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How Much is Too Much?

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Interested in the thoughts of all on here on two broadly-related issues bubbling away up here.

First relates to jockeys. As you may know, up here, before covid, in summer, we had both afternoon and evening meetings so there could be two afternoon cards and two evening fixtures so there was racing from 2pm to 9pm. Let's say you had seven races at afternoon meeting A and seven races at evening meeting B and you had two rides at each meeting. It would be up to you to get from A to B in time to get to the weighing room to "clock in" for your ride. Given Britain is a crowded island with a lot of traffic, getting through the traffic from A to B wasn't always easy (if you had a helicopter, much easier).

To help the jockeys, the last race at meeting A might be for apprentices or amateur riders and the first race at meeting B might be the same.

This year, jockeys cannot ride at more than one meeting per day but instead of seven race cards (in practice six if the last is for amateurs or apprentices), you now have nine and ten race cards. Instead of rushing from two rides at one meeting to two at another, many now get four rides at the one meeting and the general view is they are happy with the current arrangement and would like it to continue.

There's the odd dissenting voice but there's a problem - if you want to run 10,000 races in the season, you can run around 1,500 meetings with six or seven races OR 1,000 meetings with ten races per meeting. The jockeys want the latter, the racecourses understandably don't as 500 meetings mean 500 fewer opportunities for the courses to get income. More races means in effect fewer meetings which also means fewer courses quite apart from whether the horse population will be able to sustain the current fixtures (three flat races most days with the odd jump fixture).

Second, the courses are trying to fight back arguing for more meetings in 2021 but the problem with less money more meetings mean reduced prize money and that's a red rag to a bull for the Owners as part of the Horsemen so there's a battle building the racecourses and the Horsemen over prize money and meetings.

From a position of strength a few months ago, Covid has pushed the courses onto the back foot with collapsed revenues and fewer opportunities to stage meetings. With a likely fall off in the horse population, there's going to be real pressure on the fixture list going forward.

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Just to update this, there is no fixture list beyond the end of August because racecourses and the Horsemen's Group of Owners and Trainers cannot agree on prize money levels.

This Saturday the meetings at York, Newmarket, Ascot and Doncaster (all Grade 1 tracks) will stage 38 races.

That's the equivalent of four meetings with six races per card and two meetings with seven races per card so instead of six racecourses we will only be using four and dour of the high end tracks as well.

The smaller tracks are starting to complain all the meetings are going to the big venues and they are getting little or nothing.

With each course staging 9 or 10 races, plenty of media rights income for the tracks to off-set the lack of attendances. Ascot would probably have had 30,000 for King George day and York a similar number for York Stakes day plus music after. Both will have some Owners but that's all so the economics of staging racing behind closed doors is unsustainable but it now looks as though it will be October before full spectator coverage is resumed.

It's also delayed in Ireland where both Irish Champions Weekend and the Listowel Festival in September have been ruled spectator-free. This will be a savage blow for Listowel for whom the seven day liver-busting Harvest Festival is the big money spinner of the year.

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Thought I would update this with my occasional  burblings on racing issues up here.

We have a fixture list from September 1st after much huffing and puffing and helped by the British Horseracing Authority committing more money to boost prize money with an aim to return to pre-Covid levels.

There's a very large fly in that ointment, however.

As of now, we still have no paying spectators at UK racecourses - some Owners and media are allowed on-course but strict protocols and social distancing rules still apply and while there is talk of some limited crowds returning to Scotland this week and England next month, we remain a very long way from normal.

Racecourses are starting to feel the strain - there have been redundancies at two tracks and Goodwood has asked its annual members (who have been unable to attend a single meeting this year) to gift the course the £384 annual membership fee.

The York CEO William Darby was on ITV last week stating the course was losing money while staging racing and I thought, hang on, no one is forcing York or any other racecourse to hold meetings. If it's not cost effective to race, why race? Had the entire York meeting been transferred to Doncaster, for example, all the races would have happened and ARC would have borne the costs.

Big venues don't make their money from media rights - they make money from the thousands who pay through the turnstiles, eat the overpriced food and drink and bet with the on-course bookies. In addition, racecourses, on non racing days, make money via conferences, exhibitions, weddings and the like and that income stream has also been badly hit. 

Smaller courses and those holding midweek meetings get the income from the media rights so they want to race and it's a paradox the current situation could and should have been used to bring venues like Salisbury, Leicester and Hamilton into the spotlight with tv coverage and exposure but instead it's been the traditional Group 1 venues which have had all the attention.

The entire summer evening season - another hugely lucrative money spinner for many courses - has also been lost in its entirety. Courses like Windsor and Bath have lost huge amounts of income yet have still staged meetings to try to get back perhaps 30% from media rights.

As we move into the autumn, it will be interesting to see how the notion of having large numbers of people inside stands and other buildings plays out. 

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After last week's fiasco at Doncaster, which cost the course owners £250,000, the previous optimistic mood has been countered by a cold splash of reality.

The Government has ordered the size if crowd pilots at racing and other events to be cut from 5,000 to 1.000. Now, 1,000 people is nothing for a big track and the way racing works and is funded over here makes it not work and the warning signs from racecourses are growing in intensity and frequency.

Racecourses up here have three main income sources - first, media rights whereby the courses get money from the bookmakers and specialist tv channels to show racing. Second, raceday attendance - that's people paying at the gate, corporate hospitality, other food and drink, merchandise and the like. For the big venues, the raceday crowd is 70-80% of the income stream especially on music nights and big weekends. Doncaster normally get nearly 30,000 on Leger day, most of whom are paying £40-£60 to get in the track - add on food and drink and the numbers mount up. The on-course bookmakers pay the racecourse to stand and take money from the punters.

The third income stream is non-raceday revenue - corporate events, exhibitions, weddings and the like. With most courses racing 20-25 days per year, the other 300+ days are opportunities to make other income.

The problem is currently the second and third income streams just aren't happening and the possible loss of Christmas parties will be a huge blow. Media rights money helps the small midweek meetings make money - after all, the crowd numbers and hospitality  are well down but eight or nine races brings in some revenue albeit that is offset by the additional costs of meeting the biosecurity protocols now demanded.

It is the cost of getting the course ready for even a limited crowd that is now the issue. For Newmarket, it's probably not worth setting the course up for 1,000 people and those who do attend would be annual members and their guests who have already "paid" for their racing. Warwick is slightly different and that pilot may still happen but the management of Chester have today warned that IF there is no prospect of crowds returning in 2021, they will have to mothball the track as it will be cheaper for them to do that then stage behind-closed-doors meetings at a loss.

Officially, there are supposed to be spectators returning as of October 1st but few believe that will happen and indeed Warwick's pilot hangs in the balance tonight. 

The problem as we move into autumn becomes climatic - it's easy to keep people outdoors on gorgeous summer and autumn days but as the weather closes in, racegoers spend more time indoors and that's going to be a big problem with crowds congregating closely in confined spaces a major factor in transmission. I can't imagine spending a December or January afternoon outdoors the whole time - I've gone racing in horizontal sleet and snow and it's not as much fun as you think. 

The other problem is racecourses fund prize money from the above income streams plus sponsorship. Bookies sponsor a lot of races but with betting turnover down, will they be able to? Prize money at the highest levels has been slashed - the Ayr Gold Cup on 2019 went for £124,500 to the winner - on Saturday the winning owner will get £46,688. That has consequences down the racing chain albeit the Class 6 races at the bottom are for now going for the same as they did in 2019. 

IF crowds aren't coming back, the option will either be to reduce the number of races or reduce the prize money further or face mothballing tracks and perhaps concentrate on the AW tracks.

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Just a quick update on the latest "crowd" news. The proposed pilots at Warwick (800) and Newmarket (1000) have been approved by local authorities.

In Ireland, however, disappointing news tonight with crowd restrictions to continue for at least 6 months. The current "behind closed doors" regime is to be eased to allow 200 people per meeting (that's basically Owners) but it will only be increased to 500 if things improve.

The prospect of the big Irish jump meetings over Christmas being restricted to 200-500 people will terrify the Irish racecourses and HRI CEO Brian Kavanagh has already labelled the revised restrictions "unsustainable".  Holding Champions Weekend behind closed doors is reported to have cost 8 million euros in lost revenue and other income sources.

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The news today is the Warwick pilot will go ahead on Monday with just 474 spectators made up of 150 Annual Members, 124 in Hospitality and 200 spaces for Owners so no actual tickets sold. Newmarket's three day pilot is also for the moment going ahead with 1000 spectators each day. 

With the number of positive test results rising to nearly 4,000 today, I do think the chances of a full return of spectators next month are remote. 

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With the UK moving back into Level 4 (more like 3.5 if I'm being honest) of Covid restrictions, the not unexpected news came this morning that all pilots involving a return of crowds to sporting events were cancelled and the general plan to bring back crowds put on hold.

Newmarket's three day pilot of 1000 people is therefore stopped and there is huge concern this evening that with the threat of these new restrictions lasting through the winter,  the big winter jumping meetings will also be devoid of crowds.

The Goodwood CEO, Adam Waterworth, has been quick out of the blocks to explain the problem but the racecourse economics, as I've said, aren't just about race days but non-racing activities and if the hospitality industry as a whole is looking at a bleak winter,  some big questions about racing may need to start being asked.

Should we not, instead of trying to race everywhere and especially when putting on a raceday costs courses money, concentrate on a core programme at a small number of tracks? The All Weather tracks can pick up the slack of the winter Flat racing programme while also providing Bumper races for the less experienced hurdlers? As for the bulk of the jumping programme, concentrate on a small number of tracks which can race frequently in winter conditions and for whom the economics works - so smaller venues for midweek cards which can generate income via media rights and perhaps more smaller venues at the weekends and mothball some of the bigger venues whose income is mainly derived from spectators and hospitality?

It's controversial and almost certainly won't happen but these are exceptional times - in winter, races get moved due to the weather so why not move them now (as happened with some Flat meetings) to venues which can support them being run without spectators?

 

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During the free-to-air coverage of Newmarket on Friday afternoon, there was a broad and often heated debate about the future of racing following the re-imposition of restrictions by the UK Government on Tuesday which raised the spectre of no spectators for six months.

Outgoing British Horseracing Authority CEO Nick Rust and National Trainers Federation Chairman Ralph Beckett were both interviewed but the most fascinating contribution came from the CEO of the Horserace Betting Levy Board, Alan Delmonte.

For those who aren't aware, one of the key funding planks of UK racing is the Levy which is based on 10% profit from bookmakers betting on UK racing. In 2019, it raised £92 million for UK racing. Along with Entry Fees and contributions from racecourses (media rights as discussed earlier and spectators), they form the three main funding sources for racing in terms of prize money provision.

The good news from Delmonte is while racecourse contributions have collapsed, the Levy, in terms of betting turnover, is operating at almost pre-Covid levels while the additional races being staged since racing returned in early June has meant entry fees have stayed healthy. This, and a well-stocked reserve, means the BHA is "confident" the existing funding of racing can continue for at least six months until the end of March 2021.   

In other words, the largesse of Owners and punters is keeping UK racing going and while it's unlikely we'll see significant changes to prize money in the near future, the lowest grade races will continue to be run at near pre-Covid levels so £2,782 for winning a Class 6 race. 

Two thoughts - none of this helps the beleaguered racecourses who are looking to the Government for assistance and while the Levy has reserves now, for anyone who has tried living just off their savings, the good times won't last for ever and it may be if things don't improve during the winter, some hard decisions will have to be taken next year. For now, racing has to carry on even if behind closed doors providing opportunities for and funding from Owners and punters which in turn funds the rest of the industry until better times return.

It's my thought the winter programme needs to be amended to maximise such opportunities.

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