Melbourne is well renowned for its fabulous sporting crowds: the AFL has some of the world’s largest footballing crowd averages (43,000 for Melbourne teams) and the Melbourne Victory has the largest crowds in the A-League.
Another great example is horse racing crowds for events such as the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and the enormous VRC Melbourne Cup carnival.
Even though a lot of the crowd at these race days are there for activities other than horse racing, they come in their tens of thousands for the spectacle. These crowds have obviously assisted the continued rise of prize money in major Melbourne races whilst Sydney’s prize money in major races has stagnated and even regressed in the case of the AJC.
For my first visit to Derby day in 1996 a record crowd of 64,099 was announced. 10 years later in 2006 the attendance was 129,089, slightly more than double. Total attendance for the past four years has decreased annually for the last four years but still at massive levels and obviously partially due to the GFC.
Sydney is lucky to draw 30,000 to its two big days of racing: Slipper Day at Rosehill and Derby Day at Randwick.
For the four days last year the total attendance was 368,929, down every year from 418,069 in ’06. Another reason that crowds may be dropping is due to the price of tickets.
General admittance tickets for Derby day are $72 and $70 for Cup day. With some time away from work i thought that this year would be a good opportunity to attend a Melbourne cup live. A return airfare from Sydney was $160, amazingly less than a ticket in the uncovered lawn stand which is $195.
High ticket prices in marquees have not seemed to have deterred people, the $790 tickets to the International lounge and $895 tickets to the Archer Marquee are sold out for Cup day. If you charged these prices in Sydney you would only have jockeys, trainers and the horses turning up!
As a racing fan, it is shaping up as a great couple of weeks with, in my opinion, a very strong crop of budding superstars ranging from Hay List and Black Caviar in the sprints to So You Think and More Joyous in the middle distance races.
The presence of 10-12 international raider horses in the Cup creates a lot of interest but personally I find it a tougher race to bet on as i find it hard to find a form line on horses that have not raced in Australia before.
Saying that, a few overseas horses are starting to have a lead up run in another Australian race, mostly the Caulfield and Geelong Cups.
As a punter, the most frustrating thing about the overseas horses is that most highly regarded overseas horses (Septimus, Double Trigger, Mamool, etc) whilst unheralded ones (e.g. Delta Blues, Media Puzzle and Central Park) have ran top races and even saluted the judge.
My tip for this year is to put money on all the overseas long shots.
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