Racecourses glimpse the benefit of free enterprise

Alan Lee says that free entry at nine racecourses, this week, challenges the entrenched belief that racing is an extortionate day out

The best ideas can be both simple and daring. Twenty-overs cricket restored innocence and spontaneity to a game suffering from lazy preconceptions that it could last forever and still end in stalemate. Free entry at nine racecourses, this week, challenges the entrenched belief that racing is an extortionate day out.
On early indications, free racing is working in just the way Twenty20 has done - by attracting a previously reluctant audience. This will not only shame those who scorned the initiative as worthless sham, it could also bring an overdue rethink on pricing policies, both in racing and other sports.
Sedgefield shut its gates last night, the little Co Durham track full to its 5,000 capacity for a meeting that drew 600 paying spectators in 2009. Mighty Ascot still has ample space today but is expecting 12,000, a 300 per cent increase on last year. Goodwood, Saturday's free fixture, is already a sell-out.
These are uplifting figures for the Racing For Change (RFC) group, which negotiated the barriers of timid pragmatism in securing enough willing courses to comprise a week of free meetings. Yet the overwhelming response asks more questions than it answers.
Jill Williamson, general manager at Sedgefield, confirms that the bumper crowd yesterday was “nearly all people new to racing - and we're turning plenty more away”. The theme is similar elsewhere. Surely, the something-for-nothing tendency cannot account for so many thousands?
The vast majority must have some interest in racing, even if it has been dormant for a generation or amounts to nothing more than idle curiosity. So the challenge is how to win them back again.
On Monday, I went to Towcester, where free entry was nothing new. The course pioneered the idea six years ago, when the place was a building site and it hardly seemed fair to charge. It was such a success that it continued when the new stand was complete.
Only its two biggest days - Boxing Day and Easter Sunday - now command an entry fee. This quiet Monday card drew 3,400 - 28 per cent up through the RFC marketing. True, Towcester is not like other courses. Independent in every sense, it has neither clogging committees nor demanding shareholders - and Lord Hesketh, its owner, is a self-confessed maverick. Yet there is nothing fanciful or philanthropic about throwing the gates open. The business plan is proven.
Kevin Ackerman, the young and enterprising general manager, explained: “This used to be a loveably run-down place and our locals had stopped coming. By getting people through the door, we can showcase the new facilities. You'll always get the odd freeloader trying to smuggle in a packed lunch but most people are happy to spend once they are inside.
“It has other spin-offs. Not everything is free here and I call it tiered racing. Some may come back to use the restaurants, or book a VIP box as a treat - we have a very good corporate product. Or they might think of us as a wedding venue.”
Final payments on the new stand and stabling are about to be made but Towcester still expects to return a profit of £400,000 this year. Understandably, Ackerman now wonders why other tracks - especially in the netherland of all-weather racing - do not follow its lead.
Sedgefield, certainly, are thinking of more free days. “We're targeting families,” Mrs Williamson said. “If we don't get younger people coming, the sport will disappear.” Even at Ascot, where decimal odds in the betting ring will also be trialled today, there is a sense of wonder about the take-up for free racing.
Up to yesterday morning, 8,500 tickets had gone out and Ascot will not charge any walk-up customers today. Charles Barnett, the chief executive, has a throat infection and little voice. But he still managed to croak two words. “Quite amazing.”
Source:The Times