Our man reflects on Royal Ascot and hopes it might provide the springboard for two more successful summer festivals too.
Royal Ascot draws to a close, and for once, can we sit back and ask, ‘What’s not to like?’
Great weather, great racing, big crowds and a healthy terrestrial TV audience.
One of the sport’s crown jewels glistened just when we needed it to.
Because we know not everything in the garden is as rosy as it looked across the five days in Berkshire.
On the eve of the meeting the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Racing and Bloodstock held a briefing to warn of a “triple whammy of challenges” the sport faces including Treasury Plans to replace the tax structure on online gambling duties and tax bets on racing at the same rate as online slot and casino games.
The BHA are to “leave no stone unturned” in their extensive campaign against the proposals, but we still don’t know whether Lord Allen will be leading that fight. The June 2nd appointment date for the new chairman has long gone and his proposal for fully independent governance of the sport seemingly remains on the table – you fear gathering dust.
The Betfred Derby Festival revolution remains mothballed, battle plans still to be drawn up.
Crowds were down again this year and the need to restore the meeting to former glories is apparent to all. And we’re not talking its absolute heyday here, a return to say the 40,000 who went to see Galileo in 2001 would seem a sensible initial target.
Another Allen, Jim this time, is the man in charge of turning this particular tanker around.
There are numerous suggestions floating around, the most sensible being to start by asking the thousands of people who previously attended the meeting but don't now, Why?
Their answers are your platform to build from.
And sell the race, the event, make it a celebration.
If I was Jim, I’d make it a festival in every sense, pack out the hill and the rest will follow.
Attract the biggest music name you can in midweek to fill the place and then try to keep them there, however you can, for the racing that follows in the next day or two. It's no coincidence that the only times the 'House Full' signs go up at Newmarket and Goodwood for example, are when Jools Holland rolls into town or big-name DJs head to the Sussex downs.
On the track bring the Temple Stakes across from Haydock so the best sprinters have the opportunity to show just how fast horses can complete the Epsom five furlongs in. Make it the main event on Friday which in turn becomes a ‘Festival Of Speed’, featuring the two Dashes.
And Saturday – the cream rises to the top. The meeting’s three Group Ones, run over the same course-and-distance, back-to-back, culminating in the great race itself. Give each individual card a unique identity and the racegoers a different reason to attend.
They clearly pick and choose days out more carefully now, walk-up numbers at virtually every venue have fallen off a cliff. You need to convince people that your day or days at the races are the best way to spend some disposable income months in advance. Get the mid-summer dates ringed on the calendars at a time when tweed and wellies, not silk top hats and morning suits, are the order of the day. Give people something to look forward to in the summer at a time when they're looking out the windows at 4pm to dark skies and rain.
It’s Goodwood and York next, two festivals that always seem to provide the feel-good factor for both racegoers on the ground and those watching on from afar.
Officials at both venues are already hard at work, trying to improve, tweak and eke out the marginal gains that can make all the difference to the various metrics by which they are measured.
For example, York has a new Group One in the Sky Bet City Of York Stakes. It will be interesting to see which big names that attracts, whose campaigns are changed to take in a shot at a top-flight prize over seven furlongs for the first time.
And for all the concerns over the sport right now, this week in Ascot has given the big days that follow some much-needed momentum.
Who wouldn’t want to go to Goodwood to see Field Of Gold in the Sussex, or to York for Ombudsman and that turn of foot in the Juddmonte International?
The sport already has us, we’re on the hook. But let’s hope the remaining big summer meetings manage to follow in Ascot’s footsteps and put on a show to packed audiences, resonating with their core customers, while attracting curious new ones who think they might be missing out on something too.
It’s not easy, we know that. Maybe 'The Going Is Good' marketing campaign of Great British Racing can see some early cut-through for the significant investment. Like it or loathe it, at least someone is trying something.
Because we do have something special to sell. When it works, few sporting events can compete with a day at the races in which the elite horses deliver on the track, and the venues themselves off it.
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