Jack Anderson: Melbourne Cup no longer the race that stops a nation
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Melbourne is the sporting capital of Australia. The city’s calendar and rhythms revolve around sport: March to September is footy season (the city has nine AFL clubs); thereafter its cricket; January is tennis and the Australian Open, there’s an F1 Grand Prix in March and off we all go again.
Within all this there are three professional soccer clubs, hockey, basketball and netball franchises all of which compete nationally and most of whom cater for both full time male and female teams.
And, oh yes, the rugby league team (the Storm) is in the NRL Grand Final on Sunday.
It’s a lot for a city of 5.5m and it makes for a hugely competitive sporting market. Not all sports can make it work.
Even the all-conquering AFL, which historically had 11 clubs in the city, had to cut its losses decades ago and move the South Melbourne club to Sydney (the Swans) in the early 1980s; while in the 1990s, Fitzroy was transplanted to Brisbane (now the Lions).
The Swans and Lions met in this year’s AFL Grand Final in Melbourne, an unusual one without a Melbourne team; a city’s tradition usurped by the AFL but a long-term commercial investment yielding national dividends.
More recently, the demise this year of rugby union’s Melbourne Rebels again showed how competitive the city’s sporting market is.
Nationally, Joe Schmidt may be making the Wallabies more competitive and any time the All Blacks are in town the crowds are good, but you can’t read too much into that. Melbournians love a live gig, any gig but at grassroots level in the city, union has been ghosted.
In amongst all this, horse racing has its window from September to November (the Spring Carnival) culminating in the Melbourne Cup on the first Tuesday in November.
Commercially, the sport is in a good place. Prize money is robust with healthy competition among the states particularly between NSW and Victoria. Victoria may have the tradition with races such as the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup; but NSW and Sydney have the money and innovation – creating new big money races including the A$20m Everest (at €12.5m, it’s the world richest race on turf) and the A$10m Golden Eagle held on the Saturday before the Cup. As for the Melbourne Cup itself, its total prize pool is a healthy A$8m, which makes it the richest handicap event in the world.
Quality-wise Australia probably has too many group 1s and there is work to be done with the pattern but that’s a good problem to have and unlike Ireland there is a competitive spread of trainers.
Similar to Ireland, there are however gathering storms for the sport.
The first is that in Australia, there are parliamentary moves afoot to restrict gambling advertising and limit certain wagering promotions (such as bonus bets). The long, historical commercial reality for the racing industry is that it is an adjunct of the gambling industry. In Victoria, 90% of the sport’s revenue comes from betting.
Last month the CEO of Racing Victoria (RV) stated that racing generates A$4.7bn in economic activity and employs 35,000 full-time equivalent people in the state. If the government reforms are passed, he argued, up to A$1.2bn in economic activity could be lost, as well as thousands of jobs. As in Ireland, the racing industry is looking for an exemption or carve out from any restrictions.
The RV CEO argues (in language similar to racing advocates at home) that the industry appreciates community concerns about the saturation of gambling advertising and the exposure of children to such ads and supports better means of managing risks associated with problem gambling.
Nevertheless, the RV CEO contends that “[r]acing is a different product, targeted at informed adults, who have a clear expectation of the intersection between racing and wagering [and that betting] is a legitimate form of skill-based entertainment for millions of people, typically enjoyed in a controllable manner.”
The “racing is different” argument is a difficult one to make especially as community expectations of and, bluntly, community affinity with the sport and the gambling industry evolve.
Although the regulation of horse racing in Australia, as in Ireland, is on a statutory basis, and the sport retains significant political clout and equally significant public financing; racing really operates on a social license.
This means that it must always be vigilant to changing societal expectations and standards, especially when it comes to animal welfare.
Integrity or reputational scandals can hit hard. In Victoria recently, and in a long running saga, the sport’s once leading trainer, Darren Weir, was disqualified for two years are a result of being caught on video using a jigger (electrical shocks) on horses in their preparation for the 2018 Melbourne Cup.
As in Ireland, with the images used to ban trainer Shark Hanlon for 10 months (relating to the transport of a dead horse), the actual content may be brief in nature but the reputational damage long term.
One of the reasons that Racing Victoria has very tight veterinarian regulations in place for international horses at the Spring Carnival is that the image of a horse in distress after the Melbourne Cup (when a large part of the TV audience will be watching their only race for the year) is exponentially damaging for the sport.
The public reaction to the death of the Aidan O’Brien trained Cliffs of Moher in 2018 – which had to be euthanised after breaking its shoulder in the Cup – was an arresting moment for the sport in Victoria.
Those familiar with racing, and cognisant of the great care that O’Brien horses get, understand that accidents can befall horses, but the sentiment is not so easily relatable to the wider public.
This public sentiment came to the fore again recently here in Melbourne when a spate of falls and fatalities at country jumps meetings led the RV Chairman to admit that the safety record across the 2024 jumps racing season was “unacceptable”. Victoria is the only state in Australia where jumps racing takes place. It is now unlikely to survive this decade.
The third area that racing in Australia is concerned about, as is Ireland, is not so much attendance figures but demographics. Attracting a newer younger audience to the sport, and innovative ways of getting them to regularly attend, become owners of, and, yes, bet on horses is an imperative.
All the top sporting competitions (and in Melbourne the AFL is the exemplar) have consistently good spectator facilities, ensure that their best athletes compete against each other regularly and do so in clear, easily understood formats.
Racing struggles a bit with some of this and no amount of world pool gambling innovations from Hong Kong or elsewhere will paper over the fact that racing’s profile is aging, at least in its traditional heartlands.
It was always more marketing guff than sporting reality but the stark truth for racing in Australia is that the Melbourne Cup is no longer the race that stops a nation.