Chief Stipe

MEETING NEWS Cambridge Trials Cancelled The Cambridge Trials scheduled for tomorrow (19/3) have been cancelled due to insufficient entries. (26 entries)

Really. How silly. Well one problem is very few actually do walk the track. Hence we use crash test dummies and come up with a plethora of excuses when the track turns to shyte like it did on Karaka Millions night.

Yes I guess a Grp 1 is more important than weddings and a funeral.

‘Been a long week': Jockey fined after falling asleep Tyler Schiller was caught sleeping five minutes before a race he was set to ride in. Jeremy Ng/Getty Images By Jett Hatton 08:26pm • 16 March 2024 Top jockey Tyler Schiller was fined by stewards at Rosehill on Saturday after he failed to make the pre-race parade for the Maurice McCarten Stakes (1100m) because he was asleep in the jockeys room. Schiller, who didn't have a ride in the previous race, had fallen asleep in the rest room and left the connections of Rich Fortune scratching their heads when their rider was a no show prior to the race. "I was just going in there to sit on something and I had a lay down but I wasn't expecting to fall asleep," Schiller told stewards. "It's been a long week." Schiller woken up by an official five minutes before the race was scheduled to jump. Rich Fortune was well backed from $26 into $7.50 and a late arrival at the barriers before failing to beat a runner home in the feature sprint won by Godolphin's Red Card. "Can you see where it sits in respect to your professionalism," acting chief steward Tom Moxon told Schiller during an inquiry into his nap. "You're riding on a feature day, Group 3 race, connections have booked a Group 1-winning rider and there you are fast asleep five minutes before a race. "It doesn't paint yourself in a good light in regard to your professionalism." He pleaded guilty to "failing to present himself in the mounting yard in a timely manner" and stewards issued a $500 fine. Last week the young rider rode his second Group 1 winner when booting home Lady Laguna to win the Canterbury Stakes (1300m).

I bet you I have walked more tracks than @TAB For Ever !!!

I hear @holy ravioli got the DCM on Kerre Woodhams talk back show for making extravagant claims without any proof! Who would have thought?

More interested in how ENTAIN are going to get 40%+ year on year.

Well I hope ENTAIN gets the new app going soon. Half the horses at Townsville don't have Jockeys!

I think that's what @Huey means by parasites. Hangers-on.

Well they haven't been achieving much considering all the money they have spent. Rubbish. You obviously don't have a clue about the relationship between climate and turf production. NZ is actually blessed with favourable conditions. Compare that with some overseas jurisdictions. Messara didn't actually say that. Another 3 tracks that don't work. Cancelled trials at Cambridge versus 29 trials at Taupo yesterday. Trainers in two centres didn't want the AWT's and have the stopped abandonments? Nope!

Not fake news nor gossip. There were injuries to horses at the Karaka Millions and if it had been a low key provincial meeting it would have been abandoned. You see that's where despite your appare t years of experience in the industry you are still ignorant of what harms horses. It wasn't the hardness of the track (was the penetrometer reading bullshit?) it was the slippery shifty surface. Sheer causes most problems to horses not the hardness. Yes many have and still do. Many have been mothballed. Never as long as poor tracks are produced.

Obviously. You are much like the previous administrators all hat and fascinator and no cattle. Nero fiddles why Rome burns. You might want to walk the tracks that your syndicate horses are forced to race on. They don't have much choice but you do and so do the punters.

All you see is fleas of no consequence.

Ok what odds are you offering? I'll take a $100.

Haven't you seen the photos of her in cars recently? Just like a number of your conspiracy theories they have fundamental flaws. What would prevent the public being told that she had died? The Royal Family can't over turn legislation or ignore it so authorities would have had to report the death. Have the children been taken out of school? Hell you talk some nonsense at times.

It happens when you get near to 100 years of age. 75 years of age...probably has a dodgy prostate like every elderly male. Not missing.

The problem is those things that really affect key stakeholders are beyond their control. Very very frustrating to pitch up to a racetrack that is unsafe to gallop a horse on or is in such poor condition that its performance will be adversely affected. If you are as connected as you suggest you are then you would know that many of the top stables had hurt horses after Karaka Millions night but in the "interests of the industry" bit their tongues from making comment.

As usual it is an error ridden piece.

Probably on the coat tails of another owner?

Being an Accountant can you explain where the 40% in extra revenue is coming from?

Entain to inject a tripartite shot of new life into TAB NZ by Brian de Lore Published 14 March 2024 Owners, trainers and jockeys have already tasted the benefits this season of increased stakes money emanating from the partnering of TAB NZ with the global betting giant Entain, and by the end of April, punters will get their turn, and it should be a game changer. Come to think of it, a large proportion of owners and trainers (not jockeys, hopefully) will fall into the category of punters, so they will be doubly pleased when Entain announce their three-pronged attack on the TAB NZ betting experience at the end of April. Coming is a state-of-the-art app and betting platform and a refresh of the TAB NZ brand’s livery. Sydney-based Entain CFO and Deputy CEO Lachlan Fitt expressed his enthusiasm for the app at a recent Ellerslie race meeting. The app and new platform comes to TAB NZ after around $200 million of Entain IT development for its global operations. Punters in NZ are historically entitled to a degree of TAB NZ cynicism after a prolonged period of poor service, poor odds, and incompetents in charge —some of whom had never placed a bet in their lives. How did it ever come to that? But suddenly, we have gone from the invisible and uncontactable TAB people to an Entain trio of three passionate racing people – CEO Dean Shannon, Lachlan Fitt and NZ-based Managing Director Cameron Rodger. Entain’s main players making the decisions for the future of NZ racing. From left, CEO Dean Shannon, CFO and Deputy CEO Lachlan Fitt, and NZ Managing Director Cameron Rodger The infusion of Entain money into stakes and these three’s presence, enthusiasm and availability has put a spring in the steps of Kiwi racing stakeholders. It’s a refreshing start. Cameron Rodger told me by phone last week: “We’re keeping the name and brand and everything that’s built up on it, but we’re giving it a new colour scheme and logo to give customers frustrated with the old platform – maybe the ones that have not been with us for a while – just to let them know this is a fresh start. “And it’s very good—a high-quality customer offering,” continued Rodger. We think the user experience will be top of the market, and the other key part of it is that it’s very stable. We know just how frequently you’ve had outages and downtime with the current platform, and that will be a thing of the past. New technology will provide a new experience So, I asked, what else can punters expect from the new app and platform? “What you have now is the exact product you’ve had all along; we’ve done nothing to improve it. We have put all our time and effort into the new product to get it up as quickly as possible. It will have more generosity, more flexibility, same-game, same-race multi-products—things that have become commonplace with offshore bookmakers and which, in NZ, the technology has lagged. “It will be a huge, ‘brought up to speed,’ moment that will include simple things such as navigating quickly between races. It will be one or two clicks for what currently might take four or five. And that makes a world of difference for someone trying to quickly get on pre-race or pre-match. “Betting on sports has been a big pain point for customers. It’s painfully slow, taking too long to accept, which has led people to think the bookmakers are being conservative, but it’s actually just the platform which was wired that way and can’t be changed.” Thanks, Mr Allen, Ms Hughes and company, for spending $50 million on a dud platform and committing the TAB to pay $17 million annually for the updates for ten years. But that commitment happened only five-and-a-half years ago, so has Entain negotiated its way out of the contract? I asked Cameron Rodger if we had settled the Openbet and Paddy Power baggage. Openbet and Paddy Power red-carded “Yes, we have completely moved off that platform, and there’s no residual Openbet or Paddy Power reliance. As part of the deal we struck, it was our cost to bear, which we factored into our equations. That was all sorted and squared away after we signed up. “It was a big cost, but we couldn’t stand still on that platform.” What a relief to hear that the potential to be weighed down by the ball and chain NZRB Allen/Hughes debt had been rectified and kicked for touch. But in my chat with Cameron Rodger, the ‘music to my ears’ part came when he said: “I think the big one I can give you that hopefully will be interesting and exciting for people to hear is that we are huge believers in freeware and broadening the television coverage to a wider audience.” Free-to-air televised racing? Free to air Trackside – wow, that would be a game-changer on its own. According to the constitution, marketing racing is supposedly the domain of NZTR but is rarely actuated. By default, it’s now the territory of Entain, whose presence has generated newsworthy coverage on mainstream TV and radio. At the Karaka Sales, Dean Shannon told me that Entain knew they had to make a ‘big splash’ to kick start racing here in NZ—it needed to be jolted into life to move forward. On the same question, Cameron Rodger recognised the need to revive the racing marketing and encourage new people to engage. We have had droll accountants making the decisions, closing down radio, newspaper content, and TAB retail outlets, reducing broadcasting costs, and annoying the customer base. How does any industry thrive on a downsizing mentality? Entain has shown it is diametrically opposed to that thinking. And since its arrival, it has injected $30 million more into NZ racing than its commitment to the contract. Other positives have happened in NZ racing in the past year: the revival of Ellerslie; NZ Bloodstock embracing the arrival of Entain and joining in with sponsorship, and NZTR initiating ‘The Kiwi’ slot race, which, according to several sources, is a collaboration between all three parties. Entain dragging the industry up with it Simply put, Entain is dragging the rest of the industry along with its dynamism. Meanwhile, the TAB NZ board can only be sitting on its hands, doing practically nothing, and wondering if it should be embarrassed by continuing to draw directors’ fees. The board is now relatively powerless and has failed to produce a half-year and full-year report for the year ending July 31, 2023. Why haven’t they? The answer simply lies in an embarrassing rise in costs and a downturn in profits for the year in question. At the half-year mark last financial year, the TAB profit had fallen behind by $9.4 million on the previous year and heading for a record annual running cost in the vicinity of $130 million. My regular reviews of the TAB’s financial downturn caused the bosses to stop publishing the monthly figures. And now, no half-year or annual report. There is no transparency or accountability, which is the short history of NZ racing. The TAB board comprises Anna Stove (Chair), Wendie Harvey, Raewyn Lovett, and Bill Birnie. Kristy McDonald no longer appears on the website as a director, so she presumably has resigned. Dean Shannon told me I shouldn’t be concerned about the cost of running the TAB from now on because Entain now covers all its expenses, along with a guaranteed minimum payment of $150 million a year to run the codes and provide stakes. He also said Entain expected to lose money for two years but should be in the black by year three. 30 percent of NZ online betting placed with Bet365 He aims to claw back the 30 percent of all online betting in New Zealand that goes directly offshore to Bet365, a privately owned platform that gives nothing back for the use of NZ racing. Cameron Rodger said Entain would not be pushing the issue of geo-blocking but leaving it to the due process of government to decide. The codes will benefit by an additional $100 million from Entain if it’s passed into law. Things have improved since Entain’s arrival, but this partnership has a cautionary side regarding the long-term sustainability of racing. We are in the honeymoon phase but should remember that the deal has to work financially for both parties to survive beyond the annual $150 million guarantee, which ceases in 2028. The five years will come around quickly, after which the partnership will be conducted on a 50/50 gross profit basis. We need Entain to turn its massive NZ investment into an excellent annual long-term profit so we can run for prizemoney that will incentivise Kiwis to grow breeding and racing back to higher levels than we have now. So, what do we really know about Entain beyond the charismatic trio of Shannon, Fitt and Rodger? What we know about Entain We know it’s a highly geared $4 billion global betting empire that, in August 2020, changed its name from GVC Holdings to Entain and has since invested heavily in various betting jurisdictions worldwide, including our TAB NZ. We know that the company is registered in the tax-haven Isle of Man, where it runs worldwide gambling operations under the Ladbrokes, Neds, BetCity, Eurobet, Sportingbet, Crystalbet, Coral, PartyPoker, bwin and BetMGM brands. BetMGM is Entain’s joint venture with MGM Resorts. We know the company’s share price fell by 40 percent last year, which caused shareholder dissatisfaction and indifferent reviews. Since then, replacements have arrived for the CEO and several board members. We know that Entain expects the NZ betting market of approximately NZ$600 million to grow by 35 percent over the next five years. We know that in an Australian interview last week, Dean Shannon was asked if he thought a 17 to 20 percent betting downturn across the board was a sizeable shift. He answered, “Yes, it has been a sizeable shift, but it shouldn’t be that surprising. This is predominantly driven by macroeconomic factors such as higher interest rates and cost-of-living pressures.” We know, most importantly, that if it hadn’t done a deal with Entain, TAB NZ would now be either broke or less attractively partnered with one of two alternative offers – fact. What else is there to know beyond that last bit?

Why didn't Matamata make it to the top 3 in any category?

Congratulations @aquaman you have won a free years subscription to the Womens Weekly.

But just because Trentham and Riccarton are now supposedly classified as Metro clubs they get in the top three by virtue of numbers not because of performance. Not to mention of course that Riccarton was classified as Provincial when they got their PGF donation from Winnie. Now it looks like we have three tier racing in NZ.

Some read part of it and made up or inferred the rest!