Yarmouth Dogs Race Times: Full Weekly Schedule and BAGS Fixtures

I once drove two hours to Yarmouth on a Thursday evening, completely certain they were racing, only to discover the car park was empty and the gates locked. That was back in 2016, before the fixture list settled into its current pattern, and it taught me a lesson I have never forgotten: always check the schedule before you commit your evening. Yarmouth’s weekly rhythm is predictable once you learn it, but it trips up newcomers regularly because the mix of morning, afternoon and evening meetings does not follow the pattern most people expect from a dog track.

Racing at Yarmouth currently runs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sunday mornings, with Saturday evening meetings appearing periodically through the year. That core schedule has been fairly stable since the ARC media deal was established in 2018, and the five-year contract extension agreed in January 2025 all but guarantees this pattern will hold through to at least 2030.

Day-by-Day Race Schedule at Yarmouth

Monday is the anchor day. It has been a consistent fixture on the Yarmouth calendar for years, and it is the meeting most BAGS punters will be familiar with. First race typically goes off in the late morning or early afternoon, with twelve races on most cards. The exact first-race time can shift by fifteen or twenty minutes depending on the time of year and the broader BAGS scheduling across all venues that day, but mid-morning is the standard.

Wednesday follows the same daytime pattern. Again, a BAGS-contracted meeting broadcast through the standard media rights arrangement, meaning it is available to watch through licensed bookmaker streams. The Wednesday card tends to mirror Monday in structure: twelve races, the same spread of distances, similar grade bands.

Sunday mornings are the third regular fixture. These are earlier starts than the weekday meetings, and they attract a slightly different audience – the weekend casual viewer who might not follow midweek form. For form students, Sunday mornings are interesting precisely because the market can be less efficient. Prices sometimes drift further from true probability when the betting volume comes from recreational punters rather than the regulars who follow every meeting.

Saturday evenings are the wildcard. These are not every week – they appear on the fixture list periodically, often timed around holiday weekends or special events. When they do run, Saturday evenings are the closest Yarmouth gets to the traditional “night at the dogs” atmosphere, with the Raceview restaurant open and a social crowd mixing with the committed punters.

BAGS Daytime Cards vs Saturday Evening Meetings

The distinction between a BAGS meeting and an evening open meeting is one of the most misunderstood aspects of greyhound racing, and it matters directly for anyone studying Yarmouth race times. BAGS – the Bookmakers’ Afternoon Greyhound Service – funds the majority of Yarmouth’s fixtures. Across the country, BAGS produces over 25,000 races a year, roughly 74 meetings every week spread across the 18 licensed stadiums. Yarmouth’s Monday, Wednesday and Sunday cards are all BAGS meetings.

What separates BAGS from open meetings is not the quality of the dogs – though there can be differences – but the commercial structure underneath. BAGS cards exist primarily to provide content for the betting shop and online markets. The races are structured, graded and timed to fit broadcasting slots. This means you get a predictable card: twelve races, staggered at regular intervals, with grades designed to produce competitive fields.

Saturday evening cards, when they appear, operate under a different dynamic. They may carry open races alongside graded events, the prize money can be higher, and the atmosphere in the stadium shifts. For the form analyst, the key difference is that open meetings can attract dogs from outside the regular Yarmouth grading pool, meaning you see unfamiliar names and less predictable form lines. The ARC media contract that Yarmouth signed, which covers broadcasting rights, applies to the BAGS fixtures specifically, though Saturday evenings are also typically broadcast.

How Fixtures Change Through the Year

Nobody tells you this when you first start following the dogs, but the fixture list is not carved in stone. Meetings get moved, added or occasionally cancelled based on a range of factors: weather, track maintenance, clashes with major open events at other venues, and the broader BAGS scheduling requirements across all 18 licensed tracks in the country.

Yarmouth sits on the Norfolk coast, and winter weather can be a factor. Heavy rain or freezing conditions can make the sand surface unraceable, and when that happens the meeting is either abandoned or rescheduled. Summer is more predictable, though even then you will occasionally see a fixture moved to accommodate a higher-profile event elsewhere in the BAGS schedule. The practical advice is to check the fixture list at the start of each week rather than assuming last week’s pattern will repeat exactly.

Bank holidays are another variable. Some bank holiday weekends see additional fixtures added, particularly around Easter and the August holiday. Others see regular meetings shifted to different days. If you are planning to visit Yarmouth dog track in person, confirming the fixture a day or two beforehand saves the kind of wasted trip I made back in 2016.

The seasonal rhythm also affects the character of the meetings, not just their timing. Summer cards at Yarmouth tend to run on faster going – drier sand, longer daylight, calmer conditions – while winter meetings can be slower and more attritional, with the coastal wind off the North Sea adding an extra variable. If you are tracking form across seasons, the fixture calendar is not just a scheduling tool but a contextual filter for interpreting times and results.

The long-term outlook for Yarmouth’s fixture schedule is stable. The ARC contract extension locks in the commercial basis for regular meetings, and with Wales and Scotland moving to ban greyhound racing, the remaining English venues – Yarmouth included – may well see fixture counts maintained or even increased to fill the gap left by any track closures elsewhere. For anyone building a serious form database, that continuity is valuable – it means the data you collect now will remain relevant for years, and the patterns you identify in the schedule will hold.

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