Despite there being lies, damned lies and statistics it’s hard to dispute factual evidence of a decline in the Galway festival’s popular appeal. It means any rally in attendance figures could be the most important data to emerge from next week’s action in Ballybrit.
Once famously described by John B Keane as a state of mind, there has been a stark slide in numbers eager to experience that emotional state since the festival’s peak at the height of Celtic Tiger extravagance.
That pinnacle of lurid chopper-hopping indulgence, complete with the notorious Fianna Fáil fundraising tent, came in 2006 when an official attendance of almost 217,000 was reported across the festival’s seven days.
If that figure felt as freakishly odd as the mini air-traffic tower employed to cope with helicopter traffic more akin to the Ho Chi Minh City evacuation than a west of Ireland race-meeting, the subsequent crash was a salutary return to earth.
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Economic recovery since then however doesn’t seem to have been matched by any bounce effect at Galway.
An official return of 148,564 racegoers in 2015 was followed by a slight drop the following year and a much more significant fall in 2017 to 137,682. In 2018 it was 132,691 while 2019′s figure was just shy of 130,000.
A couple of years of behind closed doors action thankfully ended last year but there was no post-pandemic rebound. Instead, there was a nine per cent slip from 2019 with a figure of 116,720 returned.
Galway wasn’t the only racecourse to experience such a slip last year. Nor was it alone in not being immune to broad macroeconomic concerns. It might even have been more vulnerable to micro worries such as shortages of affordable hotel accommodation in the city.
But by any measure an more than 20 per cent drop in seven years constitutes a trend rather than a blip.
Attendance figures are a relatively blunt measurement. But crowds have always been the point of perhaps Irish racing’s most distinctive race meeting. If most everywhere else, the best quality action attracts the greatest attention, then Galway’s mix of social and sport has always been an outlier.
The festival is as much institution as sporting festival, reflected in a huge mainstream media profile that is the envy of most every other track in the country. Once again, RTÉ will cover the first four days from Monday to Thursday next week while TG4 takes over for Friday and Saturday.
Precisely defining Galway’s public appeal has never been easy. It’s racing action isn’t top class although top-notch horses do appear and it’s not difficult to suspect the action on the track is often just background noise to a large slice of those who’re there simply on the razzle.
The impossibility of bottling the ingredients of that appeal for use elsewhere was a line often uttered, never more so than on Ladies Day in 2006 when a record 48,120 people crammed into Ballybrit, many of them probably to say they ‘wuz there.’
How the festival reboots that sense of ‘event’ is anything but straightforward since any cork looks well out of the bottle at this point.
Punchestown’s festival has stolen Galway’s thunder in terms of size. An official attendance of more than 120,000 crammed into the Co Kildare course last spring. That was over five days rather than seven. It underlined how Galway is no longer the ultimate generator of crowds and betting turnover.
If Listowel’s September festival was always something of a poor relation attendance-wise, it’s become a lot richer recently with a figure of 90,000 last year.
There is, however, some statistical encouragement for next week’s attendance graph taking a welcome upward turn.
Last Christmas at Leopardstown saw a six per cent increase. The Dublin Racing Festival attracted more than 34,000 across two days, up almost 10,000 on the previous year. Punchestown jumped 5,000 while the three-day Irish Derby festival at the Curragh saw a 25 per cent increase.
Those figures have been embraced even by those whose default response is pointing out how unsubtle a measure of public interest attendance levels in any sport are. But spectator appeal remains a crucial metric of popular engagement, and especially so in Galway’s case.
Turning such momentum around is hardly a precise science. The weather can outdo any amount of ‘morkoting’ when it comes to getting people through the gates on a particular day. The betting ring used to be a central attraction but is a different and almost endangered beast now.
There remains a sense too that lingering Celtic Tiger connotations continue to do no reputational favours to Galway among the wider public.
Adapting to changing public demands could be important. That Friday evening’s action is now the busiest of the week suggests a different race-going pattern now. It might make incorporating the Bank Holiday Monday a productive move in the longer term.
For now, though, fingers are being kept tightly crossed that the annual trek to Ballybrit produces plenty of craic but also a statistical resurgence.
Something for the weekend
A combination of first-time cheekpieces and drying ground in Cork could see GABRIELLA’S SPIRIT (5.57pm) land the valuable sprint handicap this evening. Ken Condon’s filly faded in the closing stages at the Curragh earlier this month so a drop back to the minimum distance should suit.
Backing favourites in 27-runner handicaps can be an expensive pastime but anyone who saw BIGGLES (3.00pm) wing his way home in the Bunbury Cup will be wary of going near anything else at Ascot on Saturday. Ryan Moore’s presence on his back will hardly help the ‘SP’ either but seven furlongs with cut in the ground looks a near-perfect scenario for the Ralph Beckett-trained horse.
