Racing Victoria CEO Andrew Jones defends horse racing’s innovation strategy
Andrew Jones, Racing Victoria’s (RV) chief executive officer (CEO), has defended the sport’s innovation strategy after revealing that wagering was down 15 per cent year-on-year in July.
Unapologetic in moving for change, Jones would not, however, confirm details of a new race series, potentially to be held at Moonee Valley during the summer.
“Well, we’re not going to say exactly what we’re exploring. We’re exploring a whole bunch of ideas, but we are on record as saying we want to extend the spring into the end of November. We want to attract new fans to racing particularly 18-to-34 [year-olds] and particularly 18-to-24 [year-olds],” Jones told Racing.com in an interview held yesterday.
“And we need to make sure there’s a really appealing racing product and format and series for them to attend after they’ve been excited by the Melbourne Cup Carnival. So we’re looking at a bunch of options around that.”
The proposed series would include a limit on whip use, and jockeys being able to communicate to a trainer or coach during a race, with the initiative set to be a team-based concept with increased prize-money.
“You’ve got to make racing as fan-friendly as possible and mics and earpieces are not new. So in Formula 1, everybody’s watched Drive to Survive. The cars weigh as much as horses, they’re going five times faster, 300km an hour,” Jones said on the idea of jockey communication.
“That is a properly dangerous sport and they’re communicating with the pit crew all the time. Now, is that a direct analogy to racing? Well, we don’t know.
“So if we were to introduce that, what we would do is we would test it. So we would test it with one rider doing track work, we test it at jump out, we test it at a trial before we let it anywhere near a race. So it’s not all or nothing, it’s not black or white. You can actually progress and test these ideas and see if they work. If the ideas don’t work or are dangerous, then you don’t do them or discontinue them. But to innovate, you actually have to change things and people need to get their head around that.”
With some trainers and jockeys raising safety concerns, Jones said that those issues would be investigated during the trial of the concept.
“Safety is paramount in racing and a paramount consideration. But you have to understand that every single accident that’s happened in racing, and there’s been plenty even in my time, has happened without a radio and with a whip,” he said.
“So not having a radio and having a whip don’t prevent accidents. There’s inherent risk in racing. The question is, does having an earpiece or a mic change that and does it change it materially? And the answer is we don’t know because we haven’t tried it.”
Moving onto the future of horse racing in Australia, Jones feels that the industry should heed the warnings of other major sports that had once been highly successful and are now struggling.
“Racing has a lot of things going for it. We’ve just had our second-biggest year on record, so it is important to keep a sense of perspective, but my view is we’ve got quite a strong starting position and we should use that starting position to our advantage to grow racing rather than do nothing and wait for it to go backward,” Jones said.
“Now these are extreme examples, but if you see what’s happened to racing in Singapore, if you see what’s happened to harness racing in Australia, they’ve gone backwards over a long period of time because, well, rugby in Australia has gone backwards over a 20-year period, because they didn’t realise what was happening in the landscape around them.
“You’ve got to refresh your fan base at all times. And racing has the unique situation that when I was 18, I turned 18 in 1990, if I wanted to bet, I could only bet on racing.”
“I could only bet on racing and I could only bet through the TAB. That’s changed. When kids turn 18 now they can bet on any sporting event in the world.
“So racing has much, much more competition for attention and eyeballs – and we see that. We see that in the consumption data, we see that in the ratings, we see that in the crowds, we see that in the wagering data.”
Any changes made would be impacting upon less than one per cent of the current racing programme, with Jones revealing that the changes would be aimed at members of the public that are not already engaging with the sport.
“We’re talking about changing maybe four meetings out of 550. So less than 1 per cent of our meetings, less than 1 per cent of our races to suit a whole bunch of people who don’t currently engage with racing, which I hate to break it to you, is the majority of the Australian population,” he said.
“So the fact that some people don’t like it is a fact and it’s neither here nor there because there are a lot of people who don’t like what they like because customers are different and have different needs. It’s up to us to identify the segments, identify their needs, and make sure that they are well served by some element of our 4,400 race program.”
Admitting that it is difficult to keep all parties happy, including stakeholders and participants, Jones would not comment on whether any of those relationships had become tired in light of the potential new developments.
“Participants can tell you what their relationship with us is. Our job is to work out where to take the industry and we get an enormous amount of feedback from participants. It’s often very disparate,” he said.
“I asked, for example, the Australian Trainers Association for a position on an issue last week and one of the committee members said to me, ‘We will never agree. You have to make this decision. We will never agree’.
“So we’re in an environment where everybody has got a fervently held opinion and those opinions obviously vary. So we have to work out, ‘Okay, well, what’s the best answer out of the available answers’, and then go do it, and some people like that and some people don’t.”
Meanwhile, with nominations closing yesterday for both the Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) and Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m), Jones revealed his excitement at the prospect of a much larger international challenge than has been the case in recent years.
“Everybody’s getting excited about a spring with a lot of international interests. We know Japanese and Hong Kong horses are coming down. We’ve got Romantic Warrior coming down for the Cox Plate. We’ve got Vauban having a big win overnight in Ireland and suiting up for the Melbourne Cup. So the momentum is building towards spring,” he said.