Some 50,000 Irish punters are expected to have travelled to Cheltenham this week but the Irish flavour in the grandstands is not mirrored by the trackside bookies.
In 2010, there were anywhere between 15 to 20 Irish bookmakers giving odds at the festival. In the opening days of this year’s festival, while Northern Irish bookies had a significant presence just two from south of the Border could be readily spotted trackside.
“There would have been more [Irish] 15, 20 years ago,” explains Eddie Mulholland of the Galway-based John Mulholland bookmaker. “Maybe some of them have passed away.”
Mulholland himself is an example of the older age demographic being a factor. His father, John, owned the family’s bookmaking business but died last November. “I’m continuing on the tradition of him coming over,” he says. “But the expenses have gone higher than they were 10 or 15 years ago.”
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Across the track, bookies estimate that their costs are four times higher than what they were in the early noughties, but turnover has stayed the same. Despite increases in travel prices, the main driver of the hike is administration costs. Not so much due to Brexit, but in another difference between the UK and Ireland: gambling regulation.
“When my father started coming over here [to the UK] 20 years ago, a licence was a pretty reasonable thing to get,” explains Mulholland. “It’s next to impossible now to get it, there’s so much red tape, so much paperwork that has to be done.
“It easier at home. There’s no equivalent of the gambling commission yet in Ireland, it is coming in I heard and maybe there will be a lot more red tape then. There are checks, but it’s not quite as severe as over here. I have heard of guys trying to get a licence [in the UK] but the hoops to jump through put them off.”
The requirement of a solicitor’s letter to support an application for a UK gambling license is one barrier.
Seamus Mulvaney from Dublin, positioned further down the grand stand closer to the course entrance, tells a similar story. “There was a big crowd before but the law changed,” he says. “There was at least 10, 15 of us. It wasn’t worth their while, that’s the best way of looking at it. It’s not that easy coming over, bringing all the equipment.”
How have the few that remain made it worth their while financially, when so many others couldn’t make it work?
“I’m a sticker, I stick it out longer,” says Mulvaney. “I enjoy it too, I must have enjoyed it. I used to enjoy coming to Cheltenham before I got the licence, I’m coming here a long, long time.”
For both Mulholland and Mulvaney, the location of their pitches is a prime reason business has stayed strong. Both are in the upper pitches closest to the punters in the stand. “We’ve a good pitch here, we get plenty of custom,” explains Mulholland. “A lot of the Irish guys that would have been here years ago, they would have been down in the lower ring.
“A lot of people just come to the main pitches at the front, so if you’ve a good strong pitch at the front, you’ve a good chance. If you’re down the back... that’s why some of the Irish guys probably stopped. It’s a lot more money. You’d only be paying a couple of grand back there, but you’d be paying six figures for a pitch up here so you would.”
The benefit to the drop-off for the remaining bookies is familiarity. Irish punters recognise their own and are often keen to take their business to them, and now there is less competition. Mulholland, whose brother Alan is a former manager of the Galway GAA senior football team, takes one bet off a punter who recognises his name and shares a joke about the county’s lack of success during his period in charge.
Across the industry, many anticipate the regulation gap between Ireland and the UK narrowing. A new bill was introduced last December with a view to improving protection for punters.
Yet how that effects the few bookies who still make it to Cheltenham remains unclear. As ever, the challenge is balancing the love of travel with balancing the books. Will the week be financially viable this time around?
“I’ll tell you on Friday evening,” said Mulvaney.
