RaceCafe..#1...Tipsters Thread.... Share Your Fancies For Fun...Lets See Who The Best Tipsters Here Are.
Midget

So it's all about the punters is it ?

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If the the punters do in fact drive the industry would you all be kind enough to dissect the relevant legislation and comment on the performance of the NZRB.

The more erudite amongst you ( no one from Nth Canterbury please ) might like to tackle 9(1)a and offer an opinion on that clause.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Exactly Midget.

And the only way to do that I can see, and from the weight of discussion to date, is to increase net revenue. The only way I see for them to do that is to concentrate on providing a more attractive product for their customers as a primary goal.

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8 minutes ago, 2Admin2 said:

9 (c) and (d) relate to revenue do they not?

Yes, that's the only way they have available to fund their other obligations such as 9 (a), so it's a no brainer that they need more sales and/ or lower costs to discharge those functions any better than they are. For the former, they must grow the business with new customers or increased sales to existing customers.

I realise that may be difficult to grasp for some not from North Canterbury.

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Cubes and Mrs Cubes went to Riccarton about 5 years for a top-level announcement meeting , and this English dude who worked for NZRB or NZTR had come down from the North Island and everything , and Cubity got told about the top secret imminent arrival of some Triple Trio thingy or somesuch but we suspect that this did not achieve full expectations of revenue increase .

Cubemeister therefore suspects that in answer to the thread title is : No......It is not all about the punter , but rather ALL people who derive their livelihood from racing

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3 hours ago, Midget said:

If the the punters do in fact drive the industry would you all be kind enough to dissect the relevant legislation and comment on the performance of the NZRB.

The more erudite amongst you ( no one from Nth Canterbury please ) might like to tackle 9(1)a and offer an opinion on that clause.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The key words in this would begin with the letter P wouldn't  they?

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9 1 a  :  is supply and demand..   In my humble opinion, it crosses all of racing..  you have to breed horses to supply the owners and trainers, you have to have trainers and owners to provide the horses to the track for the jockey's to ride and for the punters to punt on, and you have to have good horses and attract crowds to create a demand for sponsors and to supply them with promotional opportunities.   However, all of that cannot happen to a professional extent unless you have the punter, because he/she provides constant income to the facilities that offer the venue for the racing of the horses that the owners and trainers provide and the jockey's ride.

In yesteryear they did have racing on a track with horses that had an owner/trainer but it wasn't until the punter came on board to provide an income to the owner/trainer/jockey that it really took off with venues opening in other areas and the demand for breeding of superior horses came into play.   I don't really think that there is any escaping that.   Racing needs that independent dollar.. which is the demand.. as long as punters demand racing, then there will be a need for supply.

 

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We should spare a thought for our forebears from the early days, who pioneered the racing game tracks , clubs ect, and got things started. Whats with all this north Canterbury talk, is the club making a come back.

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From my point of view I think we're all punters and as someone on a single income with one broodmare trying my best to produce a better racehorse than his/her mother just maybe I am a bigger punter than some!

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Leggy and Admin, only 8(b) clearly relates to punters so please stick to the facts, and compliance with the relevant legislation.

I do agree though that creating a better product and increasing turnover, revenue and profit from gambling is our only realistic hope and should this be a priority, but it's not enshrined in law.

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The last sentence will confirm things Midget.

Race meeting numbers reduced in Central Otago

 

 

TAYLER STRONG:

Thoroughbred racing in Central Otago has been reduced to two meetings in the dates allocated for next season.

The  reduction from four meetings is part of a plan by New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing, the governing body, to reduce the number of race meetings. The plan is aimed at increasing prize money in the wake of declining horse numbers.

Meetings lost in Otago and Southland are: Oamaru in August; Winton in November; Omakau in late February and Cromwell in March.

The Central Otago Racing Club, racing at Omakau, has been reduced to one permit, January 3. The Otago RC previously raced at Cromwell in late February or early March. The club has retained a meeting at Cromwell on Sunday, November 27. The Winton Jockey Club are now down to one permit.

"Other meetings in the area about the same time influenced the decision on the March meeting at Cromwell and NZTR has stressed that the dates will be reviewed for the following season," said Murray Acklin, a former racing administrator at the highest level and life member of the ORC.

The ORC has been racing at Cromwell since 1999 and has held two meetings a season on the track since 2006.

Acklin said the decline in the number of racing permits in the South Island was alarming.

"The South Island is down from some 94 meetings two seasons ago to about 78 which equates to about a 14 per cent reduction. Leading trainer Michael Pitman has estimated a loss of about $1 million in stakes.

"It is a loss of critical mass and will mean owners will have to wait longer between meetings to find suitable races."

He said a tier one feature meeting was desperately needed in the South Island every week to at least give owners an opportunity to compete for good money.

"To NZTR's credit they will split races to ensure most horses get a start but there are much wider issues to contend with," he said.

Matthew Hall, the general manager racing and handicapping for NZTR, said the number of permits allocated for next season had been reduced by nine in the North Island and seven in the South Island. NZTR had settled on 319 meetings overall, four more than the target.

He was unable to give an indication of the level of stakes for races.

"The Stakes issue is unclear. It will depend on the distribution from the TAB," he said.

 

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Ted I don't generally expect the average person to grasp the issues at hand, or have viable solutions, because they lack information or a wider perspective.

That said interested parties should look at the Te Rapa noms Saturday, only 3 open class horses in the sprint, and two racing out of their grade.

Similar in the R85.

The 65 grade have about 30 entries each though......the grade system is fucked, the handicapping model is fucked, the gender bias is destroying racing....but the morons do nothing, and the useless Trainers Assn stands there and collectively nod their thick vacant heads.

Makes you want to cry seeing the game being shredded like this.

To close, how can you have less meetings and expect to increase revenue ??

Oh that's right, this is the crowd who did away with Sunday racing so they must know what they're doing, FFFFFF !!!!!!!

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45 minutes ago, Midget said:

To close, how can you have less meetings and expect to increase revenue ??

You are right. This is another hare brained scheme aimed to give the impression that stakes are improving by allocating the stakes funding from the scrapped dates to the remaining ones. Essentially, a Ponzi scheme and we all know what eventually happens to those. They have evidence too. This was tried in the 90s and all that happened was revenue went into free-fall.

That said, I do think that you could have less meetings and increased revenue but not as an isolated strategy. Theoretically, you would hope that punter losses from the lost meetings would transfer to the remaining ones. What they fail to grasp, is that will only happen if the remaining product is more attractive than the competition e.g. the other codes, other jurisdictions, sports and worst, other wagering providers. So, you still need to do what most seem to agree is necessary as a priority and produce a more attractive and competitive product for punters. To do that, the focus as you have pointed out, must be on infrastructure, i.e. the tracks in particular, the handicapping system, the stakes structure and the delivery and pricing of the wagering products.

So, I think the more useful question is, if you have less meetings, what else do you need to do so that together, this leads to increased revenue?

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Meanwhile, the problems of (a) Lack of Money and (b) Poor Management remain. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but in order to increase prizemoney, they reduce the number of meetings. How dumb is that if it's not accompanied by even stronger action to enact change? 16 meeting will free up how much in stake money to be redistributed amongst the remaining 319 meetings?? About a $1m or $1.5m? What % of Head Office expense costs would need to be cut in order to have the same effect but keep the 16 meetings - which are revenue raisers and stakes providers? 1% ? If I was the Chairman of NZRB I would immediately ask for a Plan to come to the Board that reduces costs by 15% - without reducing services. Clearly, there seems to be a lack of direction here and to cut revenue producing product is stupid. 

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Guest 2Admin2

You can't have more races with less horses.  Races with less than 8 horses are not economic and are terrible quality.  The problem we have is we haven't matched the number of horses to the number of available races quick enough.  We were hamstrung by the export agreement.  If we had moved quickly then we could have arrested some of the turnover decline.  Everyone knows that it would take another 3 years to build the horse population up and there is no incentive to do that.

The method by where those races are allocated to is flawed.  There is no logic to it.  For example there is no incentive to bring Foxton back into the programme when they are looking to align the number of races with the number of horses.  Even though Foxton offers many dvantages from a track surface perspective.

Add to this the skewed handicapping policies and the female bias and we have further pressure on reducing the horse numbers.  Vicious circle.  Now if they act quickly by changing those policies we might see some horses particularly geldings stay longer therefore arresting some of the pressure on the decline.

Given the breeders seem to have a higher return than most owners (yes some of them are both) why isn't the ticket clipped at sales time to help fund stakes?

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Guest 2Admin2
31 minutes ago, Leggy said:

Here's what happened when this was tried previously.

 

graphs96-03.gif

Leggy as an academic who works in the social sciences I would have thought you would have been a little bit cleverer in presenting graphical data.  There are two graphs missing here Number of Races and Number of Horses.  Number of meetings doesn't give an accurate correlation.

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Guest 2Admin2

It is interesting to note that as of 10 June 2016 the total number of races is down 3.67% (91 races) however turnover has dropped only 0.35%.  The number of races with less than 8 horses is down 13%.  

Interestingly there is over 170 races we don't export.

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37 minutes ago, 2Admin2 said:

 Races with less than 8 horses are not economic and are terrible quality. 

That may be true to an extent admin, however it's a bit of a faulty statistic. While a 14 horse race will generate significantly more gross revenue than a 7 horse race, on average it won't generate as much as two 7 horse races.

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Guest 2Admin2
1 minute ago, Leggy said:

That may be true to an extent admin, however it's a bit of a faulty statistic. While a 14 horse race will generate significantly more gross revenue than a 7 horse race, on average it won't generate as much as two 7 horse races.

Yes but what about subtracting direct costs.  Surely a more accurate measure is the gross profit per race.  Would paying two lots of stakes in 7 horse fields return more gross profit?

At the other end of the scale gross revenue per extra horse drops off after a certain number of horses is reached.  That is, contrary to Berri's view, it would be better to have two 14 horse races than one 28 horse race.

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