Huey

But you wouldn't have a job afterwards(just like those that train at the track wouldn't have a track to train their horse on) btw just to keep it real I'd spend the money on the first thing that came into my mind , like a match stick house I wouldn't be worried about really spending it wisely.

If you owned a house with 5 bedrooms and I rented out all of the rooms (I never contributed to R&M, nothing for the furniture ,nor insurance,electricity,telephone etc, but in fact I made it as difficult as I possibly could for you to rent the rooms out ) to 5 other people and took the money for those rented rooms for myself and then I got someone else to tell you that you had to sell your house and give all the proceeds to me, how keen would you be in doing that?

Well in some situations there is no upside for the club at all, so of course this bulk funding has to exist they set it up that way. i.e A normal Industry take the club makes nothing on oncourse turnover so there is no upside for the club in any risks associated with the meeting.In fact the club would probably be better off holding jumpouts in this instance.

Bred to win

Not to mention not every club has had the same opportunities as other clubs, when people suggest clubs are being selfish by not just handing their assets over to the industry they aren't comparing apples with apples. Some clubs are in the position they are in because of the policymakers in this industry. What if those assets are still being utilised ? Its also been said before , but who in their right mind would want significant sums of money going to the guys running the industry at the moment? I watched an interview last night with a prominent stud in Aus. and the proprietor made the most sense I've heard in saying "it all starts in the country and then heads to the city, thats why you need the country tracks". In NZ our leadership thinks it begins and end in the City.

Yes I have heard the same , most of the cuts are occurring at the bottom , probably going to make it worse.

Brilliant to see and happens across almost every country track over that period, but the dummies want to stop this. I can't figure it out!

No as Freda has put thats absolutely correct, though probably what happens is Marton get invoiced by Manawatu for the stakes etc. perhaps and certainly for the use of the course. Just another way to prop up a club in the club imo.

I agree, but if less meeting etc there needs to be considerable analysis ,future proofing and discussions had to come up with the right decisions. Not just so and so track is in a town and the guy running the club is a great guy etc cause that's about all there has been to date. I believe racing needs to move away from the city centres it's relevance is lost there, the cost of operating and restrictions around operating/training are more and several other reasons, TV is the future for watching racing (if the pandemic hasn't taught us that nothing will) on course attendance not so important and that's been proven before this virus.

I'm not suggesting closing it, I just meant I didn't enjoy the racing there as much as other tracks. Good luck to them holding race meetings there but they shouldn't get preferential treatment especially in spring summer.

I;m not comparing Premier racing or the funding model or horse quality , I'm just comparing the state of racing there, the competitiveness of it , the entertainment etc Some country tracks with industry days provide better racing as a spectacle than Trentham might. I was just using Trentham as an example.

Neither do I , but they can certainly improve their processes more and stop gauging the owner for simple basic tasks like name registration,mare returns,lease agreements etc just because they have no idea how to improve them. $120 to name a horse an absolute joke!

Well compare watching racing in the Spring/Summer at Trentham to watching racing at Ruakaka , each to their own but the racing at Ruakaka holds no interest for me, its often dominated by the same trainers, horses tend to lead up and get gifted the race, the only horse that really sticks in my mind making ground up there is Very Elegant for some reason, just my opinion though good luck to you if youre racing there or having a punt. Doesn't matter what the restraint is NZracing and the club should have got it sorted , a cone for a finishing post whats next some string as the starting gates?

Happens at a lot of courses at that time of year CS. There are plenty of good surfaces at that time of year that don't get used, for some reason Ruakaka gets a more than fair suck of the sav, probably because they race during the winter. I've got nothing against them having meetings, but I agree its seriously boring to watch and its what I'm expecting from the AWT after about 6 months. The winning post just shows me how much they really care, thats just the worst look. They can't sort that out? Yippee lets take NZ racing to the world!!

The issue is they don't cost the industry anything, they are self sustainable in most respects if they aren't then cut the umbilical chord ans see if they'll survive. You see there would be any discussion about them staying open if they weren't self sustainable, because the funder would have cut the funding by now now to ensure they weren't so they could close them down, thats the problem they are self sustainable and they are being used . They would close the lot tomorrow by holding back funding if they were funding them, but they aren't. Thats why they have no analysis around cost savings cause they don't know. I know you aren't fooled by it Freda , but they are not a drain on the industry at all. Maybe this is what NZ racing is and the only way its sustainable via these smaller venues and not this dreamworld stuff they are trying to sustain.

Barry you've suggested all this stuff and no one has bad any attention to it, I blame the industry for that. A bet like the industry ignoring the D& E crowd isn't it? You'll get no argument from me regarding the state of racing and that there are few interested, not sure where you read that in my post but anyway I digress. My point is there isn't a huge following coming in after this last generation , so why alienate the one thats interested? But the industry believes the next generation can be found by ignoring the existing , won't happen not to mention the next generation have no staying power,struggle to cope with losing and want everything now - all qualities you need for racing and punting on horses imho. I could go on and on about the club situation , but like you I'm over it ,no one listens.

I think you over look the peripheral benefits of having customers D&E in particular in large volume, its this kind of thinking that has started the ruination of racing in NZ. Its these people that assist in building the next generation of race goers , local interest and stories not your A&B customers most of them are gone when they realise how hard it is. Do TA or Go Racing ignore their D&E customers, no because they know those D&E contribute to their business and some of them will become A,B&C customers. Do you hear them saying customer D&E should not be worried about lets just look after the A&B customers who have huge shares, no thats not how they work and its not how racing works , there is a place for everyone. Not to mention racing cannot afford to just spit out its D&E customers , its done that with a couple of generations of customers who its tried to ply back with alcohol and parties to get them to return and guess what its not a long term solution, I think racing would give anything to have D&E customers from those lost generations it would sure help a lot. I fear this will be the real kick in the teeth for NZ racing once the TAB , racing clubs and Pubs are torn to pieces they are community hubs and you'll lose huge amounts of interest in the sport by getting rid of them.

Think how bad the numbers would be on the website if they didn't offer bonus bets etc to entice punters to use it.

Youre right an absolute flop. I'm not a sports punter but the offering of several more options for sports betting was one of the obvious reasons for it, I'm not sure the majority of kiwi punters is sophisticated enough for more options (SLB 2.0 I think is a sports punter what are your thoughts on that?) and they absolutely destroyed the racing side of things in my opinion.

That progress is all well and good Barry if you have a website that works, if you don't and you'd have to be mad to thing that TAB website is any good and the numbers align with that its hopeless, so you've got to continue to service your customers until you have something to move them onto. The problem with the NZ TAB is they believe their own hype and just put something in place and expect the punter/customer to flock to it , it doesn't and shouldn't work like that. I don't believe the website was even tested on decent number of customers before release, if it was the customers must have all been sports bettors. So failing that you have to have channels for them to bet with or get information on otherwise you lose them, I'm perplexed at all of this progress garbage when 40% of the TAB customers are probably of retirement age, why alienate them? and thats not just the TAB thats racing in general, racing missed a couple of generations but wants to jump into the future before they catch up. Have you tried to watch race replays on loveracing or Live racing on TAB app on mobile devices absolutely hopeless. Apart from the pdf form on the TAB website or knowing a lot of other sites to get that info (and most customers don't know them) you need a formguide available for the punter. I believe the reason for the decline here has been distribution and a lack of reliability of the product. Sometimes you have to look outside your bubble and see there are others out there.

They'll close them no doubt about it. Racing in this country can't help but kick itself in the foot. Got rid of Freeview, Informant,Phonebet the list goes on and on, just another nail in the coffin. They probably think they have done well online with no stores/pubs etc open but they have had a captive audience.

If you were here for the last 18 months you'd be confused as the rest of us, the real answer is there isn't a factual one, because there hasn't been any analysis completed. Most participants in the industry know that favouritism, bias etc has led to these decisions. Its somewhat odd how no existing clubs with plenty of race days, full time staff were targeted for closure.

Be interesting to see who the Senior Management team is after all of this.

Neither are the closure of several tracks necessary , but they are part of the wider scheme of destroying the sport. My point is , is this yet another element of undertaking race meetings that wasn't communicated to the wider industry and just a select few, which appears to be a very prevalent tactic, whether you deem it necessary or not.