would have a knock-on effect on media rights,” says Thick. “That would have a direct impact on racecourse profitability.”

Much like the purists who have seen the sport change around them, the racecourses might then find themselves having to adjust to a new reality. The sport’s bosses may soon be lamenting a golden past, much like some of those at racing’s grassroots levels do now.

“The midweek crowds are not what they used to be, and the weekend crowds are completely different,” says Houghton. “The crowds were two or three times bigger on these midweek days, and the proper punters were here on the course because it was the only time they could have a bet.

“The market is a shadow of what it was in midweek as there is just not the same interest in the racing. Now, they are publicising racing as a great day out. The racing itself is not the pinnacle any more — it is not why they come.”