State body considers time factor in sport’s appeal
RACING Victoria Limited has been watching the refreshed version of Cricket Australia’s Twenty20 Big Bash competition with interest – and has considered applying the same clock restriction on its own product.
However, while RVL chief executive officer Rob Hines suggested earlier this week that thoroughbred horse racing may need to give the impression that it is still an exciting sport and form of entertainment, local administrators remain unconvinced about whether shortening meets is the best way to do so.
According to a report in Sunday’s Herald Sun newspaper, Hines said he’d thought about streamlining race days in an effort to hold the attention span of younger racegoers and ensure that the sport maintains its overall appeal.
Hines said clock control – as he put it – was a top issue for the organisation to work on at present, with the aim of reducing the gaps between races [from 40 minutes] to as low as 30 minutes, although 35 would also be suitable as an intermediate step that may also suit racegoers in other neighbouring states.
Melbourne Racing Club chairman Mike Symons agreed that the 18-30-year-old age bracket would want to see horse racing that reflected a modern format in keeping with the T20 cricket competition.
“People are increasingly time poor and looking for efficient and entertaining ways to spend their leisure time,” Symons told Adrian Dunn on Monday.
“This starts with the length of the day. It will require changes to routine from the stewards - such as inquiries and protests - and clubs for race presentations and so on.”
Symons added that if patrons don’t turn up and place a bet at a race meet, then the industry’s own future would be under threat.
Where would Kerang’s Turf Club fit into such a shortened-day format? Club president Alan Shields was unsure.
“You’d have to know Melbourne’s race times and we have to fit into whatever they’re doing,” he said on Wednesday.
“We don’t have much choice. They [RVL] set Melbourne and the other majors and then we set the start times for us. We can argue over our first and last race but we don’t have an option to go back to 30 minutes or 20 minutes.”
However, Hines did point out that given there are meets on all bar two days in an average calendar year, uniformity in start times could be tricky to enforce.
Gunbower Racing Club president Mick Farrant was more concerned about how trainers would cope with the quick race day turnaround.
“If you had three horses at a meeting, 40 minutes is just enough time,” he said.
“The time between races is really more relevant to the trainer than anyone else. To the punter it doesn’t matter when you’re having fun. If you’re a trainer, you’ll look for every bit of those 40 minutes if you’re on the go.”
Farrant added that Gunbower has already experimented with shorter race gaps in 2009 and 2010.
“I don’t think the crowd noticed,” he said.
Country Racing Victoria marketing manager Darren Galley said the non-metropolitan administration “have been talking about and with Racing Victoria for some time about modernising the product and doing those sort of things to be attractive to the modern-day person”.
“We’re all supportive [of the idea] but it needs to be done mindful of gaming impacts between races, integrity [and] stewards’ inquiries,” he added.
“But if it’s a three-hour race window with six races, every 30 minutes, that might be appealing to the public.”
If shorter gaps between races did eventually come into effect across Victoria, Shields said such a move should also mean more fields race at each meet to ensure patrons remain on-course for a similar amount of time.
“We’d have to have an eight-race program,” he added.
“If we had six races with breaks of 20 minutes, that’s one o’clock to three o’clock and people want more racing...Boxing Day and Easter is different from weekday meetings. I can understand those having races at 6.30pm or later, but in our situation people come for the day out and punting, to be entertained for five to six hours [so] we’d have to do something for the other three.”
This can backfire, too, though.
Shields said the 2011 Kerang Easter meet saw Alexandra Park stay open until 7.30pm to ensure punters could follow the final race of the day in Melbourne.
“We had to continue with providing a facility,” he added.
Shields acknowledged that a twilight-style race meet between 3-7pm may work for some venues, but a finish time of no later than 6pm suits the local turf club.
“Because it’s all volunteer work to clean up at the end and get home at a reasonable hour,” he said.
“That’s a bit selfish on our behalf, but it certainly comes into calculations.”
For Shields, there are other, more pressing concerns than start times.
“Probably the most important one would be to have one TAB meeting for the year,” he said.
“And also we are only allowed six races within each meet – we get allocated six fields for Boxing Day but seven for Easter because we supply that ourselves. That would be a bonus – for us to get more fields.”
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