Free Race Day Attracts Huge Crowd

Ascot Racecourse hosted a huge crowd on Wednesday after opening the doors to over 25,000 race-goers for nothing, ahead of the Royal Ascot meeting in June.

The racing card this week was the same as the card used as part of Racing For Change’s ‘Free Racing’ experiment last year, with many fans returning this week.

In all 26,595 people attended the raceday – up more than 6,000 from the year before, and the scheme is likely to continue in 2012.

Nick Smith, Ascot’s head of PR, said: ‘This is one of those rare occasions in racing where there doesn’t appear to be a downside. We reckon that if today was a normal day, we would probably sell 3,000 tickets, so if 10% of the people coming in for nothing come back and buy another ticket, then it will be worthwhile, but it doesn’t really matter, the whole point is to try to get people to come racing’.

‘The catchment area locally of people who don’t go racing is huge. People are always thinking nationally and internationally, but there are thousands of people who go past the track every day and it wouldn’t occur to them to go. We’re trying to target them, especially with a day like this’.

Tickets were on sale for the Royal meeting in June, a traditionally inconsistent event in terms of attendance, with the last three days close to a sell-out, but the opening day and Wednesday still with plenty of spare capacity.

Smith added that despite the free tickets, the race card still boasted serious competition.

‘Today is not a novelty. The top jockeys are here, and people are seeing racing as it properly should be’.

‘On the Tuesday and Wednesday at the Royal meeting we’ll get up to 40,000, which means that there’s 40,000 spare, then after that it’s 65,000 plus for the rest of the week. We are selling tickets today, and we will also have everyone’s email address added to our marketing database, so they will all get promoted to’.