Horse Racecourses
Equine Business Team
The industry we reviewed was horse racing. We picked 5 racecourses to compare and contrast
Punchestown Leopardstown Galway The Curragh Aintree
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
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
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
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
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
Leopardstown-Instagram, Flickr, YouTube
Galway-Pinterest Aintree-YouTube and
Flickr Punchestown and the
Curragh do not have any other social networks
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
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
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