Full-year statistics for 2024, released on Thursday by Horse Racing Ireland (HRI), showed increases in the key metrics of attendances, commercial sponsorship and on-course betting.
Attendance figures for the first six months of 2024 were 1.5% behind the corresponding period of 2023, which HRI attributed to a combination of bad weather, adverse ground conditions and an extraordinary number of rescheduled fixtures. However, the end-of-year figure of 1.24 million is up 0.5%, with strong returns from the Irish Champions Festival, Listowel Festival, Navan Racing Festival and Christmas Festivals at Leopardstown and Limerick contributing to the growth.
Meanwhile, commercial sponsorship in 2024 rose by 7.9% to €6.8 million, with EBF sponsorship totalling €2.9 million (up 7.4%). Total on-course betting, including Tote, rose to €84.1 million, an increase of 4.5%, while bookmaker betting on-course went up by 5.6% to €73.7 million.
The end-of-year statistics for 2024 also show marginal increases in the areas of prize-money, racehorse ownership, the owner retention rate and the numbers of horses in training. However, total entries, total runners and average field sizes were slightly behind where they were in 2023.
One notable dispersal sale in 2023 contributed to a record figure of €231.5 million for bloodstock sales at public auction and this figure fell back to €197.8 million last year on a more normal schedule of sales.
Suzanne Eade, CEO of HRI, said, “The early months of 2024 proved to be very challenging with considerable disruption to the fixture list, but we can be happy that many of the significant figures bounced back as the year progressed.
“Wet weather had a telling effect on fixtures and the numbers of entries and runners in the first half of the year, while a remarkable absence of rain for a prolonged period in the autumn certainly impacted on those numbers again as the return of significant numbers of horses to the track was delayed.
“However, the overall figures once more show that the Irish racing and breeding industry is strong and facing up to any number of challenges. It was good to see how well the attendance figures held up, despite a number of key fixtures being blighted by the weather, and betting figures recovered well having been behind when the six-month figures were published in early July.”
Click here for the 2024 Irish Thoroughbred Racing Industry Statistics Table.
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