How many of the people who attended the Durban July last year will be watching the race this year?

Sadly, not many. They were not there for the racing! And this is not an especially enlightened observation, the coverage in the mainstream press on the Sunday after the event is all about the celebs and the fashion. It is a situation that has been tolerated because the full stadium and the massive publicity is obviously very welcome for a sport struggling to gain mainstream appeal.

Currently, the public find racing complicated, boring and, when they find themselves at an event like the Durban July, they feel it takes too long. At the July, the friction between the party-going guests and the racing crowd is palpable. Both groups get excited about the event each year but their expectations about the day differ greatly. The fashionistas and party goers do not understand why the music needs to be controlled and why they must wait so long to get the party going. Racing fans cannot understand why these once-a-year racegoers are not interested in the horses and the racing.

It does not have to be this way! It is possible to build a new audience who love racing, but this requires change and innovation. Many sport businesses have faced this dilemma before and have had to reinvent themselves to survive and thrive. To do this they first had to ask some hard questions; how do you interest a new audience? How do you excite them? Most NB, how do you get them to care? Grabbing attention is one thing, getting people invested and involved is another. Answer, there must be something in it for them – does it entertain? Does it make them money? Does is help them get attention and exposure for themselves? Does it address something that they care about? Does it align with what they believe?

The core of Triple 8 Racing is fast format, easy to understand racing but its success is dependent on resolving these key issues above through the formation of T8 racing teams. T8 is a team-based racing competition. Our goal has been to understand how to get T8 racing teams to appeal to people and to determine how to make these teams address core elements around what fans want?

We know that from an economic perspective (and Covid-19 has only made this more acute) many young entrepreneurs want work. They want to build their brands. They want exposure. They want the chance to showcase what they can do. They want opportunity. They want to grow their businesses. If T8 racing teams can provide solutions for these, then we will have fans and so much more. We will have individuals and companies fighting for racing. Fighting to scale the sport. Fighting to bring people to race events. Talking about racing directly and honestly to the people they are connected to (in the real world and on social media).

This is how we built a new audience for the Gauteng Summer Cup over the last 4 years – through partnership and empowerment. We needed access to a new, emerging, black middle class to grow the event. We had many young black entrepreneurs saying they could bring this market to the event. All they needed was some help to get started. We provided the basic hospitality infrastructure and they then got to work sourcing sponsors and selling tickets to their areas. For us to access their markets through traditional advertising campaigns would have been very expensive. Having limited funds forced us to revaluate how we spent money and to only invest in things that had a guaranteed result (for example, we had seen that a billboard advert on a main road in the northern suburbs cost R220k for a month. That advert resulted in 20 enquiries and zero hospitality sales. Partnerships with a group of, what we termed, social pioneers cost far less and included agreements to bring a specified number of attendees).

Racing is in a fight to attract a new market and it needs something that the public can enjoy and understand. This something needs to empower and include as many people as possible. This is our goal for T8 Racing, a racing business that provides a racing centred product for people to get their teeth into. A racing business that is built by new racing fans who are directly invested and who will fight for it to succeed.

When this happens then the 40 thousand people who attend the July will tune in to watch the race with their friends and family because they will understand and love the sport, even if they cannot access the track due to a lockdown like the one we have this year.

Our dream is to have a season of racing events watched by millions in the same way that soccer and cricket events are. Fans enjoying the season and supporting their favourite jockeys and horses. People wearing their supporters kit and watching races with friends and families.

Triple 8 Racing is a team-format, fast paced racing series that is built to entertain and makes racing accessible and easy to understand for a new generation of racing fans.