Final push on for ‘Champions Weekend’ at Leopardstown and Curragh

The final push of a near six-month promotion campaign is underway for the upcoming 'Champions Weekend' with Horse Racing Ireland estimating a final cost of almost €200,000 to publicise the sport's new shop-window fixtures.

A determined effort to advertise the €3.7 million weekend at Leopardstown and the Curragh began last March at the Cheltenham Festival with Irish racing's ruling body targeting the British market as a vital element in highlighting the new event's profile.

HRI’s marketing staff have focused on encouraging participation within the racing industry in recent months but with just 11 days to Leopardstown’s QIPCO Champion Stakes meeting there will be an extensive final advertising campaign to encourage the general public to attend ‘Champions Weekend’.

‘Kind of crowds’

“It’s very hard to know what kind of crowds are likely to come until you open the gates but the more talkability about this the better,” HRI’s director of strategy and marketing, Michael O’Rourke, said yesterday. “We will be promoting it in print, radio, TV, and on social media every day.”

O’Rourke estimates the promotional cost to HRI, Leopardstown and the Curragh at about €200,000 and explained: “Fifty thousand of that is on advertising, 50,000 on public relations activities, 25,000 on print, 25,000 on tourism, which is largely in Britain. That’s what we call activity spend.

“The other 50 is set-up costs for this event, between the web-site, designing the new identity, launch activities, setting up our social-media infrastructure which is a big part of what we do. Apart from that 50,000 foundation spend, the other level of spend isn’t out of line with what you’d spend on big tracks for big meetings.”

Leopardstown’s authorities are targeting a crowd of 11,000 for Saturday week’s meeting with the Curragh aiming for 8,000 the following day for their triple-Group One card which includes the Palmerstown House Irish St Leger.

Davy Condon is undergoing further investigations in Cork University Hospital after a bad fall at Cork races on Sunday left the Cheltenham festival-winning jockey with three fractured vertebrae in his back.

Condon was reported to be able to move everything immediately after Sunday’s fall from Flaxen Flare at the second-last flight of a conditions hurdle but remains in hospital.

“More likely than not they (the vertebrae) will be treated with a brace for three months to support the back,” said the Turf Club’s medical officer, Dr Adrian McGoldrick. “As they are doing further investigations we don’t have the full picture yet.”