October
MarchBack to the future
I am writing as I could not believe how poor the crowd was at Caulfield last Saturday week (Futurity Stakes).
I have lived in Australia for 12 years and have attended most of the previous 12 Futurity Stakes meetings. Last Saturday would be the worst crowd I can recall.
In the 10 minutes before the main race started I looked around the main betting ring and believe there were as many bookies as punters.
Marketing the autumn races as Serious Racing does not work — it does not attract non-regular racegoers.
Clearly most punters now sit at home and place their bets from there (most of the time I am one of these punters).
How do you attract them back to the track or have they gone forever? Free entry? Better odds?
Racing looks like it will end up only having owners and industry participants on course — which is just like how racing started out in the 1600s in England.
Bentleigh East (Vic)