Champagne-sipping punters are back but not spending

Celebrating his long-shot victory at Galway Races, local lawyer Joseph O’Hara headed to the champagne tent to spend some of his €1,000 winnings.

During the Celtic Tiger boom, it buzzed with helicopters, alerting punters to the arrival of the nation’s richest builders and bankers. Now the punters are returning, albeit cautiously.

The crowd of about 140,000 last week was 9 per cent larger than in 2013, thronging the course and its Laurent Perrier champagne and Guinness tent, serving stout, oysters and smoked salmon.

“The general feeling is that the worst is over,” said O’Hara, 53, after backing a horse called Legatissimo that gave him odds of 20 to one. “We’ve endured six years of austerity and it’s been pretty miserable.”

While about 217,000 people showed up at the Galway festival at Ballybrit at the height of the Irish boom in 2006, renewed confidence is rippling through.

"Racing has always been a great barometer for the economy," course manager John Moloney said in an interview close to the track on the second day of the festival. "There was a terrific crowd here last night. The betting was good. There must be more money around."

The week at Galway generated bets of €13.5 million for bookmakers and gambling pools known as totes, according to figures from the race organiser.

UK bookmaker Ladbrokes took in €1.5 million, said Justin Carthy, head of racecourse management at the company. That's about the same as last year and down from the peak, though is double what was staked just after the crash.

“When things are going well in Ireland, you can see it on the racecourse,” said Carthy. “Last year the turnover came back slightly. It’s still a long, long way behind where we were at the crazy times.”

Those times are a memory at the 195-room Clayton, the hotel closest to the race course. It has 16 executive suites.

In 2011, manager Rory Fitzpatrick canceled the champagne and oyster bars after "a total disaster" in 2010, the year of the €67.5 billion-euro bailout.

Now things are picking up, he said. “The real difference in the last couple of years is not that you’re seeing a huge increase in the amount of people traveling to Galway for the races, but they’re willing to pay for the extras,” he said. “In 2011, there was never any hope of people paying extra paying for the suites. Now they are again.”

Pat Golden, a 56-year part-time bookmaker from Dublin who has attended the Galway festival since he was 12, said he hadn't seen much of an increase in business this year.

While the attendance was strong, race-goers weren’t gambling enough, he said. By Tuesday evening, he had only received one €100 bet. During the good years, customers would wager €300 or €400, he said.

“People are still afraid to spend whatever they have,” said Golden, 56, as he stood on a wooden box taking bets on the first race. “It’s mostly all small money that’s around now.’

Even the winners aren’t getting carried away. Punter O’Hara, who placed his bets through a tote, urged caution as he left the champagne tent.

‘‘The recovery as I see it is fragile,” he said. “We can’t lose the run of ourselves the way we did in the past. Just mind the recovery.”

Bloomberg