THE recent news that Ballymore will no longer continue its sponsorship of the opening novice hurdle on day two of the Cheltenham Festival has shone an interesting spotlight on the wider race sponsorship landscape at the greatest show on turf.

What was described by Ballymore as the rotation of its “sponsorship cycles” means that the total number of races without a backer at the meeting has seemingly grown to six. Overall, 21.4% of the Cheltenham Festival’s races now have no title sponsor.

Sporting Life’s association with the Arkle is no more, McCoy Contractors doesn’t feature alongside the County Hurdle listing on the BHA’s race programme listings at present and the other three races - the National Hunt Chase, Grand Annual and Martin Pipe - are said to be left intentionally without a sponsor.

Perhaps new backers will arrive, but when the most publicly-engaging week of the National Hunt year is not readily retaining major Grade 1 sponsors, does it point to wider concerns over attracting or retaining sponsors?

Credit where it’s due, there are tracks in Ireland where each race in their schedule has a title sponsor, including the 2023 Horse Racing Ireland Racecourse of the Year Award winners Ballinrobe. They are not alone, but the same cannot be said for all courses, though.

What the Cheltenham situation also does is show just how out of touch recent comments were from TD James Browne, the Minister of State at the Department of Justice with special responsibility for Law Reform and Youth Justice. Not for the first time, it should be added.

Perplexing perspective

When speaking last month about some of the implications of the incoming Gambling Regulation Bill he is pushing to roll out, Browne told The Irish Sun: “You’re probably only talking about 15 years ago when advertising in our top horse racing events came from non-gambling companies. They were sponsored by banks and insurance companies and IT companies. I know there’s always been gambling with racing but this thing of being solely reliant on gambling companies is a recent event. There is a question mark there of the business sense of ending up with this narrow dependency on one industry. I think you’d find other companies who will want to go into that ad space.”

Cheltenham’s sponsorship position a little more than seven weeks out from the meeting suggests it is a far less simple process to attract backers for key races. Additionally, more than a quarter of the races that have sponsorship at the Cheltenham Festival are backed by gambling firms. Paddy Power sponsor the Stayers’ Hurdle and Mares’ Chase, Unibet supports the Champion Hurdle - just as Betway does with the Queen Mother Champion Chase - while Sky Bet is attached to the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and Coral is represented through the Coral Cup.

Despite appreciating that we cannot turn our nose up at new sponsors, it can be frustrating for racing fans to continually see the names of feature races change regularly from a recognition point of view.

For example, many of us had only started getting used to the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury becoming the Ladbrokes Trophy when it was again switched to become the Coral Gold Cup.

Turners merry-go-round

What is now the Turners Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham has also been the Marsh Novices’ Chase and JLT Novices’ Chase since 2019. It was the Jewson in 2013. How many of us ever refer to it as its registered title of the Golden Miller?

Closer to home, another example is the Grade 1 novice chase over two and a half miles at the Fairyhouse Easter Festival. It was run as the WilllowWarm Gold Cup Chase in 2023, the BoyleSports Gold Cup in 2022, Underwriting Exchange Gold Cup in 2021 and the running prior to that in 2019 it was the Ryanair Gold Cup. You only have to look back to 2014 when the race was last titled the Powers Gold Cup.

Tracks deserve credit for getting firms on board to back their biggest prizes, but a carousel of changes doesn’t really help anyone from a recognition standpoint. Unless a sponsor is committing to a long-term deal, then consistently including the race’s officially registered name in its printed title is probably the fairest thing to do for everyone when it comes to how we refer to a race. Close followers of racing might be able to identify races regardless of sponsor tweaks, but it’s not always so easy for casual observers.

In such cases of maintaining the registered name in the title, strengthening some of the existing registrations is probably a worthwhile exercise. Irish racing is better than our British counterparts at honouring legendary horses in race titles, but if Kempton can honour Silviniaco Conti by running a Grade 2 chase named in his honour last weekend, surely Leopardstown could rename one of its major contests as the Hurricane Fly Hurdle in honour of the record-breaking great. Willie Mullins’ star hurdler won 10 Grade 1s during his 10 appearances at the Co Dublin track and was better there than anywhere else. Given Matheson has backed the Christmas Festival two-mile Grade 1 for the last five years, they probably deserve to hang onto their outright Matheson Hurdle title (previously the Ryanair).

Honouring the greats

However, if their backing ever ceases, renaming the race as the Hurricane Fly Hurdle could be a perfect fit to recognise his achievements. Alternatively, a big race like the €150,000 Liffey Handicap Hurdle over two miles at the Dublin Racing Festival, which doesn’t have a sponsor listed beside it in the latest HRI calendar, has quite a generic title. That could be a decent home for the Fly to be recognised either.

To my knowledge, there is no race in the calendar at present that honours the mighty Danoli in its registered title, and that seems a glaring omission too given his achievements - and what he meant to the public. On the flat, the same could be said about Sea The Stars, one of Ireland’s greatest performers, and what is registered as the Nijinsky Stakes only appears in the racecard as the King George V Cup. Across the water, it seems pretty remarkable that there is no race emembering Dancing Brave, or one paying homage to Frankel.

We know there is a push towards reducing graded races over jumps in Ireland at present but it is not a case of needing new races to honour legends of the past. There are more than enough generic and stale feature race titles that can be smartened up, like ones that simply feature the names of local areas (Dublin Chase) or the time of year the race takes place (November Handicap).

Is there a more boring race name in the sport than the Coral-backed, three-mile Long Distance Hurdle (Grade 2) at Newbury in December? It would be far more fitting to permanently rename it the Big Buck’s Hurdle given his status in that division, and the fact he won this contest a record four consecutive times.

We have greater areas to address in the race programme than simply titles, but frequent switches to how casual observers identify feature events is something to be avoided wherever possible.