A series aimed at adding colour to selected British all-weather fixtures had its debut last week.
When once star, now struggling hurdler Constitution Hill returns to action, he’ll do so on the Southwell tapeta, not in a Group, Graded or Listed race and with no obstacles to vault.
An army of racegoers will ‘invade’ a relatively small venue, though whether all of them will be there to see the 2023 Champion Hurdler winner is doubtful.
Many will surely have instead been lured by the £10 tickets advertised on the website of events company INVADES, which has partnered with Arena Racing Company (ARC), owner of numerous British racecourses, to develop a ‘Friday Night Live’ series of fixtures across the early half of the year.
The initiative, aimed at 18 to 25-year-olds, seeks to combine racing with assorted circumjacent goings-on, including DJ sets and speed dating.
Its scheduled debut, set for Wolverhampton last month, was cancelled due to snow but, second time lucky, the concept got going at a damp Newcastle on Friday.
Lee Mottershead, main guest on today’s episode of the Nick Luck Daily podcast, said he’d watched “bits” of the broadcast on television and called the inaugural meeting “a different sort of race day.”
Mottershead commented on how many people appeared to be in attendance, notwithstanding the weather and given an average midweek fixture at Newcastle might see only a few hundred spectators.
“There was atmosphere and decent quality racing,” Mottershead explained, adding that “all the data sets so far have been very positive” and that he “applauded” organisers for their efforts to bring in a new audience.
In a sign of success, Simon Clare of gambling company Entain was quoted in the Racing Post yesterday stating betting turnover was 60 per cent higher than for an average fixture in the Racing League series, another distinct strand in British racing, being a summer teams-based competition that has been staged for around half a decade.
Half sport, half entertainment
Discussing the broadcasting challenges of an event that encompasses both sport and entertainment, Luck told listeners he was “all for whatever they want to put between the races”, but that it needed to be produced with “the same rigour” as other sections of the coverage.
Mottershead said that, as it was a Friday night meeting in winter, he was sure the same sort of budget for most of its race days hadn’t been thrown at ITV coverage, whose team had needed to adapt to a presentation position inside the grandstand.
Referring to an interview with INVADES founder Dominic Matcham during ITV’s coverage, when Matcham, speaking to Megan Nicholls, admitted working with a broadcaster like ITV was different to sharing content on TikTok, Mottershead said he thought the organisers realised that “what you do for social media won’t necessarily work on mainstream television.”
Joined by those terrestrial ITV cameras, the series now winds its way to the Southwell stop-off on 20th February, before trying again at Wolverhampton on 20th March and finishing up at Newcastle on the 27th of that month.
“In a general sense,” said Mottershead, “I think there are some within the racing fan constituency who see young people who might want to enjoy a couple of drinks at the races as alien individuals who don’t have a place in this sport.”
Mottershead, though, said he’d counter that by saying that both he and Luck were at Flemington on the second Saturday of the Melbourne Cup Carnival, where it was “full of young people in suits and smart dresses, having drinks and completely engaged with the racing.”
Therefore, he explained, instilling an interest in the primary product alongside drinking and other activities “can be done” and “just because you have a social audience at the races, that doesn’t mean they can’t and won’t be engaged with the sport that you’re presenting to them.”
He added that it was “perfectly possible” to achieve harmony between socialising and sporting engagement “not just at Flemington on a major race day, but during a Friday Night Live meeting at Newcastle.”
Listen to every episode of Nick Luck Daily via our sister product
View the latest Global Rankings for horses, owners, breeders, trainers and jockeys
