What did you make of last weekend’s racing at Leopardstown?

Look, it was a phenomenal weekend. And really reassuring, I think, for everyone who was there to see the connection between the people and the horse.

The stampede from the grandstand to the parade ring to see Galopin Des Champs was incredible. The bit that blew me away was the amount of industry veterans who said it was the best atmosphere they can recall.

Given the target market we go after we definitely had a challenge going up against the Ireland-England game. That pushed up the cost of flights for overseas visitors and the cost of accommodation for people who would normally travel from different parts of the country and stay overnight in Dublin.

Last year 37% of the advance ticket sales were coming from the UK. This year that was down to 30%. I could be wrong about this but we might not have that clash again as I think they are moving the Six Nations calendar forward a little bit.

The meeting was billed as ticket-only although cash was taken on the day. How do you see that policy developing?

Racing is probably a little bit behind the curve on this. Last Saturday you had the rugby in the Aviva Stadium and Dublin played Donegal in Ballybofey. Nobody paid cash into either of those games – and Ballybofey was not a sell-out. That wasn’t the reason it was all-ticket. It’s because you want to know who’s coming so you can plan better.

So we have to get people into the habit of buying race tickets early. We have a rule ‘first price, best price’, so the earlier you buy, the cheaper it is.

I think this is something that we’ll stick with. The DRF was our first time doing it, and it was chosen for the obvious reason that we were coming off a phenomenal 2024, so we felt we could do it.

We will look to bring it in for Easter Monday at Fairyhouse and then maybe look at another meeting later in the year.

The approach to sales, promotion and ticketing processes is one area where I have focused particularly on in racing and taken the best of what I worked on in rugby and the GAA.

When I joined in 2017, over 90% of ticket sales was ‘cash at stile’. Compare that to the weekend just gone where 99% of sales were in advance – as little as 100 people paid in with cash on Saturday, for example.

That is an output of the strategy to put the best value tickets on sale first, encourage early advanced sale online with price promotions, early bird offers, et cetera.

Online sales allows us gather customer data and therefore reward loyalty of returning racegoers and communicate racing content on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

You’re a great believer in Festivals as opposed to stand-alone meetings. What’s your thinking on that? Have we too many Festivals in the calendar?

Every meeting certainly can’t be a festival. But I think every racecourse in the country has a keen sense of what it means to have a festival meeting. From my perspective, a festival is a meeting that is high-profile, high-impact and has a high opportunity to grow.

The Navan Racing Festival in November is another really good example where you had two previous standalone fixtures – the Fortria and the Troytown. Hardcore racing fans understood the importance of those two fixtures, and they were well supported, but bringing them together has transformed the weekend. It’s transformed the positioning of it.

The one criteria of success that we set out for the Navan Racing Festival was that we wanted it to reconnect the racecourse to the town and the local area, and having that Festival has done that.

There’s a buy-in now from the local pubs and restaurants and business. They can see the knock-on impact it’s having.

You were appointed CEO of HRI Racecourses in 2019. What does the job entail? What does a typical day or week look like?

HRI Racecourses is a subsidiary of HRI. Each of the four racecourses - Leopardstown, Fairyhouse, Navan and Tipperary - has a general manager who reports into me and I report directly into [HRI chief executive] Suzanne [Eade].

I suppose the biggest investment of my time goes into operating those racecourses as a group so that there is consistency in terms of pricing, packaging and commercial activity, but also best practice, be it in sustainability or track management, giving the experts that we have within the team the licence to bring their colleagues together on particular areas.

A new piece to my role is around the future evolution of the racecourses. An enormous amount of my time is spent on the masterplan for Leopardstown.

The site is 260 acres. It’s in a prime location, the only racecourse in the capital city, a flagship for the industry at home and abroad. But until now we have never articulated a 20-year vision for how we’re going to evolve that.

A couple of things forced our hand on that and I’m sure we will do the same for the other tracks in due course.

The Land Development Agency [LDA] has claimed part of the Leopardstown site is “vacant” and it wants to build 2,000 homes there. Could that still happen?

This concerns the car parking area on the Carrickmines side of the track. It’s part of 49 acres which was given to HRI’s predecessor, the Racing Board, in return for giving up the sprint track to the M50.

In 2022 the LDA’s Housing for All report identified the Carrickmines site as one suitable for social housing. We’ve been in constant negotiation with the Government and the LDA and various departments for the last three years. I’ve no reason to doubt we will get a satisfactory outcome there. We satisfied the criteria that it’s not vacant land. It’s a very active site.

We have a very, very progressive plan that will transform that site into a sporting and cultural and community hub. Residential housing is not something we will ever be bringing forward but residential could be part of it, if we got agreement.

I understand there are some major personnel changes happening at Leopardstown?

Yes, Jane Hedley has finished as Racing and Operations Manager. And Tim Husbands is retiring as Chief Executive in June, in line with our retirement policy.

Jane has been phenomenal. Prior to her arrival, there was an overhang of negativity around the racing surface at the Christmas and Dublin Racing Festivals. There was criticism in the media from major owners and trainers.

We did two things. We invested in Jane and the leadership she brought to it, and we invested in equipment and resources. Now the results speak for themselves.

Tim came in just as we were finishing a major phase of the redevelopment. The facilities had taken a major step-up but then Covid hit and we couldn’t open them.

Now Tim has overseen the growth in Leopardstown’s big meetings and he has been a great colleague. Most recently he and his team found a tenant for the old Baileys building just inside the main entrance. It now houses Super Social, a competitive entertainment venue.

What’s happening with the proposed all-weather track at Tipperary?

We’ve committed Tipperary to be the second all-weather racecourse in the country. Now we need government sanction to go and issue the tender documentation, to appoint the main contractor.

If we can get that done within the next four weeks, which is very tight, we think that we could start construction by Q2 this year and have construction completed by the end of 2026.

Obviously, there will be further development required around the grandstand and so on, which will come later.

It will be discussed further at next Monday’s board meeting.

It’s very exciting for the industry and for Tipperary. We’d like to think that this is a good example of where we’re actually bringing economic activity to an area that probably needs it.

In 2024 commercial sponsorships at all racecourses were up 8% to €6.8 million. What trends are you noticing in this area? Does racing remain too reliant on industry sponsorships?

I’ve been involved in selling sponsorship across GAA, rugby and racing, and it doesn’t get any easier. It’s a tough market because you’re in an international setting. Very often you’re competing with major international global events, be it the Euros or Olympics or Lions Tours and so on. So you’ve got to make a compelling case.

You’ve got to bring to the table what’s unique about your sport or industry. We can play on racing’s 30,000 jobs and economic impact in every village and town.

We’re also saying to sponsors, ‘What is your business need? Is it staff recruitment, staff retention, sales, branding?’ And then we’re tailoring our package specific to that.

What we’re seeing is that the partners who activate well are really making a big impact on the sport itself. Look at how Bulmers are promoting the Summer Series at Leopardstown, or how Savills and Paddy Power get behind the Leopardstown festivals. They are telling their target market to go racing.

Have you come across companies who don’t want to be associated with horse racing, perhaps because they are uncomfortable with animals being used for sport, or the association with gambling?

Yeah, we’ve come across it, but it’s not a prevalent view across the market. I won’t name them but there are certain major American firms that would have a particular view on being associated with gambling. But I think the more reassuring thing for us is that brands are starting to see that there’s a younger demographic coming racing, which we probably didn’t see pre-Covid.

Have you seen a significant rise in racecourse costs and, if so, in what areas?

Like in every business, costs are rapidly going up. We have seen enormous cost increases in food and beverages. Every food staple, every drink has just gone through the roof. Some of those costs are out of your control because the caterer has had to bear significant increases. They’re passed on to us and, in some cases, to the consumer. That’s a real challenge.

GAA and rugby clubs have run some of their most successful fundraisers at the races. But the margin that those clubs can take from ticket sales is being eaten away all the time.

Labour costs is another one. It’s very challenging to get a consistent labour force of casuals, be it for walking back the track or for serving drinks.

The costs of staging events has risen sharply. For example, securing quality entertainment acts to perform at the races is more difficult. There is a proliferation of live music events right through the summer in every field and forest. So the acts cannot commit to us until those festivals have finalised their line-ups.

There is an expectation that there will be live music after racing at Leopardstown this summer and that is proving challenging.

Let’s talk about media rights revenue. It has been well-documented that the new media rights deal is geared more towards performance. Payments are increasingly weighted towards the amount bet on each race. How is that playing out for HRI Racecourses?

Last year was the first year of this new model and we haven’t got the full numbers for 2024 yet, so we are still working through what that means. As we move through 2025, we will have year-on-year comparisons but it will be no surprise to anyone if there is a new focus on scheduling. What is your race meeting up against? How many runners did you have? All of that impacts betting turnover.

Is there likely to be a shortfall in media rights payments compared to recent years?

It’s too early to say. There’s been massive macro-economic factors well beyond the shores of Ireland that have an impact on media rights. Whether they are going to be long-term impacts or not, it is too early to say.

Have you any concerns over the impact of the Gambling Regulation Act on racecourses?

We worked really hard with the Government in the preparation for this legislation. And to be fair, the concerns that racecourses hade were, by and large, alleviated throughout that process. We can advertise, we can have bookmaker signage, we can admit under 18s, et cetera. It’s too early to tell what the other impacts will be in terms of the impact on broadcasters and media rights.

The World Pool has proved lucrative for Leopardstown (and the Curragh). Is there potential for Irish racing to get more of that action?

The World Pool is quite specific in that it is only interested in Group 1 flat races. So the opportunity for Leopardstown is limited to one day in September.

The Curragh has had a really successful couple of years growing its World Pool fixtures.

It’s an interesting one from a from a customer behaviour perspective. The World Pool has brought learnings to us in Irish racing as to what impacts that turnover model. It’s very clear to us that the more information you put forward to the consumer - the punter - the more that they’re willing to bet.

On World Pool days we’re putting investment into behind the scenes cameras at pre-parade rings and interviews with clerks of the course and trainers and so on, things that we’ve never done before. That all helps in those foreign markets to increase betting turnover.

Is flat racing a hard sell to racegoers and sponsors compared to the jumps?

It’s certainly different. Looking back at last year’s Irish Champions Festival, from a racing perspective, I’m not sure we ever had a better racing experience since we launched.

But that meeting has been going for twice as long as the Dublin Racing Festival and it hasn’t quite hit the mark in terms of attendances. It’s doing well in terms of international runners and the racing experience.

We know we’ve got a job on our hands to invest in the flat racing side of things. In our Strategic Plan there’s a whole objective there around growing flat racing. We’ve a project team in HRI who are dedicating themselves to that one objective alone and we’re putting money behind in terms of a marketing and brand campaign. We can’t do that alone.

We need the industry to get behind it as well. The message is to come racing and encourage your friends to go.