Everyone has an opinion on lower crowds. Most with far more knowledge than me but I'm going to throw my hat in the metaphorical ring anyway. Crowds are down. Way down. But, at the moment, it seems to be midweek fixtures that are most affected but will it eventually affect the weekends where, as a business, we are easily the busiest? Yes it will. Unquestionably. If we don't get it right and get it right, right now.
MIDWEEKS
Midweeks first of all- we generally don't go. We work on the basis of "if in doubt, leave it out". I remember a (very amicable) conversation with one bookie (who shall remain firmly nameless but is a genuine friend) who once queried why we only went to Musselburgh (on the jumps) twice a year when we had a great pick there. We only go to New Years Day and what was, at that time, the one day Cheltenham trials meeting (now 2). He asserted that there were a load of other meetings we should consider. We felt otherwise. He couldn't understand why we wouldn't go with our good number. I couldn't understand why anyone would go to meetings with 600 punters regardless. We agreed to disagree and his final words were "we have lost 30 of the last 34 meetings there, mind".
There was a recent meeting in midweek where the cost for us was around £200. I phoned and there were about 150 pre sales. We didn't go. I understand that bookies took around 140 tickets on the day. The average bet size of about a tenner. Check the SP overrounds. Actually, don't check the SP overrounds as the prices will be miles shorter than the on course books at the top of the market which account for about 90% of the take. Check the on course overround and, weighting for the ones you will actually lay, it will probably be around 110%. You are paying about £1.50 per bet to potentially win about a quid a bet. We don't go. That's not a criticism of those that do, but we won't. So what do you do? It's easy to blame everything on cost of living crisis. Throw in a bit of Brexit and Covid and multiply by Monkey Pox and wars and you can legitimately convince yourself that midweeks would be great without that. Until variant Z comes along and here we go again. But they didn't ever work for us before all of that so maybe it was the Cold War. Would a fiver entrance fee work? Honestly, probably not.
You have a chance of decent midweek crowds if you slash, and I mean slash, the number of meetings. But that ignores the income courses make off course by running these meetings which is more essential and lucrative than anything they will get through the turnstiles. It won't happen and, if I was a racecourse owner, I wouldn't want it to happen. There's talk of going behind closed doors on all weather. It's inevitable. It may even have a small, positive, knock on effect to the better meetings in the area by possibly stimulating a bit of increased demand. What's the break even point for tracks, for numbers paying customers at a meeting? No idea, but there must come a point where those meetings with such tiny crowds go BCD as well. This is far more likely than reducing the number of fixtures, in my opinion.
So we don't pine for the good old days when they were 10 deep on a wet Wednesday at Hamilton. Morecambe and Wise got 30 million viewers in those days because there was only 3 tv channels, no internet and nowt else to do. And no Betfair. The more pertinent question now is how do we stop this happening at weekends?
WEEKENDS, EVENINGS, FESTIVALS, THE QUEEN'S HAT
Well, maybe not the Queen's Hat.
Ok, let's start with a couple of quick wins;
1) CASH.
Racecourses. Stop with the cashless stuff. Stop it. Let customers choose. There's no Covid argument for it. It causes queues, especially when the router needs a reboot or the 4G is overwhelmed. Start taking cash again. Start telling the public that you welcome cash. It's not a dirty word, it's actually a business generator. Restricting customers' payment options cannot possibly increase business. Literally nobody sits at home and says "well, I wasn't going racing today but I am going now, seeing that I can only pay by card for my 10 quid burger". Plenty won't go because they can't use cash though. There are economic reasons for tracks- cash is more expensive to handle and there's the "cash going missing" element but this must be outweighed by the benefits of reintroducing accepting cash where you currently don't. AND THEN ADVERTISE IT!! BE PROUD OF IT!! I'm banging on now, but I reckon there was a focus meeting somewhere 9 moths ago with a 20 page Power Point presentation showing the, supposed, cost savings of going cashless. Probably in a pie chart. Hopefully there'll now be another Power Point with 19 fewer pages saying "Got this wrong folks, as you were".
2) PAY ON THE GATE.
We were at Chester a few weeks ago. There was rumour heavily circulating that Chester weren't allowing customers to pay on the gate. Chester had to put out a rebuttal to say that you could but how could this situation arise in the first place? Well, we've had weekly, sometimes daily, meetings from sombre chaps and chapesses, usually wearing grey, telling us how we were going to die if we didn't pre book everything and stand 6.3 feet away from everyone. This has been normalised. There is a massive percentage of the population out there that are still conditioned to this and think that if they haven't pre booked a ticket in 2019, got an industrial strength PPE mask and 3 negative lateral flow tests that they won't get in to a racetrack if they rock up on the day with a few tenners in their hand. More so in Scotland where we have had more restrictions, lasting longer, and the mindset is more entrenched.
Get the message out. Loudly and often. In fact, embrace it and use it as a marketing tool. Get to as many people as possible by whatever method possible and tell them they don't need to pre book, they will get in, they can pay in fivers and, most importantly, YOU WANT THEM TO!!! Thanks. I chatted to one of the racetrack managers recently. He said the pre sales stuff was holding up ok but the on the day stuff was awful. Honestly, this is a reason why. I shared my thoughts with him about paying on the gate and he was genuinely surprised that people just not realising they could get in without pre booking might be an issue and have a negative impact on "walk up" business. We are guilty of assuming that just because we know something, everybody else does. They don't. And, on that subject, at Royal Ascot I don't know what's going to win, I probably don't know all the greys in the field but I will know which one Frankie is on and I will want it to lose.
That was long wasn't it? I was going to expand out on thoughts for longer term "wins" expanding student nights, opening up similar initiatives to other demographics (key workers anyone?), entrance fees in general etc but we'll leave that for another day, possibly one where I'm not depressed about losing the league, and move on to the betting stuff cos you're really only here to hope that we lost on a rag. If you don't want to scroll any further, we did.
1) 4 losers, 3 winners. At least 3 books shaking their heads and muttering invocations to the Gods when they looked at the book. We stood Loose Lips and Eruption for the max, The Gay Blade and Dandy's Diva for a bit and got off to a great start when 2 good winners went head to head, with the jolly Waverley Star prevailing over the jackpot Ballistic Berry but a good start nonetheless. As an aside we had two pitches, both on the lawns, and the nature of the business means that we often struggle to lay the shorter priced ones. We did lay Eruption (2nd fav) for plenty but couldn't get the fav in which, in this case, was a blessing.
2) 3 max losers here- Oot Ma Way and Lizzie Loch, inevitably, plus Mr Gambino slightly less predictably. Our good fortune continued when the unpronounceable Mahanakhon Power won and was our best winner from the favourite Clan Jock which was a taker. Great start.
3) We managed to get stuck into the relatively short priced favourite, Eddies Boy, either through finding a few favourite backers or blokes called Eddie. Or sons of bloke called Eddie. More good news for us as Remarkable Force got the better of Mr Ed and another good winner was supplemented by the unlaid forecast.
4) CairnBet losing on a rag alert. Tommy G. Jim Goldie. Always bet here. Was again and we lost it whilst our fellow books cheered it in to put our great start into reverse gear. War Defender and Hayadh rounded out our losers. The biggest potential winner of the day (Alpine Sierra) went well but the Tommys in the crowd broke our hearts in much the same way as the Eddies had done us a favour half an hour before.
5) Another favourite, perhaps surprisingly, stuck into for the max (Nathaniel Greene) and another loser (Zimmerman) down the market. Big each way liabilities as well (Charles Street, Zimmerman, State Legend and Campese). We got another great result with Hilts and we also had a Great Escape in the place market with only Charles Street placing of the quartet. Folks of a certain age? You're welcome for the gag and I'm only sorry I couldn't sneak some motorcycle/chain link fence/baseball action in there as well
6) This was the antithesis of the standard bingo book with everything proving almost equally popular in the right proportions. We only had 2 losers (Cragside and Jessie Alan) and a lot of teeny, tiny winners plus a couple of jackpots. Cragside passed the CairnBet trackside pitch seemingly in command (and 1/4 in running) but the fast finishing Yaaser finished like a train and was alongside by the time it reached the CairnBet Pretty Staff pitch and won well. It was a jackpot again for us and we were extolling the virtues of being lucky rather than good!
7) I've lived in Scotland for 20 years and I love it. There's a million reasons I could give you why I will be living here for the rest of my life and could never go back "down south". Scots are, rightly, proud of their country. Bearing this in mind there were only going to lay 3 horses in this race, The Gloaming (sans "Roaming") Isle of Dreams and Lord of the Glen. Glen popularity being compounded by being last year's winner. Obviously they were the 1-2-3 and we lost max in win and places. We can't complain though. Overall a very good day for us and we were fortunate to be on the right side of them most of the time.
Nothing midweek (no surprise if you have read the first few paragraphs) but plenty of betting blog tedium for you next weekend with the Pro Team (Steve and Kev) heading to Cartmel on Saturday whilst the Pretty Team (me and Amanda) set sail for the Chester subway. Champions League final Saturday night so can't promise a blog then! Kelso Ladies Day Sunday (me and Kev) and Cartmel for Bank Holiday/Non Bank Holiday Monday (me and Kev again) rounds out our May. Until then....
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