21/07/16

Numerous times over the two decades that this website has been operating I’ve concluded that “racing is its own worst enemy”. The three codes that comprise the industry seemingly have little or no idea how to get a crowd to a race meeting – unless it’s 1) to a Carnival race day, or 2) an excuse for a drunks day out. However when that dreaded demon alcohol is the primary attraction at a race meeting, most of those persons attending the said meeting would be totally incapable of naming one winner after a day of racing. If you think about it aloud, any dill could promote one or two days a year when it’s an “over 18 event” and there’s a rock band or two on course to drown out what should be the main theme of the day – racing.

Metropolitan race clubs across all three codes in recent years have been proven conclusively to be incapable of attracting crowds on most of their non-Carnival race days. Have you ever stood back and smelled the roses and thought how utterly pathetic it is that metropolitan race clubs in cities like Brisbane that have a population of 2.3 million*, Sydney 5.25 million* and Melbourne 5.20 million* can only entice a thousand or two thousand paying customers through their front gate on a normal non-Carnival race day? In fact in many instances, crowd numbers are so low that Charles Manson could be out on day release and go ballistic at a metropolitan racetrack on a Saturday afternoon – and not kill anyone – as put simply, there’s just no one on course. (* = population figures taken off the australiapopulation2016.com website)

In terms of marketing strategies, the racing industry is what I’d call “slower than a wet week in Tully” at coming up with any new ideas. One of the better ideas in recent years that I’ve seen introduced to help market the racing product happened in the thoroughbred code and involved the simple idea of making the saddlecloth number bigger. It’s very basic common sense now that we see it in place, but one would have thought someone would have twigged to the idea, possibly soon after Sky Channel started telecasting racing into homes – way back in 1998. Nowadays if you don’t know the colours of the racehorse that you have backed, you can often get vision of the horse, simply by being able to spot the big number on the saddlecloth in the run.

And so it came to pass that a thoroughbred race club that most people wouldn’t even have a clue where it is geographically located, staged a TAB meeting last Saturday in New South Wales – Tuncurry Forster Race Club. The name Tuncurry sounds like something you might find at an Indian restaurant, but I for one enjoyed watching a few races from there last Saturday. For starters the track was better than Eagle Farm on the day, but I’ll bet you my bottom dollar that Tuncurry hasn’t had tens of millions of dollars splashed out on it in the last couple of years. And it’s a no brainer that Tuncurry last Saturday was about a furlong better than Sandown Lakeside was yesterday. However I thought that Tuncurry Forster Race Club should be commended on an initiative that I saw on the screen when the last race came on Sky Channel One. As we gallop along the path of life at full speed, hardly finding the time to stop for a breather to smell the roses, it’s easy for us to understand that “sometimes it’s the little things that count”. To make a difference, a marketing idea doesn’t have to be on the front page of the newspaper, or on the 6 o’clock nightly news, or concocted by someone with a marketing degree. At Tuncurry last Saturday, as per the associated photo with the text, they came up with what I deemed to be a terrific marketing idea. They simply advised on a big sign on the side of their barrier stalls when their club was racing again. Obviously they aren’t like the Gold Coast, Toowoomba, or Caloundra where they race once a week, or more than once on some weeks. The Tuncurry Forster Race Club meetings are limited and therefore spaced, but by simply putting the date of their next meeting up prominently on display for the last race, those people that regularly attend Tuncurry meetings, or those who are within driving distance of the track, or those owners or trainers who have seen the track and its configuration on the day and are interested in taking a horse there, can immediately go and write down the date of the next meeting, then those aforesaid persons forthwith have absolutely no excuse to miss the next Tuncurry meeting.

And the good news for the day at Tuncurry didn’t end there. They had a racecaller I’d never heard before. It’s always good to see a new racecaller. From what an anchor stated, I believe his name was Murray Nelson. I thought “who the hell is Murray Nelson?” Must be a new bloke starting off. The clarity of his voice was good and overall his calls were okay also. So I Googled “Murray Nelson racecaller” and it turns out he’s had a write-up recently in two papers that 99.9% of the population have never heard of – the Manning River Times and the Wingham Chronicle. Now with the greatest respect to both publications, this Murray Nelson chap would hardly become a household name if he only gets written up there. The Manning River Times on 6/11/15 wrote that “Murray Nelson enjoyed his first foray into race calling in 15 years at this week’s Melbourne Cup meeting at Taree”. The same article also advised Murray Nelson was “55”(YO).

When Sky Channel and/or a racing radio station cross to the racecaller for the last race at city Saturday meetings, most of the time, the racecaller carries on with a whole heap of what I’d call “patronizing crap” like “what a great meeting we’ve had here today” (even though the horses that were racing there were in the main “legless in the general score of things”). Or to potentially help keep his job, the racecaller might advise what a great job the committee has done and all this allied garbage. Not so the man at Tuncurry – Murray Nelson. What did he do? None of that rot about great horses and wonderful committees and so on. He simply took the opportunity to wish all those on course and watching the race on Sky Channel, or listening to him on racing radio around Australia, a “safe journey to your respective homes”. Think it through and everyone knows the country race club committee people often work tirelessly for sometimes decades for their club, with little or no recognition, whereas the metropolitan race clubs over the passage of time, have regularly been called little more than a “boys club”. The Tuncurry racecaller is right. Who cares about how good the horses were, or the jockeys, the trainers, or the committee? It’s only a bad day if one or more people or horses don’t make it home safely after the meeting.

So a race club most have never heard of came up with a wonderful marketing idea which dozens of race clubs throughout Australia that don’t race weekly can now run with to help promote their next race meeting. And a bloke most have never heard of, who according to the Sky Channel anchor may have been calling his first TAB meeting, caringly wished his audience a “safe journey to your respective homes”. Like I said just before, “Sometimes it’s the little things that count”.

Travelling around Queensland highways and byways over the years I’ve only even seen a few race clubs who bother promoting anything positive about their race club, such as when their next race meeting is on, or who their sponsors are. Gympie Turf Club has a little section at the bottom of a tourist information billboard as you drive into the city along the Bruce Highway from the Brisbane side, which advises when their next meeting is on. The little town of Dingo between Rockhampton and Emerald is just in off the Capricorn Highway and has a population of only about 350, yet they have a sign out on the highway advising when their next meeting is on – even though they only have about one race meeting a year. And the Gayndah Race Club has a sign at their front gate that every person who attends a race meeting there has to walk past as they go in the front gate, which simply reads, “The Gayndah Jockey Club thank today’s sponsors” and the names of every sponsor on the day are marked in chalk on a blackboard underneath. Fancy a race club trying to help sponsors out. How revolutionary – most race clubs just take sponsors money and are too lousy to even devote a page in their racebook to the day’s sponsors, by advising what type of business they are in and their allied geographical location, to try to get them some business in return for their valued race day sponsorship.

It’s my considered opinion that the Australian racing industry via entities like the Australian Racing Board should offer money to people to come up with ideas like the Tuncurry barrier stalls one, or the Gayndah sponsors idea – all with the aim of improving racing. Other industry like the pizza industry, via company’s like Dominos, happily pay vast sums of money to people who come up with new recipe ideas for pizzas. In racing, hardly anything changes to promote the industry – hence it’s habitually in reverse gear.