Horse Antepost
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29 Oct 10
01:35
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18 Jul 03
Trying to complete your tick list of visiting all 60 British racecourses (61 for July Course pedants)? You'd better get moving.
Racing’s ‘leaders’ are not just fiddling while Rome burns, they are running around chucking buckets of fuel on the flames.
The latest arsonist, Paul Dixon, president of the Racehorse Owner’s Association (ROA) and chairman of the recently formed Horsemen’s Group (“we need a real 18th century name for this new organisation, don’t you think?”) wants a strike. He said: "Racing should organise to exert maximum harm on the bookmakers. This would require having nonracing days.”
So Dixon thinks that what is needed for a sport in crisis due to its waning popularity with punters, is to deprive punters of opportunities to bet on it/attend a meeting?
The Horsemen’s Group was set up because its members (owners, trainers, jockeys etc) were sick of the ineffectiveness of the BHA and Racing for Change ‘initiatives’. Understandable, we’re all sick of them. But any coup to unseat Nic Coward and his merry band needs astute leadership. The HG, led by Dixon and Alan Morcombe, are showing no signs of any kind of leadership.
Racing’s whole premise for raising more funds seems to be this: “Bookmakers make big profits and we want some of those profits because horse racing is worth an awful lot more to bookmakers than the amount that is bet on it. It’s not fair. We want money. We want money. We want money.”
A group of teenage schoolkids could develop a stronger argument in a debating society.
The biggest blunder the BHA has ever made is losing control of the fixture list. Racecourses take bids from broadcasters , costs are passed on to bookmakers who then need to try and aggregate two unsynchronised services for their customers.
Bookmakers resent the cost and the hassle – why should they promote the product? They have plenty other ‘betting opportunities’ to offer punters, for which they don’t need to pay huge media rights and levy bills. So they take the sensible commercial approach and promote the most profitable products. Punters steadily migrate to FOBTs, Football, Virtual Racing, Virtual Football etc.
If the BHA controlled all the fixtures, then they could sell the media rights, at a rate that, alongside levy contributions, made commercial sense for bookmakers. They’d have one synchronised feed at a reasonable price and a product they’d be much happier to promote to punters.
Can you ever imagine the Premier League allowing clubs to negotiate their own individual media rights deals?
Racing needs to realise that Bookmakers do not need its product. All that bookmakers require to be successful - as an industry – is a level playing field. If racing, as a betting product, prices itself out of the market and becomes unavailable in High St betting shops, turnover will drop for a while then punters will adjust and bet on other products. Great result for bookmakers who have saved themselves upwards of £120m a year in costs.
As things stand, unless there is radical change at ‘the top’ (wherever the hell that is), courses will begin closing at a steady rate in the next two or three years. Ten years from now I’ll be amazed if half our current number are still operating.
The prognosis is this: The Horsemen’s Group will demand a fat share of the media rights money from courses with the threat of not providing runners at those courses. The big MR money is at the major courses so the Plumptons and Worcesters of the world will have no clout, very little MR cash and little to offer the HG who won’t provide runners. Goodbye Plumpton and Worcester and all their fixtures.
And as the small courses steadily die off, you get more and more days without any turf racing so no Levy is generated and interest in the betting product wanes further until racing becomes about as popular as speedway.
So, when very few want to bet on this now ‘quaint’ sport from bygone days, bookmakers don’t need to provide it. Media Rights money dries up, the Levy is dead and, eventually, even Cheltenham in mid March might find its famous amphitheatre echoing to nothing other than the shouts of children playing in the streets of the new housing estates.
Anyone for a nice five bedroom with double garage where the last fence used to stand? “Lovely views of Cleeve Hill, Sir”
Racing’s ‘leaders’ are not just fiddling while Rome burns, they are running around chucking buckets of fuel on the flames.
The latest arsonist, Paul Dixon, president of the Racehorse Owner’s Association (ROA) and chairman of the recently formed Horsemen’s Group (“we need a real 18th century name for this new organisation, don’t you think?”) wants a strike. He said: "Racing should organise to exert maximum harm on the bookmakers. This would require having nonracing days.”
So Dixon thinks that what is needed for a sport in crisis due to its waning popularity with punters, is to deprive punters of opportunities to bet on it/attend a meeting?
The Horsemen’s Group was set up because its members (owners, trainers, jockeys etc) were sick of the ineffectiveness of the BHA and Racing for Change ‘initiatives’. Understandable, we’re all sick of them. But any coup to unseat Nic Coward and his merry band needs astute leadership. The HG, led by Dixon and Alan Morcombe, are showing no signs of any kind of leadership.
Racing’s whole premise for raising more funds seems to be this: “Bookmakers make big profits and we want some of those profits because horse racing is worth an awful lot more to bookmakers than the amount that is bet on it. It’s not fair. We want money. We want money. We want money.”
A group of teenage schoolkids could develop a stronger argument in a debating society.
The biggest blunder the BHA has ever made is losing control of the fixture list. Racecourses take bids from broadcasters , costs are passed on to bookmakers who then need to try and aggregate two unsynchronised services for their customers.
Bookmakers resent the cost and the hassle – why should they promote the product? They have plenty other ‘betting opportunities’ to offer punters, for which they don’t need to pay huge media rights and levy bills. So they take the sensible commercial approach and promote the most profitable products. Punters steadily migrate to FOBTs, Football, Virtual Racing, Virtual Football etc.
If the BHA controlled all the fixtures, then they could sell the media rights, at a rate that, alongside levy contributions, made commercial sense for bookmakers. They’d have one synchronised feed at a reasonable price and a product they’d be much happier to promote to punters.
Can you ever imagine the Premier League allowing clubs to negotiate their own individual media rights deals?
Racing needs to realise that Bookmakers do not need its product. All that bookmakers require to be successful - as an industry – is a level playing field. If racing, as a betting product, prices itself out of the market and becomes unavailable in High St betting shops, turnover will drop for a while then punters will adjust and bet on other products. Great result for bookmakers who have saved themselves upwards of £120m a year in costs.
As things stand, unless there is radical change at ‘the top’ (wherever the hell that is), courses will begin closing at a steady rate in the next two or three years. Ten years from now I’ll be amazed if half our current number are still operating.
The prognosis is this: The Horsemen’s Group will demand a fat share of the media rights money from courses with the threat of not providing runners at those courses. The big MR money is at the major courses so the Plumptons and Worcesters of the world will have no clout, very little MR cash and little to offer the HG who won’t provide runners. Goodbye Plumpton and Worcester and all their fixtures.
And as the small courses steadily die off, you get more and more days without any turf racing so no Levy is generated and interest in the betting product wanes further until racing becomes about as popular as speedway.
So, when very few want to bet on this now ‘quaint’ sport from bygone days, bookmakers don’t need to provide it. Media Rights money dries up, the Levy is dead and, eventually, even Cheltenham in mid March might find its famous amphitheatre echoing to nothing other than the shouts of children playing in the streets of the new housing estates.
Anyone for a nice five bedroom with double garage where the last fence used to stand? “Lovely views of Cleeve Hill, Sir”
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Bookmakers are scum and any damage that can be inflicted on them should be
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called in badblokes the other day at 3.45pm while waiting for my wife who was shopping was there for just short of 30 mins and never saw a bet struck.after 10 mins a chinese guy came in and put £180 into a slot machine he left the same time as me 4.15pm £180 lighter.In my opinion you could shut racing down for 3 months and the only people who would suffer is the genuine racing folk and the on course layers without a shop
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good post steeple chasing.
It is crazy that controlling body of horse racing doesnt control its fixtures. |
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Disagree, IS. Steeplchasing's normally got something worth reading but that's a load of nonsense.
Unless another sport comes along that can organise itself to have a betting event every 10 mins or so throughout the week the prognosis above is absurd. Certainly the first half of the post will strike a chord with some....but I fear you've got a bit carried away from halfway onwards there, SC. |
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Good read Steeplechasing. Pleasure to find interesting threads for a change.
However, I'd like to argue with your conclusion a little. Perhaps the number of courses is part of the problem and a reduction in the numbers might be overall part of the solution? Put it this way. If the number of courses were doubled, would the industry be in a better place? Doubling the fixtures would mean halving the prizemoney per race. More people would have less distance to travel to get to see a race but would they see better racing? Would more people actually attend? Even if they did would this lead to an increase in the amount bet on racing? Would TV be able to cover the meetings? Would newspapers give twice as much space to racing? Would more punters in betting shops be seduced away from the alternatives. I think on balance that we might conclude that doubling the fixtures would only make matters worse. But suppose the number of meetings were hlved. Sure, fewer people would find it convenient but wouldn't they get to see better racing? Wouldn't the media be more interested? Do more people follow football becasue of the Premier League or despite it? Would trainers/jockeys/owners be better off wityh higher prizemoney per race? I think that the answer to all of these questions is yes and that a reduction in quantity and a an increase in quality is what is actually called for. The industry is over-breeding. There are too many trainers in the game. Probably too many kockeys. There are certainly too many poor horses. There are certainly too many poor courses. We should welcome a contraction of the sport because it has become too fat, much like the public sector. |
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If you reduce fixtures do you not reduce levy? What you save on prizes would not be available to put in elsewhere because you haven't generated any levy. It's an ever decreasing circle and more often than not the bad fixtures are, in profit versus prize money analysis, the most levy-generative.
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There has to be a optimum amount of fixtures though, we've tried saturation as is seen and indeed turns many gamblers away, there was a good piece on "The tyranny of choice" over products recently where it was shown that there is a certain number where people become too confused and walk away from the product.
The Off Course industry has had its way in virtually everything it wanted from legislators and Racing, think 30 years back and see the changes now Freedom of increased opening hours Pictures beamed into shops Allowed to serve refreshments Advertising allowed Favourable tax change to gross profits Technology enabling them to permit Cashiers with less product knowledge running shops Increased fixtures In fact one of the only things they didnt get that they wanted was getting the age lowered to 16 (probably to get even cheaper staff) So both parties, who's success relied upon one another to a certain extent haven't done that good a job.... |
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If you reduce fixtures do you not reduce levy?
If there are 6 meetings on a day, do you play at all 6? Or do you concentrate only on 1 or 2? If 1,2, or 3 were eliminated what difference would it make to you? How likely is it that you would be prepared to lose twice as much given twice as many meetings? Do yopu not have a fixed amount that you are prepared to lose per day/week/year? Would you be prepared to bet 2,3 or 4 times as much on a top race compared to a low-grade race? The BHA went with the bookmakers argument that more fixtures=more levy but they would argue that, wouldn't they? Also, the type of punter that wants a fix every minute can't be satisfied other than by a machine. Why bother trying to satisfy them. Quality racing = quality punters? How much would t/o fall/. The increrase in gross take came about with the introduction of a GP tax which corresponded with the fixtures increase. We need to know whether or how much levy might fall with a fixtures reduction. My guess is not by as much as we are led to believe. |
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A correctly managed reduction in fixtures would doubtfully reduce the levy, the higher the quality of racing the more money would be bet.
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If there are 6 meetings on a day, do you play at all 6? Or do you concentrate only on 1 or 2? If 1,2, or 3 were eliminated what difference would it make to you? How likely is it that you would be prepared to lose twice as much given twice as many meetings? Do yopu not have a fixed amount that you are prepared to lose per day/week/year? Would you be prepared to bet 2,3 or 4 times as much on a top race compared to a low-grade race?
I'm afraid if my betting habits were extrapolated across the country the Levy would be in a very sorry state, Sandown. |
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You can see what the off course mantra of more races did to dog racing. They even managed to destroy one of the most popular bets for the masses(f/c doubles) by steadily increasing the number of races per meeting and then adding extra ones.
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Disagree, IS. Steeplechasing’s normally got something worth reading but that's a load of nonsense.
Unless another sport comes along that can organise itself to have a betting event every 10 mins or so throughout the week the prognosis above is absurd. If only it were that simple, Headmaster. Bookmakers survived two periods without racing because of foot and mouth. In 1967, racing was suspended for two months. The 2001 suspension was much shorter but the Cheltenham Festival was among many meetings lost. To my knowledge, no bookmakers closed permanently because there was no horse racing. Since the inception of Turf TV (Gambling Commission fees have also played their part), betting shops have been closing at a steady rate, especially Independents. I know of one well run Independent operator who, numbers-wise, is in the top 10 firms in the UK; they recently closed 10% of their estate. Even the major bookmakers are closing shops. I spoke to a very senior executive last year and asked what would happen if FOBTs were declared illegal: “I’d close 80% of my shops” was the response. If you believe that the provision of six betting events an hour entitles a sport to survive and charge its customers whatever it likes, you are living in the same dream world as ‘racing’. Bookmakers are the distribution channel for racing’s product. Like any business, they will continue to pay for the product so long as it is financially worthwhile to do so. Once it becomes unviable, they will close the distribution channel. Do you think racing will survive without off-course betting on the High St? Sandown, I agree that a reduction in fixtures – less quantity, more quality – is desirable and, in the long term, potentially more profitable for the industry. But it needs to be reduction by strategic plan rather than by courses battling against administration. On the evidence so far, the Horsemen’s Group, have, like the banks in the past couple of years, nothing other than a short-term plan – let’s get what we can from the media rights cash. Their negotiating tactic is pretty crude – give us money or we won’t run horses at your course. How much does Worcester get in media rights payments? How much does Ascot get? We don’t know but we can guess which of them the HG would prefer to negotiate with. So when the HG have squeezed all they can from the courses with most money, what demands will they make as they move down the lower grade courses? How long before racecourses become resentful at being held to ransom? How long before the HG, drunk on its ‘success’ starts demanding some of the catering profits, a share of the Tote income, a spilt of the on-course bookies’ fees, appearance money? And how long before the multiple groups within the HG start bitching and in-fighting ? What’s the spread on how long the HG will be in business before further breakaway groups start forming? How will racecourses maintain the bartered-for prize money levels and still make the profits their stakeholders expect? I know, let’s demand more for the media rights. Er, sorry chaps, we’re at our limit there because our customers, the bookmakers, won’t pay any more. If you post on here, don’t confuse your betting acumen and intellect level with that of those who habitually use betting shops. Most of them bet for whatever ‘buzz’ it offers. They will take a lot less converting than you or I would to spend their cash on betting opportunities other than horse racing. Those betting horses online are, generally, considerably more astute than High St punters. But the really smart ones are being steadily squeezed out of horse race betting by software and traders who don’t want their business. Those who remain betting horses online are losing money. But that money, in most cases, is staying with the bookmakers because the majority are based offshore. I’m no defender of bookmakers, but if I were running their business (or any other), I’d be doing it, as most of them are, in the most profitable way possible. Bookmakers have a very effective pincer movement working on racing: they have total control online and on the High St, they are steadily moving the easily-swayed punter away from betting on their most expensive product – horse racing. For bookmakers to start promoting and selling horse racing enthusiastically, it needs to be worth their while to do so. All racing has managed to offer them so far are hugely expensive management consultancy analysis based on Brian and Ben, a few free entry days, bigger number cloths and a multi-million pound disaster of an idea to ‘premierise the product’. All bookmakers want is an affordable, profitable product. The BHA (or some competent commercial body capable of taking frequent reality checks) needs to gain full control of the fixture list and all corresponding rights and make sure they sell them at rate that keeps betting shops open rather than closing them. A rate that makes their distributors want to recruit horse-racing punters, not deter them. But what do we get today from those in charge? More bluster, grandstanding and empty threats. Racing survived foot and mouth, whether it will survive foot in mouth is another matter. |
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But what do we get today from those in charge? More bluster, grandstanding and empty threats. Racing survived foot and mouth, whether it will survive foot in mouth is another matter.
Very good [:D] |
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this plan would of worked, but hes just 10-15 too late LOL, bookmakers do not need horse racing or greyhounds racing anymore, game over afraid, shut the stable door horse bolted and just fight it out for the crumbs
if he could get them 4 arcade machines removed from each bookies, he would have a chance! |