Summary
IF horseracing in Britain is not quite in terminal decline, there are enough signs to suggest that it has been sleepwalking to an assisted suicide. It's flat, soulless and haemorrhaging support. Simply digest these figures. In the last 15 years, racing's share of betting shop turnover has fallen from 75 per cent to 37 per cent. That rate of decline, a steady drop of four per cent over each of the past five years, has fallen to over 10 per cent in 2009. The worrying numbers were recently revealed by Nick Rust, managing director of Coral. With crowd figures and sponsorship -- albeit in difficult economic times -- also down, it begs the question: Is racing destined to become an irrelevance? By November, we may have the answer when the Racing For Change team reveal plans expected to work for racing in the way Twenty20 has reinvigorated cricket. Radical surgery is needed, something that factional interests have prevented in the past, with no half-baked ideas like the ridiculed Sovereign Series. It is not enough simply to put on a series of pop concerts, point to the teeny boppers walking through the turnstiles and believe a solution is drawing in a 'yoof' market.
Newbury's recent Saturday meeting when Simply Red packed them in proved that. A stage that obscured the finish infuriated a loyal, core audience, who had turned up at one of the course's most attractive Flat cards of the season, featuring the Geoffrey Freer Stakes and the Hungerford. Win some, lose plenty.See the full content of this document
Extract
Flat and Soulless
If Racing For Change is to succeed ...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
