Taylen Pearce, Yvette Pomroy and Shenae Francis at last year’s Melbourne Cup Day event in Mildura. Picture: Carmel Zaccone
As Mildura Racing Club’s Melbourne Cup Day event looms, the club’s management faces a challenge for the new era – how to keep the crowds coming back. NATALIE CAVALLARO speaks to club insiders about the evolution of country racing, the hurdles and what’s exciting about the future.
The year was 1993, the event was the Melbourne Cup race day in Mildura and you could barely throw an elbow trackside because of the swelling crowd.
“Before 1993 there was only a handful of people coming along to the races but on Melbourne Cup that year you could hardly walk on the course,” former Mildura Racing Club president and life member John Fumberger reflects.
“It was packed right out.”
The reasons for the boost in crowd size, John says, was a different approach to how the committee marketed the day, with a focus on attracting the general public rather than just diehard punters.
“We really made an effort to open up the event to the general public, getting families to come along and holding Fashions on the Field,” he says.
It was just one important step forward for MRC with the committee establishing 13 TAB races in 1995.
“Prior to that we were a real amateur country club,” John says, recalling the early 90s.
“We got together a really good bunch of committee guys, all the same age and we really wanted to push the thing forward and we did, it revolutionised it.
“From nothing we established 13 TAB race meetings a year and numbers just went through the roof.”
“It’s also free entry for our general race meetings, Mildura Cup and Melbourne Cup are the only two days people pay to get in.”
Getting people to the track can be a challenge but Jarrat says once there, people generally have a great day out.
“Once people come here and realise it’s a nice spot and there’s plenty of room for kids to run around and there’s food vans and drinks, people come back again,” he says.
Think outside the straight
While John agrees trackside entertainment is one of the key factors that draws the crowds, he says there are opportunities to get “innovative” with how the races are held although he admits it would require some work to implement.
“If the straight of the track could be moved slightly so there is a straight similar to that at Flemington, that would be a real crowd pleaser,” he says.
“It’s a possibility… there’s a race called a 1600m race which is a mile and at the moment at Mildura we can only do 1400m.
“By extending it 200m it becomes that classic type of distance which is a drawcard.”
Jarrat says the challenge of horse racing’s attractiveness beyond the events was making the format exciting enough for racegoers.
“You look at cricket and they put the T20 together which is a model that’s over in a couple of hours,” he says.
“With racing one of the issues is to find the model that’s the most attractive… the T20 version of horse racing.”
However, he says appealing to younger crowds would cement popularity of the races into the future.
“If we can attract them now, they’re potentially going to be our lifelong attendees.”
Now and then
While John and the committee faced a challenge 25 years ago to overhaul the perception of country racing, current Mildura Racing Club manager Jarrat Farley faces a similar predicament in 2018.
While the crowds are still there, Jarrat says they went through a lull, with a number of factors contributing to the pull away from the race track.
“Mildura isn’t a huge thoroughbred racing area so trying to attract people to the races can be tricky,” he says.
“For our major race days like Mildura Cup Carnival and Melbourne Cup it’s more about the event and the party not the actual race.
“So one of our big challenges is that while the races are on we need to put on an event that people want to come back to year in, year out.”
When it comes to crunching the numbers, Jarrat says while 2016 was “pretty ordinary”, things were picking up again.
“Melbourne Cup Day 2017 we increased our attendance by 500 people so 1500 to 2000, ” he says.
“That was a pretty common thing around country racing, it seemed in 2016 everyone stopped going to the races but in 2017 the numbers seemed to pick up again and people got back on board.
“Looking at bookings for this year I think we’ll increase again on last year’s event.”
Bringing back the crowds
When it comes to entertainment, all the stops have been pulled out to make this year’s Melbourne Cup Day races at Mildura a well rounded day out for the whole family.
The kids will be well catered for with jumping castles, rock climbing, an enviro wildlife show and Arnie’s Laserforce on hand, while solo musicians will be performing trackside.
“In our main marquee we will have former AFL footballer Mick McGuane,” Jarrat says.
“He’s a long time out of the game but he still draws a crowd and AFL is always popular in Mildura.”
Outside of the race days, Jaratt says one of the ways the club hopes to lure the people back is by opening up the chance to experience the track and venue all year round.
“We try to have people out here as often as we can so we hold events like birthdays,” he says.
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