AO: Tennis Hits Different in the Battle for Hearts and Minds
Perhaps it isn’t a fair fight, but racing administrators in Victoria must be watching the crowds flock to the Australian Open with some degree of jealousy. It wasn’t too long ago that racing in Melbourne, particularly during Spring Carnival and Cup Week was considered a significant, if not essential, injection of tourist and hospitality dollars in the calendar. Yes, the AO is a global major on the tennis circuit, so it’s almost impossible to line up the impact and importance of one tourism spectacle versus the other, but it’s safe to say that racing hasn’t got the same attraction or allure that it once had.
Walking around the grounds of Rod Laver Arena, you see well designed ‘activation points’ (to use that awful marketing term), familiar and established local restaurants providing takeaway favourites, big branded drink marquees that provide shade and cool in the heat, and heaps of staff and volunteers to get you where you need to be. This is all before you’ve seen a ball served, if indeed you’re there for that reason, with some constant background music of DJs and some strong headlining musical acts to come as the action reaches the climax. Sound familiar?
Well, yes and no. The concept of a day at the races seems to still have the same pattern to what it was 20 or 30 years ago, and there’s some elements of the above, but without the desperately needed update to 2025. Probably the most crucial question racing administrators (concerned with getting patrons through the gates) should be asking themselves is what does a day at the races look like for someone not or just casually interested in the racing?
At present, outside of Cup Week and Everest Day, is very little. Even the flow of the racing broadcast on-course seems to be ‘Sky Racing’ lite, with impenetrable lingo, brief carryon as a race concludes and tote numbers being announced like someone reading a phone book. And look, there may be very little desire to appeal to anyone not considered a first-degree stakeholder (owner, punter or trainer), but there also feels like there’s very little thought put in to it either. A day at the races feels like: bring X amount of dollars, pay your ticket fee, buy your drinks and some below-par food, bet the rest and hope you leave with something.
Is there any memories being made? Is there anything new to be seen or heard? If you want to be more social can you do that? Is there part of the course where you can properly watch some sport (with the sound on), or is there somewhere to have a picnic, or engage in a sponsor’s retail therapy, or enjoy a pop-up restaurant’s latest, or sit in a beer garden with music between races plus shade and misting water to stay cool?
A not uncommon sight at Flemington during the off-season: plenty of empty space and sparsely filled floors of the VRC’s members enclosure.
We’re building grandstands for members, not patrons, and yet even the VRC’s (‘cruise liner’) flag-ship grandstand appeared to be closed on Saturday the 18th of January, with the top floor somewhat open on a hot day but otherwise the remaining floors inside dark and empty. This all costs money, and the racing Gods-forbid the following suggestion, but why not use these down-period months to throw the gates open to the members’ grandstand, and allow the general public to see what they’re missing out on and make the most of an otherwise white elephant?
Invite some local DJs to use the top floor all-day, let some well known bars, vendors and restaurants take up residence on every floor, and broadcast the tennis and cricket inside, only stopping briefly to broadcast the races as they come to hand. And make it free to anyone to enter, or at least offset the cost of entry with vouchers to use. You can still have a mandated members’ only area or bar for the best view, and can keep the racing-centric audio for the mounting yard, bookies ring and stables. But racing needs to try to ‘hit different’ over the next few years, and engage the public in a new way to keep the rivals at bay.
