Legendary broadcaster Bruce McAvaney's brutal revelation about future of $8 million Melbourne Cup

Legendary sports commentator Bruce McAvaney says the phrase 'the race that stops the nation' is no longer accurate when it comes to the Melbourne Cup as he believes the love for Australia's great race is diminishing. With this year's Cup around the corner, McAvaney told racing website The Straight that as a result of rival events such as the Everest and the increase of people "aggressively opposed to racing" the excitement surrounding the first Tuesday in November is declining year after year.

McAvaney says he has seen the great race fall off the perch throughout the years and believes much of the iconic Flemington race's aura is no longer there. "The Melbourne Cup will always be the greatest prize ... but it no longer stops the nation," McAvaney admitted on The Straight.

The broadcaster said growing up the Melbourne Cup was the top sporting event in the country, much bigger than the likes of the AFL grand final and says it is sad to see how far it has fallen off. "It was a huge thing (when he was growing up) ... it was about suburbs and neighbourhoods, and it was for one race. It was by far the biggest sporting event in the nation. It had a big margin on the (then) VFL (now AFL) grand final,” McAvaney recalled.

"(But) my gut feeling is that within the racing community, the Melbourne Cup has diminished a little but for those who are not racegoers or are once-a-year-racegoers, it has diminished greatly. Years ago, people may not have been caught up in the magic of the Cup but they weren’t aggressively opposed to racing. Today, more people turn their back on the race.”

Bruce McAveny believes NSW racing gaining ground on Victoria

McAvaney also noted that the decline of the Cup has coincided with the rise of various other horse racing events such as the Everest. Despite the Everest only being launched in 2017, it is the richest turf race in the world and has seen fans flock to Randwick in the tens of thousands.

The Everest is held on the same day as the Caulfield Cup, and McAvaney says Caulfield had "lost ground" on its NSW counterpart. And McAveney believes the diminished status of the Caulfield Cup has further "weakened" the allure and excitement around the Melbourne Cup.

According to Racing NSW, the Everest came about in a bid to create an “event for the next generation”. And it is succeeding, with stats showing an average of 74 per cent of general admission attendees for the event in recent years have been under the age of 35.

The new $46 million Winx stand, opened a couple of years ago, also has helped improve the punter experience at Royal Randwick. And leading breeder Henry Field told Forbes last month that a major part of the success of the Everest is because the horses that are winning are mainstream Australian horses.

“They’re horses that racing fans in Australia have known their whole lives and followed since they were two-year-olds,” Newgate Stud's boss Field said. “The Melbourne Cup was a race that, when we all grew up, we knew all the horses. They became Australian icons and legends.

“Now it’s very unusual for an Australian horse to actually take it out. I’m in the industry, it’s what I do every single day, and I don’t know half the horses in the [Melbourne Cup]. There’s no way that the average person is going to know. Whereas you go to the Everest, these are horses that’ve raced in Australia season after season, race after race, Group 1 after Group 1."