POV: The Wrong Idea (William Kedjanyi)

Star Sports’ William Kedjanyi on why moving a Festival day to Saturday won’t help the Jockey Club…

---

Anyone who knows me will be well aware that I very much love both codes of racing, and also that I’m a little later to getting into jumps than many others. I tend to do my thinking about matters in March from November at the earliest, so you’ll forgive me for letting out a sigh when I saw the Racing Post’s front page story: “Cheltenham Festival could be switched to a Saturday finale.’

Now the newsworthiness of this cannot be in doubt – although I’d like to remind everyone that we still have Group 1 action in Europe to come, and then what looks set to be a talent stacked Breeders’ Cup – but I’m inclined to wonder just why the idea is even considered at this point.

I should say here that there has yet to be any official discussion around this according to the Racing Post, with Cheltenham chief executive Guy Lavender saying it’s nothing more than “a concept”, but even then I have issues with any supposed benefits.

The commercial case for Saturday would be to boost crowd numbers – the Festival’s four day attendance has fallen from 280,627 in 2022 to this year’s 218,839, proving a dent in the Jockey Club’s finances (it’s the main source of revenue for them if you didn’t know).

However, the reasons for that drop have been debated extensively, with Cheltenham taking action to try and improve the customer experience. The course itself has capped daily attendance to 66,000 racegoers – a much needed response to the overcrowding on course at times, whilst ticket prices were frozen, the Guinness price was cut and the track’s PA system was upgraded.

Friday – the Gold Cup day – is already by far the busiest day of the Festival to navigate as it is and Saturday would be largely the same, even with an attendance cap, something which could largely reverse many of the intended effects of measures taken to improve the customer experience.

A Saturday would be more accessible to those who don’t want to use annual leave days, but racing would also be competiting with a whole host of other sports for the intended new audience.

The Festival takes place in the last week of the Six Nations, and ‘Super Saturday’ – where all six teams are in action, often with Championships and Grand Slams on the line – take huge amounts of sporting attention for the day. ITV would surely move the Festival to ITV4, depriving racing of one of its biggest shop windows of the year. This is before one takes into account a full football fixture list, something which most sports have not been able to realistically compete with outside of showcase events. Presuming the Gold Cup stays on Friday and the Festival stays as a four day event (please god, but that’s a debate for another POV), the open questions of which races are moved to Saturday is a very big one.

I haven’t even reached what is likely to be the biggest factor impacting these attendances and the Jockey Club’s finances, even if not the only one – the cost-of-living crisis which the sport can only do so much about. For now, punters are still powering through, although plenty have now decided to stay at home, visit pubs and bars, or fly over to Tenerife to enjoy the week there in a growing phenomenon.

The expansion of the ‘Room to Race’ programme is very welcome idea, but the powers in racing can only do so much about extortionate accommodation and travel – neither of which would be sorted (and perhaps even made worse) on a Saturday.

Whilst all options will be looked at – racing isn’t the only sport which will consider big changes and do everything to maximise income and audience attendance – a Festival Saturday looks very unlikely to solve the Jockey Club’s problems.

---

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

Have a point of view? Email us at content@starsportsbet.co.uk!

---

STAR PROMOTIONS