Webmaster Notes
This is a good page to have hidden notes. While I want this page to be found if someone makes a search for "Belchamp Walter Race Night 2025", I don't want those that do to see these notes.
Belchamp Walter has a Race Night planned for 26 September 2025. In the past we have run the tote.
www.racenightservices.co.uk have a description on how to run a Race Night. They make it sound quite simple but having done it ourselves we know what is involved. Quite frankly those who are staging it in 2025 think that it is simple. At the time of writing this it is only 4 weeks away.
Do these notes get indexed?
This will remain to be seen. I am not sure if I had specifically searched for "Belchamp Walter Race night". At the moment this page is on the 2nd page of the Bing SERP.
The day of the event - I deleted this page from the server - I was #1 in the Bing SERP - I think that I have made a request to remove it from Google as there is no entry in a Google search
Inspecting the URL the text is in the HTML for the inspection so it is unclear whether it would appear in the SERP.
Oh the irony, getting to top of the list on Bing whereas all the Village Hall attempts at event promotion are lower!
Running a Race Night
Belchamp Walter Village Hall are holding a Race Night 26th September 2025. Full details can be found on the Village Hall website. The entrance is £5 for adults and £3 for under 18. First race is at 7:30pm. There will be a cash bar and you are asked to bring your own snacks.
How to run a Race Night
There seem to be many companies providing the means to host a Race Night for a fundraising event.
www.racenightservices.co.uk is a company that I have picked at random. Here is some of what they say on their
website:
The Boring Legal Stuff
The Gambling Act 2005
A race night is an event where participants stake money on the outcome of recorded races. The money raised from the event is called “the proceeds”.
After deducting any reasonable costs, the proceeds must:
be given to a good cause
must not be used for private gain
Reasonable costs include any costs reasonably incurred e,g. by providing any prizes and for betting slips.
If third parties are selling goods or services at your event, for example if someone is selling refreshments,
this does not count as money raised for the charity or good cause and can be retained by that third party.
There is a lot more on their website and probably others. The bottom-line is that it is a lot of work!
Top
Belchamp Walter have staged 3 Race Nights so far and the prime observation that the main effort revolves around
the running of the tote.
Running the Tote
The key, I think, to the smooth running of a Race night is the tote. The organisation of all the other
activities such as the venue, food and drink is relatively easy and very similar to other events that an
organisation that is a registered charity might put on.
Along with a compère, or Master of Ceremonies, the Tote is pretty hectic. The time between each race
will be determined by the Tote. The running of the race is just a question of turning the DVD player (or other)
to play and pause, the taking of bets, the calculation of the payouts and the payouts themselves all has to be
done before the next race is run. This can be be "full-on" and the personel running this have to be organised.
