Throwing money at the problem

The divide between the popularity of National Hunt racing and the Flat racing with the public seems to be becoming more pronounced as the years go by.

Flat racing’s extravaganza, Irish Champions Weekend, generated combined attendances of 17,000 over the two days while the midweek Kerry National Day in far flung Listowel on Wednesday managed a whopping 25,700, despite clashing with the Ploughing Championships.

Ladies Day on Friday at Listowel bettered that figure with a reported 27,230 in attendance for that National Hunt card. On Saturday, another National Hunt card at Listowel, saw 11,000 in attendance, a record for the final day of the Harvest Festival.

One other thing that is plainly evident is that the level of prize money on offer has no direct relationship with the number of people that turn up. The combined total prize money for those three National Hunt cards at Listowel was €714,500 and outside the two feature races - Kerry National worth €200,000 and Ladbrokes Handicap Hurdle of €100,000 - no other race was worth more than €22,500 in total prize money.

The minimum prize money value for each race over Irish Champions Weekend was €150,000 and in total a whopping €4.75m was on offer over those 16 races.

Of course, we saw Europe’s richest two-year-old race run at the Curragh last weekend when the resurrected Goffs Million took place on Saturday with total prize money of over €1.2m. That was followed by the Friends Of The Curragh Irish Cesarewitch on Sunday at the same track with a prize pool of €600,000, up from a mere €80,000 twelve months ago.

Putting the Goffs Million confined sales race aside, you’d have to wonder if the friends of the Curragh really had the best interests of the racecourse at heart when they decided to elevate a two-mile handicap to beyond Group One prize money levels. Could this €600,000 have been better spent? Afterall, it is the equivalent of three Kerry Nationals and used differently it could have gone some way towards boosting crowds at a number of Curragh fixtures.

Six and a half thousand people turned up for the Curragh leg of Irish Champions Weekend, and if each of them had been given a €92 voucher for food and drink at any subsequent Curragh fixture I’d be willing to bet they’d have all come back and probably brought a few friends with them too.

Instead, the bulk of the €600,000 went to the usual suspects with Waterville pocketing over half of the prize money for Magnier, Smith, Tabor and Westerberg.

The Curragh is in a spot of bother financially judging by the Committee of Public Accounts which held a session with Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) last week. The semi-state administrative body for the industry is a 35% economic shareholder in Curragh Racecourse Limited and this is becoming a drain on their resources. HRI’s 2020 accounts show a loss of €1.8m on their Curragh investment in that year. This follows a similar €2m loss the previous year and they have also given a €9m convertible loan to the Racecourse company which, if not paid back by 2024, will mean HRI’s shareholding will increase to 37%.

HRI increasing its share in a company haemorrhaging cash doesn’t seem like the best use of public money, even more so considering that the asset can never be sold as Curragh Racecourse Limited doesn’t own the lands the racecourse is built on.

The new Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) CEO, Daragh O’Loughlin, was also present at the Public Accounts Committee meeting and gave an update on the project to install CCTV systems in the stable yards of 25 Irish Racecourses.

The issue of the lack of video surveillance footage in stable yards first came to light following the controversial case of Foxrock losing two shoes at Punchestown in November 2016 and was again highlighted with the case of Viking Hoard being nobbled in the Tramore stable yard in October 2018.

O’Loughlin is confident that CCTV systems will be operational at 20 tracks by the end of 2022. The other five will take some time longer as there is development of new stable yards planned at three tracks and another two need civil works carried out, which includes the supply of electricity to the stable yard areas, before camera installation can commence.

Looking back at Saturday’s Goffs Million it was noteworthy that €962,520 of the €1,234,000 in total prize money was won by British-trained runners as only two Irish-trained horses managed to finish in the first ten places. There won’t be much of a trickle-down effect within the Irish economy from that race, but then again, even when Irish-trained and owned runners win these big pots it is not obvious how any significant portion ever trickles down to the grassroots.