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Horse racing will never flourish here while it is dependent on bookmakers.
Anyone who thinks Rust wants to help punters is living in cloud cuckoo land and why anyone with any intelligence would be interested in joining this farce of a horseracing bettors forum is baffling.
All Rust is interested in regarding punters, is getting more money off them via the bookmakers.
Totally agree. Just having a quick look through this thread and there is plenty of betting talk. People on racing are likely to be whether the sport is in a good shape or not. The point of this forum and to boost the betting industry should be to attract new people to horse racing not pander to the bookies or come up with gimmicky ideas for existing punters.
Make a better sporting product, get more people interested in racing and betting will increase. People get interested for big meetings, Cheltenham, Royal Ascot etc and the big races/ classics but not an average Tuesday at Southwell.
Just found this thread. Will read through it later. Just putting my thoughts down.
Hoping they don’t come up with gimmicky ideas like RFC did with the Champions Series (who talks about that or what horses are leading it?) and Champions Day (the Champions Series champions rarely turn up anyway).
If you want to improve betting, they need to improve the product. Just look at football. They have clear competitions, definite seasons, accessible stats.
Take the new Jockeys’ Championship. It doesn’t cover the whole season, I doubt most people know when it starts or finishes and when was the last time Channel 4 showed the Jockeys table outside the last week or so of the flat season?
My suggestions would include:-
– Stop AW and NH racing in the summer.
– Have defined/ clear seasons for the turf, NH and AW.
Turf from March to October
NH from September to April
AW from August Bank Holiday to Good FridayThen you can have proper jockey and trainers championships for each. Everyone knows when the Premier League starts and finishes, ie August to May, how many know when the racing seasons begin and end? I often here comments like the “turf season has started and there’s so many aw meetings…” and “the jumps season has just finished and there’s three jumps meetings”
If jumps course want to race in the summer, why not hold flat meetings? If you stop the AW in the summer too there will be fixtures available.
– Have a better spread of fixtures and better racing on Sunday.
I would move the likes of the Chester, Dante, July, Ebor meetings back to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurdays and look at moving some Friday fixtures to Sunday especially those two meetings like the Guineas meeting did.
– Maybe look at having more festival type meetings. Not always top class racing but the likes of Brighton and Yarmouth have popular three day ‘festivals’.
– Better tv coverage. How about showing the Craven meeting to build the profiles of potential classic horses. How about Channel 4 showing all races from Cheltenham.
– I would love the see the Triple Crown bigged up. How about big bonuses for a Triple Crown winner or the best performing horse across the races? I don’t think the Triple Crown is out of reach. I’m pretty sure Sea The Stars would have won the St Leger if it had run. Camelot went very close and Kingston Hill was only a few lengths behind in the 2000 Guineas and second in the Derby.
– I like the AW Championships on Good Friday. Would like to see if rotated around the different AW tracks.
I’m disappointed with the line-up. Too many industry people and a professional punter. Hardly a wide demographic. I was hoping for more ‘average joe’ punters and racegoers, some fresher voices. I feel we have been here before. Just look at Racing For Change from 2009. Many things that punters and racegoers suggested then are still being touted now.
Racing needs to stop pandering to the bookmakers. Racing needs a better product.
