Ticket rush is on as punters grab National fever

Club badges for the Saturday of the Coral Scottish Grand National Festival are selling out fast and could all be gone by the end of the week.

For several years now the Saturday has been a total sell out with club badges going first followed by Grandstand.

For the first time ever this year there is a third entry ticket with the introduction of Enclosure 27 – a facility in the centre of the track which will be up close to the action and is sure to be very popular with capacity set at 1,000.

The popularity of the Coral Scottish Grand National grows and grows and one of the reasons is I believe that we are virtually guaranteed seeing every top jockey from Britain and Ireland in action while all our leading trainers have runners.

The profile of the Festival is also helped by the fact that Saturday’s principal races are shown live on ITV’s main channel.

Let’s also not forget that the Scottish National itself is the fourth biggest race in terms of betting turnover in the UK and in 2019 attracted a television audience of 1.18 million viewers one of the highest such figures recorded by ITV Racing.

It never fails to amaze me that in addition to our sell- out crowd and the huge television audience, pubs in and around Ayr are packed with punters coming into the town just to watch the action on the television.

I suppose it’s the next best thing to actually being there but if you do want to experience that great feeling of ‘ being there’ on Saturday, April 18 then you will have to move very quickly to book your tickets or badges if any are still available.

This can be done by going online at www. scottishgrandnationalfestival. co. uk or by calling 01292 264179.