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12 December 2024

RCA Showcase Awards – roundup & review

As part of our ongoing blog series, we caught up with Matthew Jones from the Racecourse Association to get his thoughts following this year’s RCA Showcase & Awards and to hear future plans. 

Matt is the Senior Raceday Experience & Communications Executive at the Racecourse Association and along with Paul Swain, Head of Raceday Experience & Communications, was responsible for planning and leading the 2024 RCA Showcase & Awards. 

Historic venue in the heart of Edinburgh

Working with Musselburgh Racecourse and its catering partner Heritage Portfolio, we chose to host this year’s event away from the racecourse in the Signet Library. Situated in the heart of historic Edinburgh, we felt the library would be an impressive and inspiring venue for delegates to visit and the perfect place to host a celebratory event. 

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Edinburgh’s historic Signet Library. Photo by Craig Heaslip.

From February onwards we were in constant dialogue with the teams at Musselburgh and Heritage to prepare. Alongside this we worked with racecourses to manage the submission process before handing all the entries over to our independent panel of judges who selected our Finalists and winners. 

We were also able to open the awards up to two vital groups in racing: racehorse owners and the racegoers themselves. By working with the Racehorse Owners Association and Racing Post we gathered the views of these groups and allowed them to have their say on the raceday experience offering across British racecourses.  

Excellence and innovation

The purpose of the Showcase & Awards is to celebrate excellence and innovation across British racecourses. The submission period is a particular highlight every year as it gives us insight into the fantastic work going on at racecourses across Britain. It also provides us with a library of best practice to inspire racecourses in the coming year.  

Racing Together Community Award. Photo by Craig Heaslip.

A perfect example of this is the Racing Together Community Award. With 14 submissions, it was the joint most-popular category in 2024, demonstrating how connecting with the local community is at the heart of operations for so many racecourses up and down the country.

The theme of this year’s Showcase Seminar was Target & Tailor, and we wanted to help racecourses identify their target audience and tailor the perfect experience for them A memorable moment on the day itself was when our final seminar speaker asked people in the room to describe how they were feeling and the overwhelming feedback from delegates was inspired, excited and motivated. This positive atmosphere rolled into the evening awards where there was a real sense of celebration amongst all the attendees in the room.  

Learning and celebration

Feedback from the event has been overwhelmingly positive.

Whilst the Showcase & Awards are a great chance to get together and celebrate the achievements of racecourses, the true value is in the sharing of best practice among racecourses and learnings taken from the cutting-edge brands in sport and leisure. We tell racecourses that if they don’t come away from the event with a notebook full of ideas that they can implement at their own venue then they can’t be trying hard enough!  

What next?

The Showcase was full of learnings for delegates, particularly around demographics, personalisation, speaking to new audiences and strategies to help develop customer experience. Others will get the chance to benefit from these learnings too via the RCA’s Raceday Experience Forum and events such as the Racing Together Industry Day where Go Racing in Yorkshire will be discussing its winning initiative.  

Matthew Jones, RCA (right). Photo by Craig Heaslip.

We’re in the very early planning stages for next year and you can be sure that our new Showcase Champion Racecourse, York will be keen to put on a show for the whole industry to enjoy! 

Hear more from Matt as the guest host of our free webinar on the 22nd January, where he will be chatting all things community engagement with panellists from racing and beyond. Sign up here.

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