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Bruce Jackson -RP
4:29pm
On the case
There’s a bookies’ match bet with a difference in the next. It’s in-house at Corals with PR Simon Clare, part-owner of Reigning Monarch, revealing there is a case of "nice wine" (Sancerre) with his colleague James Knight (their odds compiler and top Racing Post columnist) and former boss Wilf Walsh, who own Diane’s Choice. Both parties harbour placed hopes in this "banded race" and certainly both horses have seen better days and are quite capable of uncorking a win in this company. Sign of the times though that it is wine rather than champagne being gambled – the game’s gone.Isn’t this the way racing at the lower end should go? Owners racing for their own stakes rather than relying on levy board subsidies?
relentless Maybe your wish will come true when the great revealations arrive …..
cheers
Ricky
Is that not racing in its purest form?
How it was before it was sullied by betting and bookmakers.
Thank goodness the meeting was abandoned last week. No way would North SOuth Divide have been able to cope with the finish of Diane’s Choice judged on tonight’s efforts.
Well done TDK.
Cheers DJ – the yard didn’t want to take the beast down to Kempton yesterday because of the bad weather, but I pointed out that this was probably the worst race we could ever hope to find – and they had to get her there, come hell or high water.
Match bets between owners is definitely the future – are you planning to give Peter Grayson a call in advance of the 7.10 tonight?
Match bets between owners is definitely the future – are you planning to give Peter Grayson a call in advance of the 7.10 tonight?
I daren’t. He’s already got 5k out of us, he’s not having a case of wine as well!
"Isn’t this the way racing at the lower end should go? Owners racing for their own stakes rather than relying on levy board subsidies?"
I’d replace the word lower for upper in the above quote though its difficult to tell whether you are being sardonic, Glenn. I’ll assume a straight face on this occasion.
Racing in North America has a much wider base of owners from different socio-economic groups because prize money for the equivalent of Class 6 horses is often phenomenal and from an industry perspective, they are the horses who keep the plates spinning.
I’ve not seen many group horses run in the big freeze, have you? Or £300,000 ex-French novice chasers.
Some of the horses here at Southwell this afternoon are racing for two grand tops. The place money is abysmal. Why bother? Let some other poor schmuck do it. From a social, economic, even psychological perspective, its the tiny owners who need the incentive to race not the priveliged megaliths like Lloyd Webber and Clive Smith. It is the prosperous who, as they did before Crockfords, should be racing for stakes.
We should be doubling prize money at the lower end. That we don’t is an outdated carryover from the age of feudalism. Why should the Lord get all the fresh meat? There is no reason for it.
Prize money in Group races is largely irrelevant with each extra pound having a minimal marginal impact on the number of runners who compete. In some cases, extra prize money is a disincentive to race for horses with marginal form. Novice chasers too. Small fields are terrible news for the levy – and a dull spectacle in their own right – and we need to be doing everything possible to attract owners, to make racing exciting for all and to keep the game alive.
Small owners, hard pressed punters and freezing racegoers paying subsidies to enhance the entertainment of the rich isn’t the way to build a sustainable, inclusive industry. In my opinion of course.
We should be doubling prize money at the lower end. That we don’t is an outdated carryover from the age of feudalism. Why should the Lord get all the fresh meat? There is no reason for it.
Small owners, hard pressed punters and freezing racegoers paying subsidies to enhance the entertainment of the rich isn’t the way to build a sustainable, inclusive industry. In my opinion of course.
Nail on the head there, Max.
John Gosden and pals outlandish proposals to turn 1/3 of all flat racing in the UK into a certified BAGS product can be read here
http://www.racehorseowners.net/industry … easeID=500 (link to full proposal at the top)
In amongst this ridiculous document is the suggestion that all levy generated from lower end racing should go to upper end prizemoney. The “peasants” of the winter flat grafting away in the snow to supply prizemoney for the Bury Road mob upon their return from Barbados.
“A fundamental change can only be brought about by everyone in racing accepting that we all have to give something in the short term to create opportunities for the future.”…they tell us
Beyond belief.
Cav and Max , appreciate your views , disagree completely though , it may seem pompous but the only realistic way ahead is to market and plug the good racing end of story ….
We are as Henry Cecil gently reminds us in the ATR interviw swamped in mediocrity , and the aw winter schedule is mainly comprised of good old fashioned dross
If Racing is to survive it must offer quality at an affordable price , cut the dross , cut the comittees , and get to the point of re-engaging with punters , racegoers , owners , trainers , stable staff, and anyone else interested
Drop the elitist image , stupid dress codes , and FFS please stop generating snobbery its whats keeping new racegoers away (apart from concert nights , where they get pissed and enjoy the night out and promptly dissapear again )
Then lets go hunt for new customers , we will have a good product to offer , and existing customers wont feel disenfranchised , but more than anything we should be able to offer a cracking good day out at an affordable price, and offer catering and food at reasonable prices, so they the new paying customers wont feel robbed and will be inclined to come back for more , as for the existing racegoers thay will probably need shock treatment….
Is there any chance of this happening ?? my qoute is presently 100/1 , and 4/11 a complete bodge
cheers
Ricky
- Total Posts 17716
I think it’s a recognition that 1/3rd of racing is already a glorified BAGS product, and though their motives may be questionable, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that the sport must come first.
From a social, economic, even psychological perspective, its the tiny owners who need the incentive to race not the priveliged megaliths like Lloyd Webber and Clive Smith.
The facts don’t fit your theory. The recent bandit races have all filled up easily. If you look at the costs these owners have poured into the sport, their return in terms of prize money is basically one or two percent – the equivalent of loyalty card points!
There’s an endless stream of people that are happy to pay to basically run for nothing, so why the need to subsidise/incentivize them?
Let them race for their own stakes, not the ridiculous £10 entry fees they pay at the moment, but maybe £150-£200 each a race. Get prize money up that way and use the levy that’s saved to develop infrastructure and entice racegoers/punters. It is there where the shortfall is not with owners, where there’s an oversupply even in a recession.
Racing’s troubles are basically a mirror of the world economy. Too much spare money in too money baby boomer (read owners) hands chasing too few of the younger generation. Just as we had too much money being lent out to those who couldn’t hope to pay back, we have too many owners for the current demand for racing from racegoers and punters.
The answer at this stage is not to encourage more ownership. You either need to expand the base of racegoers/punters, possibly by marketing the sport abroad or reduce the number of owners.
The current market value of around half the races being run is a rosette for the winner.
Jeez, you’d almost lose your will to live discussing this stuff
Apologies for the formatting I cant make it better
“It’s hard to be specific about the cost,” Alan
Delmonte, the Levy Board’s operations director,
said yesterday. “So much depends on footfall in
betting shops, and the number of people betting
when the weather is bad goes down anyway.
“The amount of levy generated per race is very
variable too, but it’s not a bad rule of thumb that
£10,000 is lost every time a race doesn’t happen.
Tuesday had four fixtures scheduled originally,
which would be about £250,000, and we make an
abandonment payment of £10,000 to each course too,
but at the same time, we will not be paying out
prize money of £115,000. That would mean an
estimated loss to the levy of just under £200,000.”
In 2009 that’s 2334 races times 10000 grand a race = 23.3 million for the levy. The levy gave back 12.5 million in prizemoney to the all weather in 2009. All weather racing is already subsiding other racing to the tune of almost 12 million quid a year.
23.3 million is 10% of 233 million profit to the bookmakers times whatever their margin is for the amount gambled on it + 1 million quid a race on the exchanges.
Face it lads, its BIG business, hundreds of millions, the punters must love it to bet those amounts?
With all respect to Moe and Ricky, entrance fee, a 50p bet, your own sandwiches and a coffee from the bar wont even pay for Pawan’s hay.
The French, the Japs, the Yanks, the Hong Kongers will all say “GAMBLING pays the bills”
Why cant you purists “wait ’till Saturday comes”???
- Total Posts 17716
Love your arithmetic Cav – totally ignore the fact that the bigger races generate many times the levy that a full meeting of class 6’s & 7’s ever will, why don’t you?
Do you ever wonder where racing would be, were it not predicated on the ‘pursuit of excellence’?Thats the Levy Board’s arithmetic, Reet, not mine. Excellence is of course subjective, 296 UK Flat pattern races in ’09 were plenty for me anyway.
Cav , great stuff , as always your numbers give you comfort , but thats a load of horlicks really
Pawan and all the rest of those aw sloggers , no matter how noble and admirable they may be to hardened nuts like us forumites are in fact not exactly a turn on for quality racing
ok this may come as a shock
Forget the numbers , look at the bigger picture , we will never be like those tote monopoly places , as we have bookies and exchanges its not going to change
The only way we can increase the levy or amount contributed is to attract more business , and thats where quality comes in
Cav , Quality is the key , think about it
Ricky
"The answer at this stage is not to encourage more ownership. You either need to expand the base of racegoers/punters, possibly by marketing the sport abroad or reduce the number of owners. "
All reducing the number of owners will do is turn the sport once again into the playground of the rich, which you and Ricky – and it must be said a large proportion of the forum – don’t seem to mind.
The owners of Ponting today went mad when their horse won. I’m no expert, but they certainly didn’t look like Harrogate Young Farmers to me. Ordinary folk paying their fifty quid a week.
The maths seem simple to me. If you had an average return to a winning horse of, say, six grand then you expand participation. You raise awareness. People start to dream. More people take the plunge and buy a horse. The flat expansion means there are more races for the horses to participate in. The WHOLE betting pie increases (not individual races). Owners have more chance of making a return and thus owners buy more horses. Pinhookers, breeders, trainers, stable staff and punters benefit. The game grows. 32,000 people attend the opening day of a meeting, as they did in Santa Anita where a similar model operates.
Always surprises me that you can throw prize money at a race for Group One horses and no-one will turn up. The King George at Ascot for example. What do you suggest? Double the prize money for that? There was nearly a million pounds for that race. Your model doesn’t make sense.
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