Time for customer friendly horseracing

The 461st edition of the Wayward Lad blog.

After the hurly-burly of the Cheltenham Festival last week, I gave myself a few days off from racing.

Today, we have a jumps meeting at Exeter which looks very ordinary, and an couple of meetings on the All-Weather at Kempton and Southwell. The meeting at Exeter is a bit disappointing, opening with a selling hurdle followed by a 4 handicap hurdle with an odds-on fav. Then we have a couple of novice chases, a hunter chase, and finally a novice handicap hurdle. In that last race on the card, I was tempted to have an eachway wager on SEA SAFFRON, but the early value has gone on him and he's 6/1 from 11/1 as I write. He should be in the 1st-3 as he goes well at Exeter and his best form is in the "spring", but this trip of 2m7f & 110 yards may find him out stamina-wise. Hence, he was worth and eachway nibble at 10/1+ but not at his current odds. The only horse in the race proven at the trip is the 6/5 fav KOWLOON. The only other race that I'm interested in at Exeter is the 3:00, were the odds-on Katchmore may just be anchored by the huge weight of 12st 5lb that he has to carry. The Henderson trained Buckie Boy could be a lot better than he showed LTO when winning at Taunton, as he idled in front and was nearly caught close home. That was over 2m4f, so he won't be lacking stamina over this shorter 2m1f trip. And DREAM PEFORMANCE  with just 11st 1lb to carry also ran well LTO when winning over 2-mile at Wincanton. At 6/1, she looks to be the "eachway thief" in this race.

No selection today.

I'm still pondering the success of Channel 4 in securing sole terrestrial broadcasting rights to horseracing for the next 4 years, and whether or not it's a good or a bad thing for racing. What I think horseracing desperately needs is some new young blood in its audience. It cannot be too difficult for those in influential positions in horseracing to realise that the reason for the increase in attendances in the past 10-years – and jump racing attendances in particular – is due to the "pig-in-the-python" of the baby-boomers. The post WWII baby boom means that those born between 1946-1963 (that is those aged 49 to 66) are the people filling the racecourses. Unless horseracing recruits a younger audience soon, then we should see attendances at racetracks start to decline in the next 5 years and for that decline to continue. Tracks need to be made more receptive to a younger, more savvy, audience. For instance, it really annoyed me that I could not get a signal on my phone(s) to place a bet on inside the bar behind the "Tatts" at Cheltenham last week. In fact, to get a decent signal on my phones (one is T-Mobile, the other is O2) I had to walk out beyond the 2nd rank of bookmakers. Tracks need to be more user-friendly at every level. Even bookmakers at their pitches need to think about how they present their business. I watched several bookies at Cheltenham struggling to entice punters to place bets and they had front-rank pitches; but then they gave the punter nothing – no banter, no atmosphere, nothing to "buy" into. The high street has (finally) realised that shopping – if it is to compete with the internet – has to be a customer friendly experience. It is about time horseracing realised that too.

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