Future Ticketing has partnered with Horseracing Ireland to provide best of class user experience to four of Ireland's leading racecourses, including Leopardstown, Fairyhouse, Navan, and Tipperary. The agreement follows an exhaustive tender process during which the software provider's functionality was examined and exploited to satisfy a demanding set of criteria.
Horseracing Ireland is Ireland's leading racecourse group, centred around the centres of excellence at Leopardstown and Fairyhouse. These include the homes of some of Irish racing's leading events, like the Irish Grand National and the recently created Dublin Racing Festival.
Coinciding with the news that attendances may increase to 50% of capacity, this is enabling racecourses to control numbers and ensure that tickets are booked in advance. Irish Champions Weekend over September 11-12 at Leopardstown and the Curragh saw a daily capacity of 4,000, the largest crowd at an Irish racecourse for several months.
Speaking to the Racing Post earlier this month, HRI chief executive Brian Kavanagh said: “The capacity of a racecourse is being decided on indoor and outdoor capacities. There are Failte Ireland [tourism authority] restrictions in terms of the numbers that can be seated in bars and restaurants so that has an immediate impact on capacity, as does social distancing.
“There is still a requirement to wear masks, and to be two metres apart outdoors. It's a matter for individual racecourses to decide their policy on capacity and you're talking about something that's on in less than a fortnight's time, so those are the numbers they have landed on.”
Trade in tickets for Champions Weekend was brisk, illustrating both the demand for the sport's top events, and the swift, intuitive purchase process enabled by the adoption of Future Ticketing software.
The acquisition of the four HRI courses brings the number of racecourse businesses supported by Future Ticketing to 37, making the business the leading racecourse ticketing software provider across the UK and Ireland.
"We're delighted to work with Horseracing Ireland to manage demand for their fixtures," commented Future Ticketing CEO Liam Holton. "We're pleased to be able to play our part in the re-establishment of racing as Ireland's leading spectator sport in the post-Covid economy, and we look forward to working with the team at HRI to develop their ticket sales revenue through the broad range of functionality options open to them through our software."