westbrew

Actually that brings up a very important point in New Zealand who does what Austrac does in Australia??? And when was the last time they did an audit of NZ TAB, i don't see any mention in the TAB last annual report that they have had the tick of approval, and i think they would have mentioned it if they have,

Entain Australia is a much smaller operation than the casinos or banks or sportsbet for that matter. The bottom line is the stuff about systems is a red herring, what all of these Austrac claims show is that the management culture at all of these orgainisations was one of willful blindness, hell a little outfit in the global scale like Ladbrokes Australia and Neds Australia actually have no excuse as the volume of transactions they are dealing with is miniscule on a global scale, there has been really good software around to manage this for over 15 years. The key has been if the management of the organisation have a culture of compliance first and profit second. I believe the culture set by Dean Shannon was one of don't look to hard profit comes first. Now we see turnover in Australia falling as Austrac has made the corporate bookies look a bit harder and so the dodgy money has been drying up. Funny how Shannon and Co turn up in NZ and our turnover is apparently going up, guess he has figured no Austrac in good old NZ.

Perhaps what is needed is to end the old JCA system, i think they are called adjudicators now, a layer of complexity that is not needed, let the stewards hold the drivers accountable, maybe that would give the stewards more confidence to question drives and tactics.

Very interesting statement, they aim to enhance Entain AML and CTF compliance by June 2025. Looking at NZ TAB annual report it appears they are under the impression that Entain have great systems already, is this just another example of having a Board that has no experience in gambling and the associated risks of financial crime expecting a global wagering outfit to put doing the right thing ahead of profit. I hope they are not asleep at the wheel as the last thing racing needs is to be seen to be profiting from the proceeds of crime.

It seems very strange that HRNZ are silent on the matter. The club continue to play the line nothing to see here but then fail to deliver any specific details. Does the minister need to have DIA do an audit of the club to ensure that further public funds are not needed to bail out racing yet again. I think the public would have very little appetite for tax payers money being used for this.

I have not herd anything for a while. The last I herd the sale of Pukekohe had not happened and they were 80m in debt as at the end of last year, with an interest bill of approx 500k per month being added to the debt. Have they found another buyer for their land, and if so at what price?? The last financials i saw show they are not able to sustain these interest payments from a cash flow perspective, thus the Bank are adding them to the Debt. The ATC is an incorporated society and as such is required to be run with much higher standards than a private company. Is the board of HRNZ involved in monitoring this club?

NZ Govt will attempt to place a geo block much as Australia does, on all on line casinos outside the licensed 15, there will more than likely be ways around it for the Tech savvy, plus the Big 15 will be allowed to advertise excuse the expression their tits off, so good luck to TAB/Entain vs 15 online casinos. All us old buggers bought up on racing will plug away but the younger crowd I'm not so sure they are invested in racing anymore.

Ellerslie is designed to cope with very large amounts of Rain. The problem when they started was rain on the day was making it slippery, they have solved that by putting the machinery thru it and thus in layman's terms ruffing it up, as long as they continue to do that, the track will be able to be raced on no matter the amount of rain it cops. As to the appeal of the punting product that will produce, i can only say i am a small punter but i will not be betting on Ellerslie at present.

TAB 4 Eva i am interested in your numbers, i have had a look at the annual accounts of TAB NZ where they say they have provided 26.5 million to sport and 225 million to racing. However when i look at note 8 in their accounts it shows distributions to racing community 214.6m and pokie grants to sporting organisations 3.3 million. I assume the difference between what the financials say ie 215m and what the blurb at the start of the report says ie 225m for racing and 26.5m for sport for a total of 251.5m is made up of the 21m which has come from race fields payments from aussie corps ( which is not anything to do with the TAB business, but they are happy to claim it as a distribution made by them) and the rest is a smoke and mirrors payment re gaming duty refunds. Also the pokie money is split 80% racing and 20% sport. It is clear to me that if racing is getting 225m and sport 26.5m but the turnover is 50/50 as per your Feb number suggests, Racing has well and truly got itself an unsustainable business model, which sometime in the future a Government looking to better fund community sports will tap into.

Geo-Blocking will not affect on-line casino license holders, think of it in these terms, there will be one provider to bet on racing and sports TAB/Entain and there will be 15 online casinos to bet with.

Do not buy Commercial sensitivity, as the business has a NZ monopoly, so who would be gaining a commercial advantage if they were to release comprehensive turnover figures by each code and sport, as they have done in the past???

Yes it is very interesting what they have chosen to leave out??? Given the TAB has simply provided Entain with a License to run there operation why are the usual details being left out????

I would be interested to see the numbers, assuming they come from entain somewhere they will be turnover numbers, it was only a matter of time before sport overtook racing, the big question will be when do big revenue sports like Basketball and Tennis wake up and say how come we don't get a share of the profits? They get a measly 2.5% of turnover, and a few thousand in pokie grants.

Well they need to wake up, 123/1 in a vote in Parliament really??? They think it is all Woke pressure groups, look society moves on back in the 70s Softball and Tennis were big sports in NZ now they are basically non entities as far as serious competition sports within NZ. I love racing and have all my life but the Greyhound people are deluding themselves if they think this is just a woke beat up. Horse racing will survive as they have political clout, look at the KCs Judges, Dames and Sirs that own racehorses, plus look at all the pictures of whinny and Luxton at the races with the mulit millionaire crowd. Greyhound racing basically lost the support of joe blow and unlike horse racing does not have the political clout to fall back on. They have some serious cash use it to help your license holders and dogs move on with their lives.

Couple of things here, the preparation of a track is a NZTR directive, and as the stipes work for RIB they have no obligation whatsoever to make sure that tracks are presented on the morning of the races as per NZTR directives (they are there to ensure license holders adhere to the rules). Given this NZTR has a directive which they have no way of enforcing. I have been a reader of the racing forums for a number of years, while i have only been a small time owner, breeder and punter, when i took the plunge to become a contributor to racing forums early this year, BOAY welcomed me with open arms, the other site referred to in this forum actually made it very difficult to join or contribute.

The first win i ever had as an owner was at Foxton. CD racing is not in a good place at the moment, the RACE financials are very very poor and if RACE cannot make a profit from Racing in the CD, the powers that be at NZTR will need to step in, but does a guy who got the DCM from Sky City really know how to fix the problems in the CD????

Well i attended Trentham on Saturday, my first visit since about 2010 I think, there is no doubt in my mind that we are at the beginning of the end for that course, with all surplus land sold, very little support from joe public ( with no public facilities anymore that's not surprising) and reading thru RACE financials bottom line is that the numbers in their accounts show that racing is not generating enough money to support the running of meetings plus the ongoing of maintenance of tracks and facilities. Trentham needs a serious upgrade to get the next generation to attend Race meetings and with stakes where they are, the money is not there to support that, so i expect Trentham to be sold off within 5 years.

It is clear Peters has said there is no way back for Greyhounds. GRNZ have substantial reserves, they need to demand that the NZ TAB continue to fund them via revenue made from betting on Aussie Greyhounds, and with these two sources of income begin a program to assist young trainers to relocate to Aussie, and for older trainers to transition to other employment, as well as making money available for the present owners to continue to care for their dogs, a monthly payment per dog is easily achievable. Also a welfare program for all license holders to deal with any mental heath issues that this upheaval will cause. When the Railways, and MOW where basically shut down in mid 80s thousands lost their jobs with minimal assistance, at least GRNZ has the resources to be able to close their sport with dignity and allow the license holders and dogs to walk away with their heads held high.

Chief, the NZTAB bought a system and continued to pay licensing fees on that system called open bet off paddy power, who are owned by Flutter, Flutter own sportsbet in Australia who run the same open bet system. Entain did not own the software, so this was not the way out for the TAB. I agree Allen was an incompetent when it come to running a wagering business and the purchase of the flutter betting system together with a number of stupid decisions made by Bayliss before Allen arrived led to putting the TAB in a very poor situation, the Covid shutdown then made the TAB insolvent. Unlike you i have no faith in the fools who negotiated the Entain deal even having any idea about betting systems. As for Austrac, you may be rite nothing to see here just a few bad apples pushing their money thru Entain Australia, I'm guess the NZ equivalent will give Entain NZ the once over and provide a report to the NZ Government.........as i said the DIA could not organise a piss up in a brewery, or maybe they are to busy writing up 15 online casino licenses so they do not have time to check if a global entity having problems in Australia is doing the same here.

The breeders have an Industry. Racing is a community based sport, and NZTR are taking that community based sport away from the community as it appears to be putting the Interest's of the Breeding Industry ahead of the sport of racing and its inherent connection to the community.

Exactly, but Rugby and League both get assistance from the local councils in the form of the ongoing playing field infrastructure, and more importantly both the NZRFU and NZRL, are trying to grow the community engagement and participation in their sports across NZ. Racing is telling half the country that you don't fit into our plans and we are going to shut your course, and take the money, but watch us on TV and bet on our sport really??? On what planet does Messara, Peters and the board of NZTR think that is a viable long term growth strategy for racing in NZ.

First I would have a Board, as i owned the Industry i would be chairman, then the members would be.. A Lawyer, and Accountant, a respected ex Trainer, a respected ex Jockey, a respected ex steward, and a respected ex track official and last a civil engineer. Eight including me, my expertise is gambling/wagering so i don't need someone on that front, then you use the experience you have on the board to appoint a CEO. The key then is having a set of KPIs for that CEO that the Board set which reflect the outcomes we wish to achieve. As far as i can see with the present set up in the so called Racing Industry either the CEOs, of bodies such as NZTR and RIB are setting their own KPIs or their respective boards do not have in depth knowledge of the industry and/or outcomes that are required so either way bullshit KPIs are being set which are producing bad outcomes.

Entain/TAB are a disgrace. The idiots in Australia running Entain for starters have no idea how to run a tote as they never had one, so all they have done since they arrived is tried every trick they had in Australia to destroy the tote, as TAB Corp runs the tote in Aussie. They were not bright enough to realise when they took over NZ TAB they were running the tote. So they keep pissing away revenue introducing deals that are just a tactic in Aussie to shift betting from tote to fixed odds. Entain in Aussie have major issues with Austrac so how exactly were they growing their aussie business? they must love it in NZ no oversight except DIA who could not organise a piss up in a brewery, so simple answer to grow the NZ business restrict the hell out of any punter that even looks like they know how to make a buck, and make money like they do in Aussie, letting it flow into their fixed odds book which they keep secret. And the funniest thing of all is the silly old TAB let Entain totally decommission the TAB betting platform and run the business from Entains platform in Aussie, so in effect they have sold the business not outsourced it, so racing got 200 million for the TAB. If the TAB was to end the outsource deal they no longer have a system to run a betting platform on so effectively they have no business. They still own the tote which Entain is trying as hard as possible to destroy, not to mention they have allowed Entain to export all of the TABs customers data to Entain Aussie so when Entain UK get a casino license they can use the data to move the younger TAB customers over to casino gambling. And even funnier, Entain Based In Brisbane, and suddenly CEO of HRNZ from Brisbane, CEO of RIB from Brisbane, and CEO of TRNZ an Aussie..............There you go had my rant for the day.

The interesting thing to me when you start to look at the large scale infrastructure problems that racing has is the term Industry. Is it really an Industry. Is it not a collection of sporting clubs that were designed to provide community entertainment in the form of horse racing......moving on 50 plus years its now an Industry but the problem is unlike examples like the wine industry or the kiwi fruit industry etc it is not self funding anymore and the money required to up keep its assets to the required standard in this modern age ( without a lot of unpaid community input which historically was available) is substantial. This is a classic case of wanting your cake and wanting to eat it as well, you either have stakes at the current artificiality inflated level and a racing bureaucracy growing at an expediential rate ie NZTR/RIB or you have sound well run infrastructure. The present industry leaders have decided to have the stakes and bureaucracy, while telling everyone they have a funded plan for the infrastructure problem. Simple answer is they are bullshitting, and NZ has now taken the art of Bullshitters, Bullshitting to Bullshitters to a new Level.

Are the RIB equipped to effectively censure clubs around the presentation of tracks??? In the old days pre RIU 2010, the chief steward of TB racing would have been a senior member of the NZTR management team, in all likely hood someone that the NZTR board would have deferred to in all matters racing, and thus the chief steward would have been able to police such things with a firm hand. Now the chief steward is a much less important position, he does not work for NZTR anymore and in all likely hood has very little ability to even influence anything outside of jockey behavior on race day. Maybe NZTR should look at getting their stewards back in house and thus bringing much needed expertise back within the tent. With Greyhound racing coming to an end it would make total sense as well as saving millions in administration costs to devolve the stewards back to the two remaining codes.