Crowd and betting figures up Figures released this week by Horse Racing Ireland for the first six months of this year indicate a healthy picture for Irish racing.The industry shows gains in all main areas with attendances up over 4% at 565,982, and both the Tote (up 12%) and on-course bookmakers (up 5%) increasing their turnover. The Tote figure is 20.2 million, while the bookmakers handled 84.7 million.In addition, total off-course betting in the period exceeded €1 billion, an increase of over €196 million or 22% on the corresponding period in 2003. However the attendance increase is probably misleading as the total number of fixtures is up by 8%. Commenting on the figures, HRI’s Chief Executive, Brian Kavanagh, said: ´The figures are extremely encouraging, and show that 2004 is likely to be another successful year for Irish racing. While attendance figures are on target, they were affected by a difficult month of June which saw a number of meetings hit by wet weather and clashes with other major sporting events.´´Up to the end of May attendances were actually 11% ahead of last year’s attendances, and we expect that level of demand to continue in the second half of the year.´
