Lack of enjoyment in Irish Racing

Motivator

For as long as I can remember I’ve been going racing and I always loved picking out what horses to watch out for and what horses to back when I got there. I’d usually spend the night before looking through the card, watching clips on the ATR website and trawling through Oddschecker to prepare for the day out.

Since ATR has left our screens, my interest in Irish racing has dropped off to an almost non existent level. I refuse to pay for RTV for a number of reasons but mainly it’s the lack of respect they show for Irish racing. It’s absolutely desperate and they really don’t care about it. I went to Galway on Wednesday and I hadn’t a clue what I was looking at for the majority of the races. I haven’t been able to watch Irish racing for a few months now and I felt totally disconnected with the day itself. I didn’t enjoy the racing at all and I was reluctant to have a bet on horses that I hadn’t seen running yet this season.

HRI are killing Irish racing and Brian Kavanagh and his chronies have the neck to tell us that everything is positive in Ireland at the moment. It isn’t and if it continues as it currently is then traditional punters will just stop going racing. I spoke with a few Galway regulars that I meet every year and we spoke about the current situation and they all said they won’t go racing in the Curragh, Leopardstown or Punchestown anymore for the same reasons I outlined above. The same lads have attributed the shockingly poor Tote figures at Galway to the TV situation. The Tote is an older generation product and currently, the older generation aren’t paying for RTV and when they go to their local pub the pub isn’t paying for the channel either so they can’t watch any Irish racing. They aren’t going to spend money on a product when they don’t know what they’re backing when they get to the races. It’s a bad situation that will only get worse.

Attendances will drop off again once we get back in to the new NH season. I can’t see myself ever getting the love for racing back if things continue the way they are at the moment. I feel a total disconnect with things in Ireland at the moment and HRI don’t realise that they aren’t going to attract the younger generation either.

If something is difficult to access, new blood is not going to be interested in it.

Fann Linn

Lots of people go to the races who never relied on the ATR channel.

tryfix

The key word in the OP is enjoyment, HRI wouldn't know it if it slapped them in the face.

This Friday evening we have the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh. It's one of only 3 Group 1 2yo races in this country, the other 2 being separated for the sexes.

Ireland currently houses very many of the best bred juveniles in the World. How do HRI promote this abundance of high class racing potential? They stick it into a Friday Evening meet at the Curragh where the field and result won't get any media attention and where there won't be more than a very few thousand souls watching it. Why not run it at Leopardstown ( it used to be there ) on Saturday or Sunday and get a half decent crowd and atmosphere attached to the race?

Are they purposefully trying to reduce racing attendances or are they just indifferent and useless at organising race meetings?

IAMAMORON

I agree with Motivator on everything.... except.

Leopardstown - I live in South Co Dublin so this is my local track. It is easy for me to get to and get home from. It is an excellent track which attracts horses from all over the world. It won't fail, on it's location alone. You can get there from Grafton street in 25 minutes. The only chance it has of not succeeding could be it's value alone. It is on one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the whole country. Even the Phoenix Park eventually had a price...

In contrast to this, the Curragh have not accepted that half the battle is getting spectators to and from the track. I am reiterating this comment, I am not arsed getting the train to the Curragh because it takes too long. I have to get off in Kildare and then get a transfer, it costs me over 2 hours travel time, fúck that. I can watch it in my local and walk home. They simply need to re-open the Curragh station on race days.

Punchestown has never needed Dublin to survive and probably never will, just saying. Die hard fans will drive or get the bus. You can get there from West Tallaght in 20 minutes in a car.

The other massive issue facing the HRI is placating the punters and the on-course bookies. On-course bookies don't get my money anymore because I can get guaranteed odds on my phone, it is that simple. I only use them now as a novelty. This is more the bookies problem than the HRI's , but their heads are lodged so far up their own holes that they will never ever be able to have the foresight to see that the punter and the industry are inexplicably linked.

Which leads me back to the point you are making about the TV rights. The fact remains that somebody somewhere owned those rights and probably got good money from someone to move them to Racing Uk. Money talks and bullshít walks. It is out of anyone else's hands.

The real question about the TV rights is why the decision to change was unilateral? How come all the racecourses did not have the ability to negotiate their own contracts? That needs answering more than anything.

klairondavis

tryfix wrote: »

Why not run it at Leopardstown ( it used to be there ) on Saturday or Sunday and get a half decent crowd and atmosphere attached to the race?

They built the M50 over the old sprint track!

The Tetrarch

The powers in racing are not interested in racing as a spectator attraction.
They are interested in the money for themselves, and for the big players in racing, the top studs and stables.
At the 'Horses for Courses' Adult education evening course on Horse racing in the Talbot Hotel, Stillorgan, in February 2019 I put questions to the HRI boss and the Leopardstown boss.
Leopardstown have plans “in the future” for a sprint track. This might actually happen, but in my opinion they are only saying they might build a sprint track on land to the south of the track that might be taken from them if they do not use it (my guess).
Really HRI are motivated by money, not racing, and will sell the plot if they can. I would not be surprised if they sell all of Leopardstown and open a track in the midlands or south.

State agency Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) is weighing plans for housing, a hotel and a school on land it owns at Leopardstown in Dublin that a local council has classed as a vacant site.
The two plots are valued at €79 million, according to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, which maintains a list of vacant sites in its jurisdiction along with valuations.
HRI owns Leopardstown Racecourse in Foxrock on the capital’s southside. The property includes two parcels of land totalling about 57 acres at Ballyogan and Carrickmines, at the track’s southern end, that are now used for car parking.
John Osborne, head of HRI’s racecourse division, said on Monday that the State body was considering plans to build housing and possibly a hotel on part of the land.
At the same time it is in talks with the Department of Education, which is seeking to build a new school in that area of south Dublin.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has included the land on its vacant sites register, which means that it could begin charging the State body 3 per cent of its value each year if it is not developed. This would equate to a charge of almost €2.4 million a year for HRI.

I mentioned to the boss of HRI that there was a big fall in the prices of mares at the breeding stock sales in 2018. The very expensive end of the market was still good, but that is where the billionaires play. The prices in the mid and low end were terrible, but even worse a large percentage of the lots on offer did not even attract a single bid, and were led out unsold. The result will be a loss of our horses as they are culled, and small breeders will go out of business. The new chairman of HRI said shortly after he was appointed the situation will sort itself out.

I said prizemoney was poor in Ireland and the UK, good at the top races, terrible at the lower end. Average earnings are 7k, but a moderate horse would do very well to earn 5k a year, owner paying 20k training fees annually. That is not a way to retain owners. They will come, learn a hard lesson, and leave.
I mentioned that prizemoney was much better in France with owner and breeder both getting prizemoney premiums. The boss of HRI said “they have a different system” (a state owned betting system). I said “copy it”. I might as well have been talking to the curtains in the room.

The administrators in racing will not do anything that will upset the billionaires. If the billionaires want to run ten horses in a race they can. If they want to own all the stallions and all the top broodmares they can.
Big owners dominating racing is similar to Dublin dominating Gaelic football. Spectators lose interest. The same in the English Premier League, a four team league.
The Irish Derby in 2019 should have been a wake up call, only eight runners, five trained by A P O’Brien, another 1, 2, 3 for A P O’Brien, and a very small crowd. The winner paid 43.30 on the Tote. I didn’t bother going and I have a season ticket.
Now for reasons only known to themselves the next four meetings at The Curragh are on four Friday nights in August.

onlyonpaper

Motivator. I wholeheartedly agree. I live in the extreme North west of country and on in years. Mobility limited and on a state pension. No longer can go to race meetings that I loved. The loss of the ATR coverage of Irish racing has been heartbreaking.
Has yong grandson and loved to watch the races with me and had a huge interest but no betting by either of us..just the enjoyment of watching those beautiful animals racing. Loved to tell him of the great horses.trainers and races of the past.
Cant afford the cost of Racing uk. As some contributors said above that money talks and the loss of ordinary viewers is acceptable when money lost will be made up by TV advertising and betting companies.............until the day comes when a critical drop off is reached the sport will start to die.

Those guys making these decisions now will have moved on to some other corporate position probably shutting down businesses they deem uneconomic to improve share price etc and the damage they are doing racing will be in the distant past by then.