The sound of rock music is "becoming as big a part of a day out at Britain’s horseraces as the sound of galloping hooves," according to Roger Blitz of the FINANCIAL TIMES. The country’s Jockey Club, which operates 15 leading racecourses, "has set itself the ambition of becoming an out-and-out concert promoter to generate extra revenue." Attendances at a number of meetings at several Jockey Club-operated courses "have been transformed by music nights tagged on to the end of a day’s racing." A run-of-the-mill Friday at Newmarket, for example, might attract 4,000 customers -- but "add on a rock concert on another Friday meeting at the Suffolk course and attendance shoots up to 20,000." So "on the back of a buoyant 2013," when it staged 25 music nights with 200,000 visitors who jigged about to acts such as Kaiser Chiefs, McFly and Labrinth, the Jockey Club is "now gearing up to expand its music concert repertoire" (FT, 1/7). MUSIC WEEK's Rhian Jones reported the venture is titled "Jockey Club Live," and has been set up with music promoter Andrew Wilkinson and advertising and media exec Simon Halden. Plans also include expanding the number of gigs at racecourses, including staging them on non-race days (MUSIC WEEK, 1/8).
