Bad weather blamed as crowds fall in first half of year

An exceptionally wet start to the year has been blamed for a dip in racecourse attendances for the first six months of 2016.

A total of 2,804,218 people attended fixtures between January and June, a fall of 6.1 per cent against the same period last year, when there were 2,986,760 racegoers.

That decline has been attributed to the weather, with 43 meetings cancelled in the first half of 2016 - already more than the whole of 2015, when there were 37 abandonments in total. There were 23 cancelled meetings in the first six months of 2015.