The Jockey Club Racecourses | Horse Racing Free Tips

Jockey Club Racecourses’ Prizemoney To Return To Pre-Pandemic Levels

Prizemoney at The Jockey Club's racecourses will return to pre-pandemic levels for the fourth quarter of 2021. The Jockey Club will increase its prizemoney contributions by almost £1.5-million in the final three months of the year, boosting total purses for that quarter to more than £12.5-million; the projection had been £11-million. Therefore, total prizemoney for The Jockey Club's 15 racecourses in 2021 is expected to be more than £46-million.

Prizemoney will increase across all levels at The Jockey Club's racecourses, and major races positively impacted include the G1 Darley Dewhurst S. and the G1 bet365 Fillies' Mile (advertised as £450,000, now £500,000); and the G1 Kingdom of Bahrain Sun Chariot S. (£225,000, now £250,000).

Nevin Truesdale, chief executive of The Jockey Club, said, “A big priority for us has been to get to a position in our recovery where we can advertise prizemoney at pre-pandemic levels as quickly as possible. When you add 2020 and our 2021 outlook together, the pandemic will have cost us more than £170-million in lost revenues, so originally it seemed we would need to wait until 2022 to have any chance of making this announcement, but I'm delighted and tremendously proud of the team that we're able to bring this forward.

“We're optimistic about the future, but despite today's announcement we are continuing to operate under uncertainty as a business. This includes whether any restrictions on our operations will be reintroduced or deter racegoers at any point in the remainder of 2021 or into 2022. As such we'll need to keep planning on a relatively short-term basis for the foreseeable future and contribute the maximum we can back into the sport, including all our areas of investment beyond prize money.

“It's no secret that we view prize money as vital to the livelihoods of those working in the sport; it provides an important return for racehorse owners and encourages the competitive racing that we all want to enjoy. We're working hard to drive the sort of underlying growth and commercial success that allows The Jockey Club to continue to increase its contributions to British Racing, which has always been, and will continue to be, our aim.”

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Pullin Named Cheltenham Clerk

Jon Pullin, who has been clerk of the course at several British racecourses including Doncaster, Uttoxeter, Southwell and Wolverhampton, will take up that position at Cheltenham. Pullin held the positions of group racing manager at Arena Leisure, managing director of Royal Windsor Racecourse and assistant racing director at Arena Racing Company before being promoted into his current role as ARC's racing director in 2017.

Current Cheltenham clerk of the course Simon Claisse will remain in his position through the new season opening on Oct. 22 and 23, with Pullin to take over on a date yet to be determined ahead of the 2022 Cheltenham Festival.

Pullin said, “The Cheltenham Festival is the absolute pinnacle of our sport, so I'm thrilled to be given this rare and exciting opportunity. There is no doubt that the role is one of the most pressurised and challenging in British horseracing, but I also know that it can be one of the most rewarding. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with Arena Racing Company and can't thank my colleagues there enough for all their support over the years. However, I'm excited to be starting a new chapter and looking forward to meeting and working with The Jockey Club team.”

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£3 Million Plus Prize Money Boost at The Jockey Club Racecourses

A prize money boost of over £3 million at The Jockey Club racecourses for the remainder of 2021 was announced on Tuesday.

This purse increase brings prize money to within 9% of pre-pandemic levels. Total prize money will exceed £42 million this year at all levels of the sport for the 15 racecourses operated by The Jockey Club. This amount is prior to additional funding from the industry's Appearance Money Scheme (AMS). These prize money increases are effective immediately, with the Cazoo Derby Festival gaining £65,000 and a £135,000 boost to Coral-Eclipse Day.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Jockey Club distributed only £30.5 million in prize money and racing was halted from mid-March until June. As The Jockey Club generates nearly 50% of its revenues from spectators and another 10% by staging conferences and similar types of events and neither of these were possible during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Jockey Club sustained an overall loss of £90 million. This trend continues into 2021. Pre-covid, The Jockey Club managed to increase its contribution to prize money by over 103% in the last decade to £26.4 million.

“One of our imperatives since the start of the pandemic has been to keep prize money values under constant review,” said The Jockey Club Chief Executive Nevin Truesdale. “The financial impact of coronavirus has been very significant indeed and it will take some time yet to recover. However, with some positive indicators around funding and with spectators starting to return, albeit in heavily restricted numbers at this point, we wanted to move quickly to announce this prize money increase.

“The biggest issue aside from losing so much of our revenue has been the constant uncertainty. If you could guarantee after the second lockdown that things would return permanently to normal, we would have been able to plan investments accordingly, but here we are well over a year into the pandemic and we are only just starting to welcome some racegoers back. Therefore, we continue to have to play the situation as it comes and ensure we would remain solvent if another lockdown occurred.

“I'd like to thank participants for the huge amount of patience they've shown and reassure them that The Jockey Club always treats prize money as an absolute priority, as I hope our track record and this announcement leaves no doubt about. We aim to get our prize money contributions fully back to pre-pandemic levels as soon as we realistically can.”

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