IT would have been easy to have got carried away on the wave of expectancy. With advance ticket sales strong and corporate hospitality booked out for the opening six days, it fuelled loose talk about huge numbers descending on the Galway Summer Racing Festival.

We even heard a couple of suggestions that Ballybrit wouldn’t be able to hold the crowds such was the anticipated pent-up desire to attend the popular festival after the Covid-hit meetings of 2020 – held behind closed doors – and last year when daily attendances were restricted to 1,000.

But Chief Executive of Galway Racecourse, Michael Moloney, had been guarded in his pre-festival expectations about the numbers which would end up heading west for one of Irish sport’s most iconic occasions.

Between the current cost of living pressures, the festival coming in the wake of a hectic period for Galway GAA teams, and high accommodation and fuel prices, Moloney knew the meeting would struggle to reach the total attendance of nearly 130,000 of the previous pre-pandemic fixture of 2019.

It was no reflection on what Galway had to offer, more a case of many people forced to be more selective about the number days they would attend Ballybrit due to their own financial considerations and priorities.

Galway Racecourse had run an energetic and innovative social medial campaign promoting the festival, while these who made it to Ballybrit last week had to be impressed by the increased covered areas and extra catering facilities around the enclosure.

Ultimately, over the seven days of the festival, there was an attendance drop of almost 10% from the last comparable meeting of three years ago. The total crowd was 116,720 which represented a decline of 12,338 spectators spread over the seven days.

That figure would have been lower only for the Friday evening and Saturday cards being hit by adverse weather, but the festival finished on a high with the Sunday crowd of 13,040 a significant jump on the 2019 figure of 9,998.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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