What Will They Come Up With? (BHA Consultants report)

Well, according to the consultants, racing is in effect invisible to the remainder of the population (95%) who never attend. I doubt that's entirely true, since there is definitely a regular betting shop clientele who never go to the track, but nevertheless the average sports fan has no interest in racing.

There are plenty of people who follow sport in general, are informed to a degree about some of the main ones and follow the seasons from the various codes of football through to Wimbledon, golf and cricket. But such people, while prepared to watch most sports on tv, are not normally into racing and find its presence on terrestrial tv alongside other sports an irritation.
 
They shoudl promtoe the gambling aspect of racing A LOT MORE!!!!! Its not a circus. Betting adn racing go hand in hand, they are missing something which is staring at them directly.
 
How many people do the lottery? So perhaps highlighting the wins might be better?

As an old friend of mine used to lament, 'in the UK people tend to be incentivised by money, sex, booze or violence'.

Other comments I've heard centre around the fact that as a spectator sport it just isn't a very good spectacle. The action takes place at a distance and intermitantly. Anyone I've ever taken racing for the first time I'm praying that they win something in the first two or three races as you can physically see their morale leaving them otherwise, as they wonder why they've bothered to try and pick out a few dots at the 2 furlong pole and possibly get excisted for 20 odds seconds, every half hour. Without the thrill of winning a racecourse can be a particularly desolate and unpleasent place.

The other thing that occurs to me developing Greys points about other sports, is that all those he lists, are to some extent, accessible to spectators as participation sports too. Football, Cricket and Rugby I was playing as a child. I'd swing a tennis racket in my early teens for 2 weeks in year, and could pick up a few wedges on the local pitch and putt. It might not have been much, but the very fact you were able to experience a bit of the game yourself at least gave you a connection and bonding with it. By contrast racing was not just a long distance viewing sport, it was also inaccessible compared with other more easily accessed alternatives. Even motor sport has been able to get round this to some extent with the advent of computer games.

The other major (though not necessarily terminal) problem it might face is that there's no real team to support, and with a few exceptions you can't build up a following beyond the 4 or 5 year life span of a 'public horse' or a charismatic jockey. I know they've tried to address this through things like the Shergar Cup, or that Haydock race that involved jockeys wearing football shirts, there's even this Ireland versus UK scoreboard that Ch4 so belove of Cheltenham, but it's never going to work.

The bottom line is we live on planet football, and with no obvious end objective to a season, racing is seen as series of disjointed unconnected events. As Grey also says quite correctly, for most people it used to be an unwelcome and irritating interuption of a sport that people would prefer to watch.

I've always felt it was a decent product 'trying to get out'. The more I think about it though, the more I realise just how much is stacked against it, how much its out on a limb, and how much its increasingly falling behind the trends of the day in entertainment. Even something as sedate as cricket has been able to make 20/20 work, and due in no small part to Indian investment, sits on the cusp of a lucrative future. In the last world championship snooker profiled it 'snooker sixes' (number of reds) and seems to have been well received (mind you, they've got a Chinese market to milk).

The core of the problem has to be attendance prices, as the sport is primarily designed to take money off you from the moment you pay to enter. You don't pay to go into a pub do you? With better television pictures providing closer views of the action, and with on line exchanges providing better prices than on course bookies (many of whom are taking the piss with their e/w terms) what incentive do we have to travel with todays petrol prices, to pay £15 for a ticket that limits you to a restricted area?. I got caught out at Thirsk the other night trying to buy a members badge, and not being allowed to for the lack of a shirt collar and tie!!! alright i can understand this at Ascot (don't agree with it) but for Gods sake, a Sunday evening meet at Thirsk, when the first race up was a 5F seller!!! (I have to say, I otherwise liked the course).

The other complaint I frequently hear is the lexicon of racing and the confusion caused by fractions. It could of course be that our maths teachers have failed a generation, but I would have thought we could easily follow the PMU and various Totes, as well as the exchanges and move to decimals overnight.

The racing lexicon if explained properly could actually become part of its slightly eccentric appeal. It certainly doesn't seem to have made cricket too daunting for people, and racing has got nothing on the complexities of the ever changing laws of rugby union.
 
Warbler said:
I've always felt it was a decent product 'trying to get out'. The more I think about it though, the more I realise just how much is stacked against it, how much its out on a limb, and how much its increasingly falling behind the trends of the day in entertainment. Even something as sedate as cricket has been able to make 20/20 work
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It`s a great product, but from my experience you need a mentor to explain the finer points of it. I hated racing until I was in my early 20s - I didn`t mind watching it, it was all the talk beforehand that bored me. But I worked with someone who got me into it and the rest is history. Football is such an easy sport to follow but of course it`s not the beauty of the game that people love, it`s the kinship with team and/or nation. 20/20 Cricket is an abomination.
 
Warbler said:
I got caught out at Thirsk the other night trying to buy a members badge, and not being allowed to for the lack of a shirt collar and tie!!! alright i can understand this at Ascot (don't agree with it) but for Gods sake, a Sunday evening meet at Thirsk, when the first race up was a 5F seller!!! (I have to say, I otherwise liked the course).
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Arrrrrrrrrghhhh it's this kind of crap which puts people off racing, they see it as a pompous entertainment for the rich and incidents like that don't help. Goodwood makes "gentlemen" wear their jackets for the Glorious meeting even when it's about 35 degrees celcius.

Racecourses like Thirsk don't help, they took a frigging register entering the parade ring when we ran Brut there (on the same evening card 3 years ago). Absolute tossers, they run it like Ascot.
 
been racking my brains - who the hell are Ben & Brian?

:lol:

quarter of a mill? - Ben - Brian??

yes we are in Britain for sure

I would want me quarter mill back I think

think they spent it on drugs
 
Gamla - agree with Ye Olde Dresse Code rubbish, et cetera, but the reason there may have been a 'register' of people entering the paddock is probably down to the Clerk of the Course determining safety levels of entrants, telling the gateman how many people per horse is considered safe, etc. A bit like night clubs having a licence for up to 499 (don't ask me why not 500!) only - it's a Health & Safety measure. Many racecourses don't allow more than six people per nag, and no child under 12, even accompanied. The centres of rings are really quite small, when you consider the maximum number of nags per race - imagine you have all 15 permitted in one race, and that you've got 10, 12, 24 syndicate owners all wanting to go in for their posing moments. Impossible, I'm afraid, for people to get out of the way for an errant beast, especially one that gets loose and starts fly-bucking its way around the ring. There'd only be a howl of "Why did they let so many people in?" if one of a party got killed because they couldn't move for people.
 
krizon said:
Gamla - agree with Ye Olde Dresse Code rubbish, et cetera, but the reason there may have been a 'register' of people entering the paddock is probably down to the Clerk of the Course determining safety levels of entrants, telling the gateman how many people per horse is considered safe, etc. A bit like night clubs having a licence for up to 499 (don't ask me why not 500!) only - it's a Health & Safety measure. Many racecourses don't allow more than six people per nag, and no child under 12, even accompanied. The centres of rings are really quite small, when you consider the maximum number of nags per race - imagine you have all 15 permitted in one race, and that you've got 10, 12, 24 syndicate owners all wanting to go in for their posing moments. Impossible, I'm afraid, for people to get out of the way for an errant beast, especially one that gets loose and starts fly-bucking its way around the ring. There'd only be a howl of "Why did they let so many people in?" if one of a party got killed because they couldn't move for people.
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Can understand that Kri but they asked for all names in advance and ticked us off as we entered. I've walked into the parade ring on the July Course without an owners badge before, the stuck up smaller courses just need to get a grip. Thirsk is in the throws of the dark ages, they'd probably refuse entry to all young people, homosexuals and ethnic minorities if they could.
 
Thirsk is just a deeply conservative place and its abundantly apparent, it's a poor mans Newmarket in design, and lay-out, yet tries to borrow equally from somewhere like Salisbury in clientele. North Yorkshire is about as traditooanl and conservative as it comes in this country, althought he brass band palying the James Bond theme that greeted was just a slightly tacky.

And I said Saturday Shadow Leader!!! It's just that I spelt it Sunday:p
 
Oh, I see, Gamla - now that is bizarre! Never heard of that anywhere, including Glorious Goody or even Royal Arscot. It doesn't sound a very welcoming sort of place, put like that.
 
Has there been much feedback on how those lessons they used to do (still do?) where they took school kids to racecourses to see weighing room etc, whether that's had any luck in encouraging more young people to have an interest in the sport? Those kids might still be a bit young yet to get any proper feedback, I'm not sure.

I was talking to an instructor from the NRC last year who were offering a college conversion course to students studying equine courses at uni etc to try and get them to move away from eventing/showjumping etc and consider working in the racing industry but he was saying it was quite likely that the course would be withdrawn as although it booked up pretty quickly (£50 all in - riding, food accomadation, lectures, visits) most a very small minority of the students attended still went back to working in other horsey jobs rather than racing jobs. So, it seems difficult to convert even those with an equine back ground to racing.

Don't think much of this flowerpot men idea though. I think the issue of cost of entry, as others have said, is a major issue. If you're looking at paying a small fortune to get in on top of traveling to the racecourse that's bound to put a lot of people off. And also, whilst getting more people interested in going racing in general is a good thing I know that there's been mentions on other threads of the coach loads of stag/hen parties etc going racing purely for the piss up and that's something I don't want to see more of. Not saying no drinking allowed as I like a drink or two when I go racing but too much of that could be a bad thing. Admittedly would probably be a small minority of people though.
 
Racecourses aren't the most proactive arenas for trying to get people interested in racing as a career, unfortunately, Imagine. Now and then, you're right, schoolkids get trundled through a day at the races, but what I'd suggest is that the BHA developed a mobile careers truck, which could move from course to course on racedays, with videos showing insights into the various types of jobs which underpin racing. From becoming an assistant trainer, a stud groom to stud manager, consignors, bloodstock agents, trainer's secretary, racecourse manager and associated management/admin positions, Clerk of the Course, Clerk of the Scales, stable manager (at the courses), the British Racing School for wannabe jocks, professional syndicate managing - just about every aspect of every line of work that racing can offer should be outlined, with a variety of CDs and booklets on hand to provide websites and phone numbers.

The BHA ought to be proactive itself, and offer courses on all such subjects. The Thoroughbred Breeders' Association does offer a number of courses on foaling and health matters, but so much of racing is about who you know, word of mouth, etc., and not about gaining formal standards.

The BHA could have saved £250,000 and six months and just asked people who have connections to its business to send in suggestions as how to make itself more attractive. This forum alone would've cost them nothing, and they'd have had the answers in five minutes!

Been onto the RP online just now, and Andy Stewart's incandescent about the report - says it's already out-of-date, unbusinesslike, and useless. (And he contributed time to the researchers!) Not happy that more women weren't included. It does seem odd that businesses like Betfair weren't consulted, since surely, with the way betting's been trendily overhauled in the last few years, they'd surely have some sort of business acumen to loan. Simon Clare seems upbeat about racing being able to be resold to the public as cricket's been, though.
 
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What they could do Colin is have a series of 6 different starts all at the same time over different distances. Then they have giant crane/ pulling device to whip the stalls out the way in a matter of seconds and then they could run a series of races with a result every 12 seconds as they various races flash through. They could run it at half time during football matches and call it the lottery.

The BHA are actually members of TH Kriz, but we don't seem to have heard from them for months now. Im sure you'd be within your rights to look them up and drop them a PM if they're still looking in. If memory serves me right, the gentlemans name was Robin.
 
That was Alan Lee, Colin. He wrote an article advocating it in Owner and Breeder - I was most surprised that he'd come out with such bollocks.

I can see that getting schoolkids involved is a good idea in theory but why are they targetting very young kids? The kids taken to the races by their schools were all under the age of 10, most of them nearer 6 or 7. You're not going to formulate any life changing plans in kids of that age!
 
Nowhere in the recommendations of those marketing ponces do they recommend that racing insiders could help the cause by stopping defrauding the core customers.
 
krizon said:
The BHA could have saved £250,000 and six months and just asked people who have connections to its business to send in suggestions as how to make itself more attractive.
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Spot on. Absolute waste of time that whole sham was. Consultants dream I'm sure, mind!
 
When you take note of some of the individuals on the panels consulted it is hardly surprising that this whole thing is nothing more than a muppet show. Ascot, Newbury and York sponsorship and marketing chimps and bookie reps, a set of blithering smarmy PR liars no better than the MPs about which the country is currently up in arms, no, no surprise at all that this was a load of bollocks.

Same reason the Sportsman failed. Drag out the same old pricks and you'll get the same old crap.
 
this prick mentality stems from public schools imo..civil service is run with the same stupidity...the love of pretentous buzzwords laced with childlike ideologies and happily paying hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money to outside consultants to keep the gravy train of nonsense running

i think the whole country is run with sole intent of f*ckin it up so we always have to pay someone to "sort it out". It just seems like a game for ex public schoolboys.

Its time we put such as Branson and Sugar in charge of the country...it always amazes me how we have successful people like these in the country but end up with nest lining, spin merchant muppets for MP's.

need a lay down..all this makes really angry :mad:
 
I went to the 2000gs day at HQ. The whole thing could be improved greatly, but just who exactly wants to?

  1. car parking -- I know from the past it's a damned business finding your car if you've been a bit vague -- provide numbered aisles, at least.
  2. entrance - replace those knee-busters made of cast iron: it's not the 1930s.
  3. £25 for the general enclosure -- I don't know what the £40 would have provided, so that's weird. 25 is too much -- I'm paying to go shopping.
  4. the parade ring -- far too small & difficult to catch sight of a complete horse -- what's that about? Some shop window.
  5. horses only identifiable when the arm-band of the handler is legible: they should wear their colours. I don't know how -- someone with a brain can figure it out.
  6. horses should be introduced & talked about -- they could read the Timeform comments or Spotlight for all I care -- but some presenter should be saying something. Wake up - present the product. Bozos.
  7. not enough time between races. 30 minutes is just too short -- make it 40. paddock to betting to race to pay-out to loo/shop to paddock ... share the experience, organisers, why don't you.
  8. if traders are going to charge 30% over high street prices, I don't buy. what's this about not bringing in my own refreshment? justify that.
  9. stick to the time-table. the 4.00 o'clock: no horses in the parade ring before 3.50 -- why? am I supposed to look at them all & get a price & bet in 10 minutes? fucking amateur night.
  10. the race commentary -- you can't hear it with a few thousand people yelling & whereabouts in the race can't you hear it? in the last fucking furlong. spend some money on more sound.
As you noticed, I said it's fucking amateur night. So it is and it's run by fucking amateurs.
 
uncle goober said:
When you take note of some of the individuals on the panels consulted it is hardly surprising that this whole thing is nothing more than a muppet show. Ascot, Newbury and York sponsorship and marketing chimps and bookie reps, a set of blithering smarmy PR liars no better than the MPs about which the country is currently up in arms, no, no surprise at all that this was a load of bollocks.

Same reason the Sportsman failed. Drag out the same old pricks and you'll get the same old crap.
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It's often said that a consultant will 'borrow your watch to tell you the time' and I'm more than half wondering if this isn't a case in point. Consultants aren't stupid though. They want paying, and they know the best way of achieving this is to reflect what the client wants to hear
 
I'd dispute plenty of your points there mrussell, in particular 40 minutes between races - why? No need for it at all, not least when there are 7 or even 8 races to get through. 35 minutes is more than enough.

As for the commentary, the usual gripe is that it is too loud, at least the announcements are; "and if you'd like a bet, ladies and gentlemen, here today at Newbury, ladies and gentlemen, you can find the bookies in front of the stands between the stands and the track, ladies and gentlemen, or you can go to one of the Totepool booths here today at Newbury, ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon at Newbury, ladies and gentlemen. And, if you're hungry, today, here at Newbury this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, you can go to one of our many food outlets, here, today, at Newbury, ladies and gentlemen.....yada yada et in finitum. We know where we are, and where the bloody bookmakers are, and that it is 'this afternoon'!!!! Bog off and leave us all in peace!
 
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