Attendances for British racing fall for fourth year in a row

British racing is grappling with a downward trend in attendances after four straight years of falling crowd figures culminated in 2019 returning the lowest average crowds this century and more than half a million drop in total numbers since 2015.

It was a similar tale in 2018, when the average dipped below 4,000 for the first time since 2013 when extreme weather – from the beast from the east to a record-breaking summer heatwave – and England's historic football World Cup semi-final run were blamed.

But the decade ended with a further decrease from 2018, with the average across British racecourses down to 3,898 from 1,443 fixtures. In 2018, the average attendance figure was 3,924 from 1,471 meetings.

The higher number of cancelled meetings, including the six-day halt during the equine flu scare, was cited for an overall drop in numbers attending British racing last year.

A total of 5.62 million people went racing in 2019, down from 5.77m in the previous 12 months, which itself was a decrease compared to the 5.95m in 2017, 5.99m who passed through the gates in 2016 and 6.13m in 2015.

Levy Board figures released in August showed a two per cent increase compared to 2018 over the first six months of the year. That was thanks to more than 100,000 racegoers attending meetings over Easter weekend and increased attendances at the Cheltenham Festival and two-day Investec Derby jamboree.

York's Ebor week and the Ladbrokes Trophy fixture at Newbury also boosted attendances in the second half of the year, but the blowing of such a strong start was attributed to the loss of key meetings in the final quarter such as the opening day of Cheltenham's November meeting and Doncaster's Vertem Futurity Trophy afternoon.

"I think the sport faces some challenges, but within those are some opportunities," said Rod Street, chief executive of Great British Racing (GBR), the sport's marketing and promotional body. "We have to be realistic about trends and not expect things to turn around overnight.

"Phase one has to be to consolidate the position and slow it [the decrease in attendance] down or stop it, and phase two is to generate the growth. But you won't do that overnight, it will take time to get racing more deeply into the public consciousness."

Explaining the decline, Street added: "The sport's generally holding its market size – if you look at a deeper trend of ten to 20 years – what it's not doing is growing and it is under increasing competition from many other sports and leisure options. The public have more choice than ever before, particularly in the summer.

"The challenge is we are not attracting enough new people. All the data we have points to the fact awareness is not the issue, our target audiences are aware of the sport, but not enough are considering it as part of their annual leisure activity. There is nothing wrong with racing's core offer - as the second-best attended sport it clearly has a set of assets that are attractive to millions of people. We need to focus new consumers attention on those assets."

Paul Swain, brand and experience manager for the Racecourse Association (RCA), said: "We're mindful of the fact the trend is down, but we're still encouraged by some of the things going on beyond that number and we have some things we can do to try and reverse it. Our under-18s campaign in conjunction with GBR was a success and we're looking at more national campaigns.

"Overall we're not too downbeat, it's frustrating that it's down, but we're retaining our market share as the second-most attended sport behind football. 5.62 million is still a lot of people."

In a statement David Armstrong, chief executive of the RCA, tried to put a more positive spin on the situation and added: "The sport has faced a number of challenges in 2019. In spite of this, British racing has once again comfortably remained the second-most attended sport in the country and we should be proud to have welcomed over 5.6 million people to our racecourses this year."

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