The Grand Tour Racing Festival has just hit the halfway mark, with the national campaign looking to grow awareness and participation in the sport of Thoroughbred racing.

The initiative, which was launched last season, aims to promote New Zealand’s top 20 premier racing events across key venues in Auckland, Waikato, Hawke’s Bay, Wellington and Christchurch.

NZTR Head of Marketing, Communications, and Wagering Partnerships, Dan Smith, discussed the highlights of Season Two and focus on raceday hospitality and entertainment.

“Last season was all about launching The Grand Tour and building awareness of the concept and brand, but this year we have stepped it up on raceday presence,” he said.

“We have been very deliberate in our creative and messaging, stepping away from how racing is traditionally perceived. By focusing on delivering a campaign that is brighter, bolder and louder, it has allowed us to stand out in a competitive entertainment market and engage with a new audience.

“One significant move has involved partnering with a music promoter to bring a number of headline artists to key racedays, aiming to attract a new audience and provide another reason to get to the races.

“To date we have had close to 50,000 racegoers attend The Grand Tour events across the country.  Like for like, this is a 13% increase on last year,” Smith said.

To support the campaign, a range of both paid and unpaid influencers have been engaged to create pre-event hype, attend key racedays to showcase their day on-course and share post-event content, to encourage their highly engaged followers, across Instagram and Tik Tok, to attend a future raceday.

The media campaign has also evolved in Season Two, seeing a more targeted local layer of activity and a stronger focus across social media and digital content.

Season Two saw TAB come on board as the major partner, a move that Smith feels elevated the campaign’s promotion and alignment to wagering activity.  

“Entain has really embraced what we are trying to achieve. We know the importance of wagering growth to our sport and with the TAB coming on board as a major partner, it has helped us align The Grand Tour to punters through Trackside and TAB channels,” said Smith. 

Cameron Rodger, Entain Managing Director - New Zealand, expressed his enthusiasm about collaborating with The Grand Tour's promotional initiatives to boost wagering.

“The Grand Tour has been a fantastic success, effectively introducing a fresh audience to our premier racedays,” Rodger said.

“At Entain, attracting and retaining new customers aligns with our core strategy. It is a thrill to be involved this year where all aspects of the campaign have taken flight."

The Clubs involved in The Grand Tour have also seen great results this season to date.

“The role of The Grand Tour is to make our best racedays even better. We have worked closely with each of the Clubs (and as a collective), on integrating The Grand Tour to supercharge the activity they already have planned for their racedays,” commented Smith.

Tim Mills, Canterbury Jockey Club Chief Executive stated “The Grand Tour, in its second year, is a promotion that is evolving and gaining traction. We believe that it added greatly to the magic of the New Zealand Cup Meeting in 2023, one of the most successful and vibrant Cup Meetings.”

“The Grand Tour delivered a great start to New Zealand Cup Week, where we focussed on growing the Al Basti Equiworld Dubai NZ 2000 Guineas Day. Increased general admission contributed to significant increases in ticket, food and beverage revenue. Sir Dave Dobbyn playing after the last was a huge highlight,” Mills said.

Aaron Hamilton, CEO of Hawke's Bay Racing Inc., discussed the benefits The Grand Tour brought to this year’s Colliers Hawke’s Bay Spring Racing Carnival.

“From our perspective, we felt The Grand Tour integration into our Spring racedays was hugely successful. We broke records on wagering, on-course attendance and hospitality, just about every category and financial aspect increased in some way.”

“From a marketing perspective, it brought a lot more awareness of our racedays in the community, which in turn put focus on promoting the Spring Racing Carnival as a collective,” Hamilton said.

Ashleigh Jeffcoat, Marketing and Events Coordinator at Waikato Thoroughbred Racing, felt the digital impact of The Grand Tour at the Club’s recent SkyCity Hamilton Waikato Cup Day.

“The campaign itself is awesome. It’s really bright, colourful and inviting, which makes racing look exciting for young people,” she said.

“We felt it helped to get more people on-course and we saw a positive impact in advertising and promotion. Our GA total of 3,200 was a substantial increase on last year’s event,” Jeffcoat said.

With some fantastic racedays still to come, The Grand Tour Racing Festival will continue to celebrate all the entertainment both on and off the track right through until early April.

Eat, drink and get racy at thegrandtour.nz