National Hunt racegoers have been up in arms for the past few days over plans for the Grand National to have a later start from next year, with the race to be held back until at 5.15pm to attract the biggest possible television audience.
As you can imagine, there are several reasons why traditionalists find this undesirable. Already it is being pointed out that extra drinking time will make Aintree even more of a Bacchanalian nightmare for racing purists by teatime on the Saturday, while paying customers of the type who actually like to watch the whole card are wondering whether the National is going to be moved back to the last race of the day or if the proceedings are going to be extended through to early evening. What has always been a jolly afternoon in April is now in danger of becoming more of a Saturday night event, in other words, and racegoers fail to see why this character change is necessary for the benefit of a few more people watching from their sofas at home.
The answer, briefly, is that a TV audience that runs to the millions is always going to be a bigger consideration than the inconvenience of a few thousand who have paid to be at the event. Sad but true. We live in a television age. To be brutally honest, the number of people who attend the Grand National as a race event, as opposed to a combined outdoor fashion party and boozefest, is so small that television is always going to win out. But for television interest, the Grand National would probably have run its course by now: there were times in the 70s when sponsorship was almost impossible to find, so it is hard to get too worked up about the paymasters laying down their own terms and conditions.
It is not even true of racing, as it is of football, that the paying spectators constitute part of the attraction. The most the Aintree audience contributes to the television experience of the Grand National is a roar of anticipation and excitement as the horses hit the home straight. Most of the spectators are concentrated in the grandstand near the finishing line, while for the bulk of the actual race on television, when the runners and riders are out in what Aintree announcers euphemistically describe as “the country”, their only company is the outside broadcast equipment and a couple of ambulances.
So, in short, if racing traditionalists do not like a move to a 5.15pm start, they may just have to lump it. Just like all the football supporters who hate the fact the FA Cup final kicks off in the early evening, moved from its time-honoured, rightful 3pm slot for the same couch potato reasoning. When defending the Football Association’s decision to allow their prize asset to be henceforth known as the Emirates FA Cup, in fact, Greg Dyke was fully behind the later kick-off time. “It’s the modern way to watch football,” the FA chairman explained. “You put the game on when the most people want to watch it.”
That argument is fine as far as it goes, and doubtless there are shop assistants and shift workers up and down the country who are glad of the chance to get home at teatime and switch on some live football, though it does rather neglect the concerns of the people who have gone to the trouble and expense of going to Wembley to watch.
There are up to 90,000 of those, and the expense can sometimes be considerable. So can the trouble of getting to Wembley, or more specifically getting back home, when finalists can come from all over England or even South Wales. Never mind the journey home even, if you have made a special trip to London to watch your team in the Cup final you are surely entitled to a Saturday night out if you choose, yet with the present kick-off time you are still likely to be trying to clear the environs of Wembley by 9pm, and that is without extra time or penalties.
It would be possible, of course, to make a long list of all the injustices and inconveniences television’s demands have foisted on football supporters, such as Newcastle fans being asked to make the trip to Bournemouth for an 12.45pm kick off last month, but this is familiar territory. No one is forced to go to matches if they don’t want to and most supporters can accept, albeit reluctantly, that for the money it pumps into the game television has the right to call the shots. But the FA Cup final is different.
It represents tradition, or ought to. There is nothing particularly sacred about a 3pm kick-off other than the fact it worked perfectly well for over a century and fans really quite like it, but why abandon a perfectly good Saturday afternoon? You need a compelling reason to change and it is not clear the FA have one. While the television audience may be slightly bigger in the early evening it hardly seems to have been the case that FA Cup finals down the years went unnoticed or unremarked through kicking off in mid-afternoon. There was a time when the main attraction of the FA Cup final was that it was just about the only live football you would see on mainstream television. People would make an effort to watch it, whether congregating front rooms, pubs or even (this used to be quite a common sight) taking a break from shopping to stand outside high street television showrooms and gawp through the window.
Different times, obviously. You don’t see so many high street television showrooms any more, and at no point in the present century has anyone complained of a dearth of live football on TV. Dyke would argue such desire to watch the FA Cup final on TV is a justification for the later kick-off, others might contest the event is big enough to be left alone and taking place at the traditional time for football adds to its grandeur. A bit like the Grand National, which clearly should take place at the crisp apex of an April afternoon and not in the early-evening gloaming. Ironically, one of the reasons being advanced in favour of holding the race later is that in pubs and clubs across the land it can then be screened without competing distractions – ie football.
The problem with acceding to every television demand is that eventually the event itself begins to be compromised. You will hear a lot about the magic of the FA Cup this weekend, and then again next month when the third round takes place, yet the showpiece itself is definitely compromised by its arbitrary early evening kick-off.
It is not fair on the paying fans, who do so much to add atmosphere and background to televised games, and while the final now sensibly has a Saturday to itself after the end of the league season it seems daft to waste the best part of the day waiting for an unnaturally late start. It is true the Champions League final now does the same since switching to Saturday, thought at least the Uefa competition is being consistent. All its earlier rounds are played under floodlights, whereas the vast majority of FA Cup ties kick off at 3pm.
Viewing figures may indicate more people are watching at the later slot, though it seems a fair bet that in most households people are doing so while simultaneously preparing a meal, putting the kids to bed or getting ready to go out. Ultimately, the trouble with 5.30pm it that it is an intermediate time, a nothing in particular time, a slack time. It does nothing to enhance the prestige of the occasion. Rather it turns the FA Cup final into something of an afterthought, when it ought to be, just for one day, the main event.
