Gowran manager focusing on the positives ahead of its first RTE Flat show

Gowran Park manager Eddie Scally is hoping racing can one day transform its increased exposure into “bums on seats” ahead of the first live terrestrial television broadcast of Flat racing from the Kilkenny venue on Friday evening.

Although the Premier League returns this week, in Ireland there will be no intercounty GAA action until the middle of October while the resumption of the League of Ireland season is still up in the air.

The dearth of live sports fare has seen the state broadcaster RTE announce a series of hour-long racing productions for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays until July 12, and Friday’s Listed Victor McCalmont Stakes card at Gowran Park will be the first of the new hour-long productions.

It is believed there is a decent chance that arrangement will be extended until the end of the summer. With RTE’s viewing figures for last week’s Irish 2,000 Guineas broadcast soaring to a peak of 129,000 from 69,000 in 2019, there is clearly an opportunity for the sport to broaden its fan base.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever been covered on RTE for a Flat meeting, and it’s great for the track as we have a very good Flat track,” said Scally.

“Racing behind closed doors is going to be extremely tough for tracks, because income is next to non-existent, but I’d be hoping the exposure from the new audience that might see racing over the next few weeks will translate into bums on seats when we do start opening up again. The hope is that you’d convert sports fans when other sports are closed down.”

Gowran Park manager Eddie Scally, pictured here with Gordon Elliott: 'We have a facility for horse racing, and everyone on the board agreed with me 100pc, so we decided we’d worry about the cost implications afterwards.'Credit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

The Irish Stallion Farms EBF and MansionBet share the sponsorship of Friday’s eight-race card. However, with all attendance-related revenues having evaporated and media rights money expected to be down between 30 per cent and 50pc over the course of the year, racing behind closed doors is not sustainable for tracks for long.

With a €25,000 cancellation payment available from HRI, some venues have opted not to host all of their originally scheduled fixtures as it would not be viable, but Scally says Gowran was determined to provide a service for the industry.

“I went to our board of directors and took the view that we are a race track, we were built in 1914 to race – and there was no media rights money back then,” he argues. “We have a facility for horse racing, and everyone on the board agreed with me 100pc, so we decided we’d worry about the cost implications afterwards. We are here to race and that’s what we are going to do for as long as we can.

“We are independent track and we had big development projects planned to start in June, so unfortunately we have had to delay them indefinitely.

“For us, all that we’re hoping to do for the next five or six months is break even and keep people in their jobs as much as we can. Unfortunately we had to make a few redundancies because the work isn't there. We aren’t under any great pressure yet because we had money saved for the building projects, which unfortunately we have had to redirect to keep the business going.

"In our heads, we have the October Champion Chase fixture in mind as the fixture we might have attendances back. If we can get to that and have people back, I think we’ll be looking at this in our rear-view mirror and driving on.”

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