'This year has been back to pre-pandemic levels' - non-racing business improving at Doncaster

Doncaster executive director Rachel Harwood had a spot of good news among the sport's financial woes when she revealed that non-racing business seems to be booming.

Racing has been hit by falling crowds and reduced betting turnover and is facing a potentially huge blow to its income with the introduction of affordability checks on punters.

But as Doncaster prepared for its final Christmas party of the year on Sunday evening, Harwood revealed that numbers are back to pre-pandemic levels.

"Christmas dos are back to how they were," she said. "We did some in 2021 as we were coming out of the pandemic but the government sent out a bit of a warning that year and a lot of tables of ten had only, say, seven people on them.

"Then last year the cost of living crisis had begun to hit and a lot of companies seemed not to want to be seen to be doing big parties. 

"But this year has been back to pre-pandemic levels. We started on the first weekend of this month and we've done some big parties, Howdens had nearly 1,400 people, and we've also had parties in the hotel and we have a ball here on New Year's Eve."

Non-racing events are also thriving at Doncaster, which stages a two-day antiques fair on December 27-28 and a toy fair on December 30, sandwiching its Listed Yorkshire Silver Vase Mares' Chase racing fixture on December 29. 

"The events business has really come back this year," said Harwood. "They were slow to come back after the pandemic, which is partly due to the age profile of the people who tend to go to those type of events."

Rachel Harwood: "The events business has really come back this year"Credit: Doncaster Racecourse

Harwood also discussed a change to next year's fixture list at Doncaster, where the two-day Great Yorkshire Chase and Grimthorpe Chase meetings will be Saturday-Sunday affairs rather than Friday-Saturday as previously.

"We've moved the Fridays to the Sunday because we want to get fresh ground for the big races," she said. "I couldn't understand why you'd have the best horses racing on a track which might have had 150 runners race over it beforehand.

"Commercially you are better off racing on the Friday than the Sunday because of corporate bookings, but from a racing point of view you want the best ground for the best horses so we are taking the hit.

"We'll see whether it makes a difference to entries and runners, and we'll make the Sundays more family friendly. Sometimes you just have to move the dial and see if it can help racing and make a difference."

The Great Yorkshire reverts to its original name next month, with Sky Bet having ended its sponsorship after 20 years.

The track is hoping to make the two-day fixture a "celebration of all things Yorkshire" and Harwood said: "I think some people forget that Doncaster is in Yorkshire, it's such a massive county and is very different in every part.

"So we're hoping to celebrate that by doing things like offering Yorkshire tea for a pound, having the Yorkshire Prose poet here and getting Yorkshire cricket involved."

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