MN319

1. Horse Racecourses
Equine Business Team

2.  The industry we reviewed
was horse racing. We
picked 5 racecourses to
compare and contrast
 Punchestown
 Leopardstown
 Galway
 The Curragh
 Aintree

3.  Breeding sector contributes over €2m to the
Irish economy
 It employs over 16,000 people
 There are 27 racecourses in the Republic of
Ireland
 Across all Irish racing festivals attendances
reached 462,938
 Total attendances at all race meeting in
Ireland reached just under 1.2m
 In comparison to race meeting attendances
in the UK that reached 6.15m

4.  Punchestown-located Naas Co. Kildare, 18 race fixtures per
annum, Punchestown festival held in April, attendance this year
reached 101,715, active on Facebook and Twitter
 Leopardstown-located Foxrock Dublin, 23 fixtures per annum,
student race day March, active on Facebook and Twitter
 Galway-located Ballybrit Galway, 12 fixtures per annum, Galway
festival August with attendance of 144,315, active on Facebook
and Twitter
 The Curragh- located in Kildare, 19 fixtures per annum, Irish Duty
Free Derby in June, active on Facebook and Twitter
 Aintree-located Liverpool UK, 6 fixtures p/a, John Smith Grand
National, active on Facebook and Twitter

5.  Punchestown- Home page well marketed,
scattered and unorganized, provided a lot of
information
 Leopardstown-attractive promotion on page,
easy to use, sign up to members club
 Galway-attractive, plenty of pictures,
extensive information
 The Curragh-poor promotion, easy to
navigate. Plenty of info
 Aintree-high quality and appealing
advertising, good media centre, substantial
info, not as easy to use as other sites

6.  Punchestown-up-to-date, receives a lot of
traffic, have over 1,430 tweets, follow 326
people, have 4,091 followers
 Leopardstown-3,175, follow 725 people, have
4,308 followers
 Galway-tweet monthly, 232 tweets,
following 194, have 3,957 followers
 The Curragh-regular tweets, mentioned more
than Aintree, 2,406 tweets, following 1,923
people, have 6,136 followers
 Aintree-up-to-date tweets, 2,738 tweets,
follow 1,771, have 8,744 followers

7.  Punchestown-20,951 fans, most talked about out
of the 5 tracks, 1,633 people talking about it,
ticket booking link, video link and events link
 Leopardstown-20,368 fans, 184 people talking
about it, provide contact info and links to their
other social networks and ticketmaster link
 Galway-58,229 fans, 625 people talking about it,
few posts and no link to ticket booking
 The Curragh-8,553 fans, 210 talking about it,
post regularly, ticket booking link and contact
details
 Aintree-20,867 fans, 323 people talking about it,
not updated regularly, provide links to other
social networks

8.  Leopardstown-
Instagram, Flickr,
YouTube
 Galway-Pinterest
 Aintree-YouTube and
Flickr
 Punchestown and the
Curragh do not have
any other social
networks

9.  Punchestown - no app available, not user
friendly for smart phones, images and map
unavailable to smart phones
 Leopardstown - no app, website
accommodates smart phone users
 Galway - no app for smart phones, website
designed to suit smart phone
 The Curragh-no smart phone app, website
not smart phone friendly
 Aintree-has a mobile app, Itunes download,
main website not user friendly to smart
phones

12.  We put it into our blog
 We put it onto sociamedia.ie
 We made a video
 We put it on our social networks including
Twitter

13.  We found that:
 Galway most popular on Facebook
 Aintree has the most followers on Twitter
but the Curragh has the most out of the Irish
racecourses
 Galway posts the most blogs
 Aintree is the only track to have a mobile
app
 The best website is Galway