The governing bodies of Swedish horseracing have agreed to trial a new ‘V64 Xpress’ competition format, seeking to revive audience participation with Swedish trotting’s winter schedule.
Beginning from 17 September, Svensk Travsport Swedish Trotting’s governing body will test its new V64 Xpress competition format, hosting simultaneous back-to-back trotting races across two ATG racetrack venues.
Svensk Travsport and ATG have agreed to trail the V64 competition format for a 13-week period, with the dual races held and broadcast on Fridays.
The V64 concept will see Svensk Travsport limit fixture intervals to 11 minutes, maximising trotting race coverage for Friday audiences tuning into ATG races from 8:30 pm.
Svensk Travsport has worked with ATG on the new concept to significantly reduce the breaks and intervals that have previously delayed team trotting events, impacting the sports engagement with wider audiences.
Updating trotting team owners, Svensk Travsport stated that its new competition would have no impact on qualifying races, which would maintain a traditional format during its daytime schedule.
“We need to try new things to keep up the national interest in the trotting sport, and this is a small part of it. The competitions on Fridays are not really much affected. It is about the same race and schedule as usual on both evening courses, and for the first two hours the course audience focuses only on home course competitions,” commented Per Wetterholm, acting sports manager at Svensk Travsport.
“But at 20:30 the game for V64 starts where the teams are picked up from two courses instead of just one. Together with our business partner ATG, we want to test what advantages and disadvantages it could entail”