Hamilton 13/7/24 - Bath Time

It's really hard to generate crowds. It's nearly as hard to keep them. It's very easy to lose them and, if you do, it's even harder to get them back.

Rewind 9 months or so. I'm a bit of a masochist. I actually enjoy doing the diary for the following year. I enjoy poring over the previous attendance figures and racecourse websites trying to find diamonds in the rough. Had I missed anything last year? Is there a new student night or music event that will make a big difference next year? Conversely, has a track lost a big event? Was last year's sell out a one off or the start of a trend?

And so I alighted upon a meeting I was 50/50 about. We'd not done it for a while but it was a weekend and really should've been good, but the last time we did it, it wasn't. It was awful. So I donned my virtual deerstalker and lit my virtual pipe and got down to some detective work. I checked my spreadsheet (yes, of course I have spreadsheets- you've read my blogs- no sniggering at the back) for the meeting in question and my notes said something like "crowd decimated by rebrand and doubling of ticket price". And it had been. The previous year was a crowd of about 4500, the year we went was 2500. The track went back to the original pricing and branding but the following year was only 3200. Then 3700. Then 4200. Then finally back to where it was. It took 4 years. The damage had been done and took some time to repair.

The Ayr Gold Cup, sadly, had to abandon in 2017. In 2016 the crowd was 12000. In 2018 and 2019 the crowd was 10000. Not their fault at all, but damage done.

The big meetings, from a crowd perspective, are generally Saturday afternoons and, if we're honest, the vast majority of the crowd are there for a day out. And if that day out at the races changes significantly enough they won't go, they'll do something else instead, and it's bloody hard to get them back. Even Cheltenham have suffered with stories of real racing fans going to Tenerife to watch it in a bar and get a bit of sun because it was cheaper.

Let's have a quick look at a couple of decisions which have recently been made;

• Yes, we start with our old friend Premierisation. Dress it up how you like but it's there to extend the betting window for off course books and has, and will continue to, affect crowds at the courses whose start time has been affected. And, you at the back, please stop talking about "telling the story" or the sniggering will be even louder than the spreadsheet outbreak.

• 6 race cards in July and August. Introduced to tackle smaller field size issues. Small field sizes are a genuine issue. They had a few options to reduce the amount of racing. Either cull some midweek meetings when one man and his dog go which will have zero effect on crowds or take 7 race cards and turn them into 6 across the board. We were at a sellout Ladies Day last year and the complaints at the end when they'd paid 50 quid for one fewer race than the previous year were constant and voluble. It may not have had an effect last year but it will this year. Again, the decision not to cull the midweek fixtures to protect field sizes comes at a cost for the live event in order to keep the midweek betting window active enough for off course books.

I have no idea whether the overall influx of money justifies these decisions but these decisions have been made to satisfy off course bookmakers to the detriment of live racing, live racing attendances will suffer and racing becomes yet more reliant upon off course funding and less dependent on organic live growth.

I'm going back to my farmer analogy. You know the one. He sells his spuds to 50 different shops at a quid a bag. Then along comes a massive supermarket who'll take all his spuds at the same price. The farmer thinks he's quids in. No need to hawk round 50 shops- just bang them in a massive truck and count the profits. So the 50 different shops go to a different farmer and our guy becomes totally reliant on one buyer. And then gets surprised when the price drops to 50p a bag a couple of years later.

In a totally unrelated story, two massive off course bookmakers took a "commercial decision" not to accept bets at Bath last week.

On to Hamilton.

1) Hamilton, along with Newcastle, often throws up the most "normal" looking books in our system and the first here was no exception. Various liabilities on the top 3 in the market and we went for the middle of them as Lady Celia got us off to a losing start, compounded by Wee Fat Mac placing to give us the worst place result possible. Inauspicious beginning. At least we nabbed 20 quid in the forecast to give me minor bragging right over Steve.

2) No normal book here. 6 runner card, 2 maxes, 1 half max, one bore draw and a couple of winners including the favourite Airspeed who prevailed. Places poor again as wine drinkers collected on Beaujolais Nouveau. Still, race 1's loss was covered and we were back to parity thanks to another forecast book skinner. I was scaling the dizzy heights of the moral high ground as Steve muttered something about "only being for dogs".

3) Moyola the only game in town backed in from 100/30 to 5/2 and lumped on relentlessly. Book was, of course, a bit of a mess but, as is often the case, the bad book threw up a lovely winner with Giselles Izzy and we even managed to not lose on the places. Plus another forecast tenner.

4) Couldn't lay jolly My Noble Lord into liability and it drifted alarmingly but, this time, our book was saved as we couldn't keep them off Two Auld Pals which went from 6s to 9s in a heartbeat. Modest win on the drifting jolly, places steered to top up and another skinner in the forecast market which made be happier than a Saturday jackpot at Royal Ascot. Almost. Steve groaned and prepared the ear plugs for the journey home.

5) Unsurprising max on the favourite, MysteryOfTheSands and slightly more surprising max on Naval Academy. Two late lumps on Helter Skelter made it, like England in the group stages, a tedious draw. We regretted the late rush on the Curly Slide as it got up to nab our jackpot, Gainsbourg, on the line. Or so it seemed when it hit 1/5 in the photo. "And the result of the photo finish, first number 8 Gainsbourg". This seldom happens. I whispered "Je T'aime" (to the man in the photo booth, not to Steve) as the photo painted a beautiful picture as we got the result on the merest of nods.

I'd very much like to take credit for the Je T'aime gag but that was all down to our lovely Twitter follower/punter who told me about it in race 1. The 18th century portrait painter twined in seamlessly (sans "h") is all my own work though.

6) Back down to earth, slightly, on the next as Jumeira Vision gave us a small loss from jackpot Millbuie who, like me in my football days, threatened but failed to score. Places helped and the obligatory two tenners in the forecast meant we stepped neither forwards nor backwards. And we were 5-0 up in forecasts. My cup doth overflow.

7) Maxes on Ledger, Penelopes Sister and a lump on the rapidly collapsing Lunacy gave us a pretty valueless book but odds were defied again as Golden Echo just hung on from the sister of the aforementioned Penny with Ledger third. We'd dodged bullets and had another lovely win to finish. Sad to say we didn't lay a forecast though.

All in all we were delighted with another cracking result from Hamilton- we spent many years there losing which makes this season's results, so far, even more delightful. Still another couple to go to give it all back though.

Hamilton again next up for us on Friday. Until then...