Bird-brained rebrand misses racing's real problems

General / Jack Houghton / 29 May 2009 / Leave a Comment

The £250,000 spent on fancy marketing plans has not addressed one of the public's biggest gripes with the sport, says Jack Houghton.

An ex-colleague, who probably wouldn't want to be named, really knew how to market racing. Kempton was midway through its all-weather metamorphosis and office conversation turned to how it could ensure a successful future. Some put forward lofty proposals involving Kentucky Derby trials, high-profile dirt races with high prize funds, and a long-term aim of steering the Breeders' Cup course merry-go-round Sunbury bound.

His proposal, however, was less highfalutin'; and would likely have been far more successful. Stage a meeting each and every Thursday night. Send double-decker buses into the City to transport hedonism-hungry financiers to the races. Invite a gaggle of the best escort girls London has to offer and station them in stretched-limousines in the car park. Then ensure those were present to offer an ample supply of the white stuff.

With these additions to the usual racecourse fare, he reasoned, you would guarantee 20,000 each and every Thursday night. And with a suitable racecourse cut arranged for all on-course, and just off-course, transactions, the Kempton coffers would soon overflow. We all concurred. It's unclear how the idea would have survived the recent ravaging destruction of much City wealth but, for a while at least, Kempton could have never had it so good.

Unfortunately my ex-colleague never was, and I imagine never will be, invited by racing administrators to apply his probing, piercing and relevant analysis to the more general challenge of increasing racing's popularity as a whole. Instead, at various points, and in various guises, those charged with steering the sport have spent hundreds of thousands on market researchers and marketeers: all in the hope of finding an easily implementable idea to catapult racing upwards from its marginal sporting status.

The latest effort - which has seen a reported £250,000 spent on a rebranding activity resulting in no concrete proposals - has been roundly set upon by the racing press. And whilst I don't particularly want to don a white pointy hat and join the mob in dangling those involved from their sub-committee branches, the whole thing is a bit perplexing. You have to wonder: did anyone involved in this new initiative think to look back on previous incarnations for anything of use, or anything that hadn't yet been acted upon?

In an independent survey carried out on behalf of the British Horseracing Board by TNS Sport in 2003, more than one in three people who said they would not go racing cited horse safety and welfare issues as a reason. What has happened to address this concern?

I know I'm turning into a terrible bore on the subject of whip use, but when those around you ignore the obvious, and focus their attention, time and your money in areas you know to be fruitless, what is left but to bore?

In a diary entry from 2000, Alan Bennett wrote: "In 50 years time I am sure that we will not treat animals the way we do now; and to succeeding generations our behaviour will seem as barbarous as bear-baiting." I can't help thinking that horseracing - allowing and encouraging, as it does, horses to be hit in full view of a salivating public - will be a cornerstone in how our future views this, our barbarous past.

Of course, presenting whip use as an obvious abhorrence is contentious. There are those who, mistakenly, feel it not a tool of inherent violence, but a misunderstood implement of necessary correction.

Whichever side of that debate you fall however is irrelevant in deciding the whip's future in racing. A majority, and increasing majority, of the British public view its use as cruel and, to address racing's declining popularity, the whip therefore needs to be removed from the product offering altogether. It might not attract all the City boys back to Kempton just yet, but it would do for the millions of people who don't want to pay to watch a horse being hit.