Glasses down for The Hennessy
Bookmakers Ladbrokes favourites to take over Gold Cup sponsorship
HENNESSY have pulled the cork on their sponsorship of Newbury Racecourse’s winter festival Gold Cup after 60 years with backing of the meeting likely to go to Ladbrokes-Coral.
Hennessy’s sponsorship ended with Native River’s recent victory ending a relationship that goes back to 1957 when the first of three Hennessy Gold Cups was staged at Cheltenham.
Dominic Burke, chairman of Newbury Racecourse said: “The Hennessy Gold Cup has been a race that has captured the imagination. It has helped to identify future stars, confirmed existing champions and produced as much emotion and excitement as almost any other race in the calendar.
“We are enormously grateful to several generations of the Hennessy family and the company's management team for their wonderful support of such a special event, but everything comes to an end at some point and it is fitting that the sponsorship is drawing to a close after such a thrilling race to mark the 60th Hennessy Gold Cup as the highlight of two wonderful days of top class Jump racing last month.”
Hennessy had last year ended their backing of the Irish equivalent, which is low backed by Stan James bookmakers, and Ladbrokes-Coral are the front runners to take over the Newbury race, although that may cause repercussions in the industry.
The recently merged bookies are not authorised betting partners and are barred from sponsoring races by the British Horseracing Authority, not least because much of their business is conducted offshore the offshore and makes no levy contribution to racing.