SIMON NOTT: All The Turf’s A Stage

Those of us who love racing know that the turf is a theatre. A day at the races contains all the ingredients of a great play, drama, passion, intrigue, winners, losers and a sprinkling of hinted at skulduggery. A day at the turf is also as interactive and immersive as any play where the audience are invited to interact, writes SIMON NOTT. 

The roar of a racing crowd has arguably made the difference between winning and losing out there on the turf on many occasions. The participation of a crowd makes all the difference between electric and soulless on a daily basis, over the last at Newton Abbot at a packed bank holiday and hitting the final furlong in the 9.20 at Kempton anyone?

This analogy isn’t a new one from yours truly, we’ve all seen the excellent ITV racing intro which highlights the similarities. That impressive bit of TV showboating wasn’t the inspiration for this blog though. It was Star Sports’ own theatre aficionado who suggested that racing can learn a lot from the world of theatre, telling me they have done a complete about turn with their attitude to social media. Regular theatregoer and head of Star’s content David Stewart told me:

“For years theatres have taken a zero tolerance to anyone filming in a West End theatre – always citing ‘reasons of copyright’. Even threatening at one stage to have cameras ‘destroyed’.”

However, recently there has been a completely different approach where some theatres are actively encouraging patrons to film the end of the shows as they’ve realised, shock horror! that people share this content on social media and act as unpaid marketing executives for the production.”

Obviously it would never be acceptable for someone to sit in seat A12 in the stalls and film the entirety of Les Miserables but when it comes to the end of a show when there’s usually a form of a ‘megamix’ finale cameras are now welcome.

Top musicals including I Should Be So Lucky, Six, Don’t Stop Believin’ and Mamma Mia all allow end of show filming and I think all have benefitted commercially as a result.”

Finale of I Should Be So Lucky (appropriately enough for a racing blog) filmed permissably at a recent performance at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking.

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People may not be aware but some of racing’s media rights have been very jealously and robustly guarded in recent years. That is to the point that social media platforms have been temporarily removed from bookmakers as a result of copyright infringement. These haven’t been cases of filming and broadcasting live racing, which of course would be totally out of order, but just capturing the fun of the betting ring and interviews in private boxes which had been bought and paid for. All very draconian, but of course their right to do so and enforce.

As Dave Stewart pointed out, it seems horseracing’s fellow entertainment industry behemoth, theatreland, has decided that hundreds of thousands of unpaid promoters is actually a good thing. A good thing even if they do technically infringe on copyright small print. Surely, it’s good for racing too, everyone’s a reporter these days.

Similar to my piece on syndicates the other week, surely the more video clips of people having fun at the races proliferating social media the better it is for the sport. Despite being the races that everyone always used to bet on and watch, the only way you’d get #GrandNational or #Derby trending these days would be gleeful posts by people who want to ban the sport if something terrible had happened.

Some racecourses are more social media savvy than others and do encourage people to post hash tagged photos, as Star Sports and Towcester will do again at #GreyhoundDerby2024. I reckon it would be more the game to encourage a massive outpouring of social media from as many racecourses as possible, encourage the owners film in the paddock, capture themselves celebrating a win and cheering home their horses. Let’s have more Racing Blogger type characters, not having the lumps on, he’s cornered that market, but sharing what fun a day at the races is. More importantly that’s it’s not just for toffs and huntsmen as I’m sure is the misconception by many non-racegoers.

Racing, isn’t it time to unleash the army of smart-phone wielding passionate racegoers onto every platform, it’s free and effective, what’s not to like?

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Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

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Simon Nott is author of: Skint Mob! Tales from the Betting Ring
available on Kindle CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

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