The Jockey Club
reflected in the SIS revenues. Our field sizes were in line with 2017 on the Flat and nearly 0.5 runners more at Jumps fixtures, with both significantly ahead of industry averages. Racecourse Media Group performance continued to be strong, in particular in the GBI international business and on Pay TV. Our Conference & Events business saw strong year-on- year growth as we started to see the benefit of our national approach to large agents and the benefits of some of our courses being used as filming locations, while at Aintree we benefitted from overspill matchday hospitality business from Liverpool Football Club. Furthermore, commercial partnership revenues were enhanced by our Group-wide Official Partner agreement with Diageo. Jockey Club Estates recorded continued turnover growth to £7.3 million in 2018 (2017: £7.0 million), with a small reduction in Newmarket horse numbers driven by lower Godolphin pre-training volumes. These were partly offset by volume growth at some smaller yards, which is a pleasing trend. Positive momentum built up over the past few years at Lambourn continued apace, with a 4% growth in horse numbers to an average of 789 horses in 2018. The National Stud had a very strong year with turnover up by £1 million to £3.3 million, driven in the main by a highly
successful first season at stud for Time Test, who covered 110 mares, of which 38 were to breeding right holders. He also had a very successful first season in New Zealand at Little Avondale Stud, where he will return for the 2019 southern hemisphere season. Boarding volumes both for mares and for spelling horses also continued to be strong, in particular in the latter part of the year. GROUP OPERATING PROFIT Operating profit referenced in this review is core operating profit, which we believe is the most appropriate measure of underlying operational performance and the same measure we have used in prior years. This is defined as statutory profit on ordinary activities after adding back the following: tax, interest, depreciation, share of joint venture profits, changes in fair values of financial investments and investment properties and profit and loss on the sale of fixed assets. As budgeted, Group operating profit was managed down to reflect both record £4.2 million in prize money contribution and increased investments in on-course maintenance programmes, enhanced customer experiences and improving our CRM, data management, WiFi and digital media capabilities designed to support British Racing over the long-term. Operating profit in 2018 was
339 Number of fixtures at our 15 racecourses in 2018
£157,105 Average prize money per fixture
£3.3m National Stud turnover up from £1 million
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