Mr. Colin Walsh:

The decline in attendance has been a trend since 2007. It has declined at varying rates each year since then. We have changed completely the commercial strategy and the commercial operations with regard to how we approach this. When I first started in mid-2013, commercial operations as they were and the commercial strategy were not fit for purpose. We had a homogenous approach to the market in that we sold the product and racing on the back of the Irish Greyhound Board brand. What we have done since, following research, is have a local market-based strategy to promote the stadia in each of their local markets, within a drive time of 45 to 50 minutes, assuming this is the maximum distance anybody will drive for a night out with regard to cost and time. We have also launched www.gogreyhoundracing.ieand put in place a consumer facing racing brand rather than the IGB brand. We separated IGB as a corporate entity and put in place a consumer infrastructure.

We have completely changed our digital infrastructure and we have upskilled our digital expertise. All of our activities are dovetailed between advertising, digital activity, social media and social platforms. We are trying to expose the industry and sport to the widest possible audience because the biggest opportunities with regard to getting leisure and racing consumers back to the tracks are with people aged between 18 and 35 years. In the year to date, the average attendance per meeting in the IGB tracks increased by between 6% and 8%.

The position with Christmas bookings, in terms of the sales cycle this year compared to the sales cycle for the same period last year, is that we are up 18%. Our digital strategy is part of the overall strategy. It is about acquisition of customers and retention. The next phase, having put in place that infrastructure, is to put in place loyalty technology and loyalty marketing.

Let us consider the journey we have come from. We had a situation where we had a database of 100,000 customers. It was non-compliant, in multiple formats and was effectively unusable. The marketing department and our outside digital people have now worked through that. We now have a functioning database of over 60,000 people. To that database we have sent over 400,000 promotional e-mails so far this year. That part of the journey involved putting in place the jigsaw to get to the point where we can actually put in place loyalty marketing, which is a speciality in its own right. A tender document has gone out. There is a two-piece approach. The first is to ensure we have the correct strategic direction for it. The last thing we want to do is pick a model or infrastructure that does not work, does not deliver or does not give us a return on investment. We are taking a two-phase approach. The first phase is to establish the strategic direction and the second relates to how that implementation is going to work in terms of technology and from a marketing point of view in light of the technology that is in the tracks.

We have come quite a way in terms of our marketing strategy, commercial operations, processes and strategies. We are getting to the point where we have the most up-to-date contemporary tools in place to promote the leisure and racing markets. We are also using food and beverage promotions as tools to drive attendance.