Can horseracing be resurrected?

What do people (from outside the racing community) think when they attend a horseracing event for the first time?

They find the sport complicated, they feel it takes too long, and they think it is boring.

But what do I know about horseracing in SA? Who am I to have an opinion and why should anyone care about what I think?

With my team at Campbell + Campbell I have been designing, building, analysing, and most importantly, investing in, horseracing events for almost 10 years. We are not horse, breeding, or betting experts. We are event management specialists and, more specifically, we are horseracing event experts.

We have bought thousands of first timers to racing events over the last 10 years. This is our story.

10 years I happened to come across a channel on TV showing the SANSUI Summer Cup. It was the premier racing event in Gauteng, and it was empty. I had never been to a horseracing event before. Ever. But seeing the empty event got me thinking. We had a good track record running events for our corporate clients and I was positive we could do something. It seemed like an opportunity, so we made an appointment with the only person we knew in racing, Chris van Niekerk, who kindly agreed to see us. He met with us and set up an introduction with Clyde Basel. After another short meeting Clyde introduced us to Megapro who headed up the SANSUI Summer Cup. Megapro also agreed to a short meeting and then let us have a small space at the next Summer Cup. I am pretty sure all these people we met thought we were overconfident and totally naive. They were correct. We hosted a tiny hospitality area at the next Summer Cup and lost some money, but we were even more convinced that there was ‘something’ we could do to grow a racing audience and make money.

At this point we believed our slick PowerPoint slides (and one tiny hospitality area) had totally shown the powers that be how amazing we were and could not understand why nobody contacted us to implement the genius ideas we had. What we did not know at the time was that countless individuals and agencies were approaching racing operators with their solutions on how to ‘save’ racing. We were simply one of many big talking entities thinking they had all the answers. Eventually, we decided to stop waiting for something to happen and we built our own racing event on a race day that was available. We called it the Bourbon Beer and Burger Festival and went all in. The event was superb, and the turnout was good but most of the guests were friends and contacts who came with complimentary tickets we provided them. Again, we lost a heap of cash but this time our efforts paid off. Megapro liked what we did and asked us to host our Summer Garden hospitality area for the second time and they managed to help us by buying tickets and by promoting our area. For the first time, we managed to make a small profit at a race meeting.

Over the next few years, we were fortunate to work with the Phumelela events team on a variety of racing events at Turffontein and were able to learn about the intricacies of racing, betting etc. We continued building the Summer Garden at the Summer Cup and had a small but consistent growth in the numbers year on year. We decided to focus a core part of our business on racing events and were determined to build a racing event that we owned and that we could design our way and grow into a colossal success. After having worked on a barrier draw for the Summer Cup one evening, I went down to the parade ring and watched the horses under the bright spotlights as they came out before heading to the start. It was a night racing event and seemed phenomenal to me. The energy was electric, and the colours were bright, and you couldn’t see the dump! I looked around and there were a handful of spectators in a stadium that could handle many thousands. It seemed clear to me that this was a massive opportunity – we had to work out a night-time racing event. And so, Equinity was born. Night-time horseracing with a themed performance built around the racing and a spectacular closing party. We also came up with a concept called Reality Racing and used extra-large screens, microphones, and drones to bring the racing alive for this Equinity audience who were almost all people who had never been to a racing event before.

We were convinced that this time we were going to score big. The first Equinity was a resounding success with everyone who attended saying it was brilliant. But, as before, we had made a big loss by running the event without sponsors. Nevertheless, we decided to press on to year 2. We doubled the numbers but made an even bigger loss, but we had such good feedback that we believed that at some point we would get sponsors and sell shedloads of tickets. In year 3 we built our biggest ever outdoor hospitality area and put on the most phenomenal performance and event. And lost bucketloads more cash! At this point we made the decision to only build the next Equinity if we sold tickets in advance and had sponsors. We put the last of our cash into paying for advertising, sponsor agencies, salespeople, social media marketers and anyone else who said they could help us sell tickets. None of it worked. We started to ask some hard questions which we really should have asked years before. Why did people love Equinity but not feel compelled to buy more tickets? Why were we not seeing the financial rewards we expected? As is so often the case the answer was brutal and simple. When some invited guests told us that they had given some of our comp tickets away (rather than attend the event) we asked them why and they told us they would love to attend Equinity if it was at a better venue. And by that they did not mean the stadium, they meant the area. Our high net worth guests wanted to be in Sandton or Inanda or any place that was classy and aspirational. They did not want to see people fighting in the streets on their way to the venue. They felt threatened and unsafe. And no matter how amazing Equinity was they just did not want to go to Turffontein.

Over this same period, we had become more involved in building the Summer Cup. Megapro had decided that building events was not their key priority and while they continued to assist and work on the sponsorship and marketing for racing events, they were happy to let us take over the event logistics.

How we built the Summer Cup is an entirely different story which is outlined elsewhere but the question for the purposes of this article is, why could we get thousands of people to the Summer Cup when the venue was the same as for Equinity. There are 2 elements involved, first the Summer Cup is a day time event and when Phumelela made the decision to transform the event from a no under 18s to a family event we were able to design the event in a way that made families and schools feel comfortable attending. Secondly, the price point for the Summer Cup is not on the high end. Our Social Pioneer and hospitality partners did everything they could to sell high value packages and they really struggled. The Summer Cup did not appeal to corporates and those who could afford premium packages - the same hurdle that affected Equinity.

While we achieved great success with the Summer Cup (we grew the audience by over 400% over the last 4 years) we were never able to make Equinity the fast-growing, mega event we dreamed it could be. Most of the events we worked on over the last 10 years saw an increase in attendance numbers and generally positive feedback. However, our mission to bring thousands of people to sold-out racing events was not completed. While we observed and witnessed countless people with an idea, and numerous key-board warriors, berate the operators about how things needed to be fixed we were on the ground putting our money (and time and minds) into working out how to attract new fans to racing events. But honestly, our successes were limited.

To make matters worse, not only did we have some serious skin in the game, we also made the decision several years earlier to focus exclusively on horseracing events. We gradually stopped our other corporate event work. We chose to become experts in one field. In hindsight, and with the Covid-19 lockdown wreaking havoc on the events industry, this will prove to be either the making or breaking of our agency. Time will tell. Either way, we have earned our stripes and paid our dues. Most importantly, we have learnt from every horseracing event we have worked on, and we believe all is not lost.

This is what we know; those who love racing do so with a passion unmatched. They live and breathe the sport and often have little or no financial reward for their efforts. What we also know is something those in the racing community do not want to accept and refuse to acknowledge. That is, people from outside of the sport who attend racing events might like the fashion, the parties, and the entertainment at these events but they find the racing takes too long, is difficult to understand, and is boring.

This might seem counterintuitive. Surely the racing itself is not the problem. What about the kak venues? In terrible areas? What about the lack of technology innovation? What about the numerous issues that have resulted in the sport going into business rescue? What about getting the best human resources involved in the business of racing? What about government? Of course, all of these are issues that must be addressed but when it comes to attracting new fans to racing I would argue that the sport itself needs to be reinvented, as many other sports and sport businesses have been reinvented. Smart marketing and business brains have worked out that to attract a modern audience a sport product needs to be fast paced, easy to understand, and very entertaining. Adding some glitz and glamour and a few educational campaigns onto existing race meetings is not going to cut it. We have tried that. With bells and whistles. What is needed is a fundamental format change that makes the sport accessible and fun. Only then will we attract the vital elements key to any sport business success in the modern era namely, broadcast partners, sponsors, and investors.

After almost 10 years of working on racing projects we believe that the sport needs a radical reinvention. This is why we’ve built Triple 8 Racing. To implement what we have learnt from managing racing events. To create a racing product that makes people fall in love with the sport. To tap into the huge potential of the sport. To drag horseracing into the modern era. And maybe, just maybe, prove to ourselves that the millions we have spent, and the last 10 years of hard work have not been in vain. Racing purists will not agree. Die hard racing fans and punters will fight against the implementation of the radical changes that T8 Racing advocates. Either way, we are determined to use what we have learnt to create a (big!) new pool of passionate racing supporters.