Two of the summer’s biggest and best festivals take place next week at Galway and Goodwood where huge crowds will flock to experience the thrills, spills and excitement of horse racing.
The Galway Races draws crowds from all over Ireland and beyond for the seven-day long festival which sees in excess of 120,000 revellers turn up each year to party through the week, but how does the biggest Irish horse racing event compare to its English counterpart, The Qatar Goodwood Festival.
We’ve covered already how the two festivals compare to each other when it comes to attendance, duration, and feature races. However, some of the most pronounced differences between the two festivals are to do with money:
Firstly, the prize money on offer for the races at Goodwood far exceeds that at Galway. The total prize money over the five days at Goodwood is £6.4 million, including a cool £1 million on offer for the Group One Sussex Stakes run on Wednesday.
Galway, on the other hand, has total prize money on offer across all seven days of €2.1m and its joint-highest value races are the Tote Galway Plate (Wednesday) and Guinness Galway Hurdle (Thursday) with prize funds of €270,000 each.
There are in fact a total of six races run at Goodwood with significantly higher prize money than the richest races run at Galway.
There is also a significant difference between the cost of attending each festival. A standard admission ticket to Galway ranges from €35-€40 depending on the day you attend, whereas the cheapest ticket to Goodwood starts at £55.
On the hospitality front the gulf between the two race meetings grows even wider. The most expensive hospitality package available at Galway is the Killanan Stand Gold Package priced at €275 per person which includes a champagne reception, 5-course gourmet meal, complementary bar and panoramic views of the racecourse.
At Goodwood there are a range of fine dining hospitality packages that come in at double or more than the prices at Galway. The Charlton Hunt package which also boasts a champagne reception, a 4-course á la carte menu, an inclusive bar and a private balcony with exceptional views of the racecourse, is priced at £789 per person during the Qatar Festival week.
There is significantly more prize money up for grabs at Goodwood, due to the top-tier Group 1 racing staged throughout the week. By contrast, Galway’s feature races are valuable handicaps, for which prize money is naturally lower.
A day at Galway Races, however, is markedly cheaper than Goodwood. For those who fancy sipping champagne and enjoying gourmet food in hospitality at Goodwood, they will have to dig much deeper into their pockets to find over £500 more than for a similar offering at Galway.
