Wednesday 15 July 2015 16:49, UK
Newcastle's arrival as an all-weather venue next year could be impacted by changes to how the British Horseracing Authority allocate floodlit fixtures.
While the BHA expect the 2016 Fixture List to broadly tally with this year, it is now planning to allot the 97 floodlit cards based on a model which apportions meetings according to criteria including betting performance, field sizes and prize money rather than being divided equally between venues.
The BHA also stated it may move to take some certain races away from the programme while trying to be conscious of not staging meetings geographically close together on the same day as well as trying to bolster midweek and Sunday racing.
For the approximately 200 fixtures the BHA owns, it has used a weighting of 85:15 in favour of prize money over sporting performance but that will change to 60:40 and for the first time will be applied to twilight fixtures.
BHA chief executive Nick Rust said: "We currently anticipate that the size and composition of the fixture list will be broadly similar to that of 2015, though there are some funding challenges to be overcome if we are to deliver this.
"The pool of BHA fixtures remains almost identical to 2015 which means that there is unlikely to be significant change to the proportion of fixtures allocated to the jump, Flat and all-weather codes.
"However, with the new entrant to the all-weather landscape in the form of Newcastle racecourse it is inevitable that there will be a slight rise in the number of all-weather fixtures, not least because as a minimum Newcastle's 17 Flat Turf fixtures are being converted to the all-weather as part of this process.
"In 2015 we removed around 130 races from the size of the programme at certain 'pinch-points' and the data from this suggested that this initiative did help field sizes in this period.
"The management of field sizes in this manner is something that we will be replicating - and likely expanding - in 2016.
"This year we are prioritising the resolution of many of the geographical clashes that permeate the current list, which will be advantageous in terms of racecourse attendances and field sizes.
"We don't hold all the cards here but we are working with the racecourses and have already had some successes on this front. We also want to bolster the quality of midweek and Sunday racing."
