Year-on-year increases in the key metrics of attendances, commercial sponsorship and on-course betting point to another robust 12 months for the horse racing and breeding industry in Ireland.
Full year statistics for 2024, released today by Horse Racing Ireland (HRI), 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.
Prize money in 2024 was up 2.6% to €69.9m and the figure for 2025 will rise by a further €1m. Commercial sponsorship in 2024 rose by 7.9% to €6.8m with EBF sponsorship totalling €2.9m, up 7.4%.
Irish horses continued to perform well when campaigned overseas and the prize money won by Irish-trained horses in Britain rose by over 16% to Stg£19.4m with a total of €9.2m won by our horses in the rest of the world.
Total on-course betting, including Tote, rose to €84.1m, an increase of 4.5%. Bookmaker betting on-course rose by 5.6% to €73.7m.
Total Tote betting has reduced by 2.8% to €75.8m. Betting on-course with Tote is down by the same percentage to €10.4m while off-course betting with the Tote is 4.8% down to €57.6m. Off-course betting receipts came to €141m, up 37.4% on the previous year.
While for the first six months of 2024, attendance figures were 1.5% behind the corresponding period of 2023 due to a combination of bad weather, adverse ground conditions and an extraordinary number of rescheduled fixtures, the end of year figure of 1.242m is up 0.5% with stronger returns from Irish Champions Festival, the Listowel Festival, Navan Racing Festival and the Christmas festivals at Leopardstown and Limerick contributing to the growth.
One notable dispersal sale in 2023 contributed to a record figure of €231.5m for bloodstock sales at public auction and this figure fell back to €197.8m last year on a more normal schedule of sales.
On the racing front, the total number of active owners has risen by 0.9% to 4,741, with the number of syndicates up by 6.7% and new owners up 4.1%. The owner retention rate climbed marginally to 73.8%. The ownership base in the USA has risen 12% with UK-based owners remaining static at 356. Building on our international ownership base is a key area of focus for our Ownership Department.
There is also a marginal rise in the total number of horses-in-training which grew 0.4% to 10,488. Extremes of weather affected the number of entries, down 3.2% overall with Flat entries down 4.7% and National Hunt entries down 1.8%. While the total number of runners was also down, by 0.9%, the number of National Hunt runners rose by 0.4% while the total number of Flat runners was down by 2.3%. The average field size, based on 2,894 races in 2024 compared to 2,877 races in 2023, was down by 1.4%.
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 2024 Irish Thoroughbred Racing Industry Statistics Table
Media release by Horse Racing Ireland on Thursday, 30 January 2025.
