curious

Sorry Dark Beau but it's no more legal in New Zealand to administer alkalising agents the day before the race than it is in Australia. If that's what he has been doing here, the RIU should be investigating and if as reported, " Stewards fined Pike $500, accepting there had been a misunderstanding of the differing rules between Australia and New Zealand", then the stewards over there must be very gullible and have been lied to and sucked in. The NZ rule is quite clear on this and what he was penalised for over there is equally illegal here. 804(5)(b) A person must not administer an alkalinising agent, in any manner, to a horse which is engaged to run in any Race, trial or jump-out: [Added 15 April 2016] (i) at any time on the day of the scheduled Race, trial or jump out and prior to the start of such event; and (ii) at any time during the one Clear Day prior to 12.01am on the day of the scheduled race, official trial, or jump out. Someone needs to read the rules.

Completely agree that owners can not be ignored but they have been for a long time because there have been no effective strategies implemented to build revenue to improve things like stakes and facilities in any sustainable way. It's more than stakes and infrastructure that need to be fixed here though and the critical issue is to build a racing and wagering product that is attractive to punters and grows sustainable wagering revenue. To do that requires investment and the only available source for that is existing revenue. It also requires owners to provide the product and they will continue to rapidly disappear as you and I have if the stakes to cost ratio continues to shrink. So, I agree there needs to be some sort of balance between the two. To answer your question, I think if the right strategies and structure were put in place, with stakes sustained and perhaps slightly increasing for the next 2-3 years, then things could begin to snowball from there. What I am more certain of is that if we continue to expend almost all available revenue on stakes, we'll get the same result we've had for at least the last decade. You know the old story - keep doing what's already not working etc.... We are now borrowing perhaps $15-20m a year from reserves to fund current stakes. When the reserves are gone in a couple more years, what then? What if the government decides to pull pokie proceeds from racing, or decides that a greater share of revenue from overseas and sports events should go to sports and/or the taxpayer? Goes back to what I said, if you want improved stakes then racing needs to generate revenue from racing to provide and sustain those.

Maybe, but I don't think there is any provision in the current Act that gives anyone the power to do that.

Aside from the fact that I've bred, owned and raced horses for 40 years barryb, though down to zero in NZ as of 3 or 4 years ago, I think you are entirely missing the point here. The only way to have sustainable and much higher stakes levels, is to generate sustainable and much greater revenue. To do that requires investment of existing revenue. If all existing revenue goes to stakes, then that will never happen and you will have continually declining amounts available for stakes. Much higher stakes levels are the main objective here, but the desire for instant gratification in that regard has destroyed any chance of achieving that.

I'm particularly referring to track surfaces there that make racing fair and attractive for wagering and reliable for punters. Long overdue relaying of existing tracks with upgraded drainage and 21st century irrrigation systems could be part of that, as could all weathers.

Peters can drive legislation and appoint board members, but regardless of what the report says, he can't make the NZRB do anything that the report suggests. So, yes, he can take it on board but if it requires action from the NZRB, they will need to be convinced.

I struggle to see how anything like $60m in costs can be found unless they do something constructive like shutting down the FOB operation. And even if they could find that, if they distribute it to codes it will likely mostly be wasted on stakes. It needs to be used to maintain distributions until the pain incurred from properly and competitively restructuring the tote business is mitigated and revenue from NZ Racing recovers and starts to grow. I'd say that could take at least 2-3 years. Any additional distributions to the codes from a TR perspective needs to go to infrastructure, sorting the handicapping and integrity systems, etc. so as to provide a more attractive wagering product.

Nice work Chief.

No worries Newmarket. When you wake up, maybe try and get a life.

Is that what BOAY stands for? Here I was thinking it stood for Bit of a Yawn.

Seems to me that what might increase revenue is overall pricing. That in essence means offering the rebates to everyone via lower takeouts. This worked before when the duty relief was first granted. Then they unexplainedly reversed the strategy.

I'm not sure why you raised it here then in a galloping chat forum. I was concerned that you had some personal anxieties with your pedigree and/or living arrangements and may want to talk further about that. I agree it has nothing to do with racing and suggest this thread be moved to a more appropriate forum so we can keep the focus here on galloping chat. Of course, it is possible that Darwin was right.

Do you need to say some more about that Hesi? I mean your living arrangements and parentage.

Completely agree. I still have that half a crown from the bet that grandpa put on for me when I was 6.

I generally agree. The likes of Betfair suggested 20-30% on racing and 10% on sports. The likes of Ladbrokes suggested that any charges be calculated on the same basis as GST for simplicity and efficiency. That makes sense to me. What do you think about somehow prohibiting 'best tote' type offerings? And what about allowing complying operators the right to advertise in NZ? In other words remove the core tote business competition as far as possible but encourage legitimate betting exchange and FO operators to build revenue for NZ racing via the IUC.

No they don't and I didn't think that Reefton's question was about publications but about betting operators. Of course there is an arrangement with the respective TABs in each country where those operators do pay. But for example Betfair Australia arranges bets on NZ racing but pays nothing for racefields information (even though they offered to 10 years ago but the NZRB didn't want their money). The likes of Sportsbet and Crownbet who also take bets on NZ racing don't either, although the latter have a commercial arrangement with NZ Rugby where they do pay them directly for relevant sporting information on NZ events which they offer a market on.

Costs might be being generated to a fair extent by trying to garner that revenue too.

Yes, that's true for the TABs. NZTab pay a fee to Oz for bets taken on Australian product and vice-versa.

No.

That's because the gambling legislative structures are quite different in both countries Reefton. Oz licenses operators who then pay Australian taxes etc. The NZ TAB was taking bets directly from Australian customers at an unfair competitive advantage to those licensed operators. The NZTAB can obtain a licence to operate in Australia on a level playing field with Australian licensed operators if they choose. NZ on the other hand does not allow OZ operators to be licensed and therefore advertise here. However, NZ customers may bet with Oz operators which currently have an unfair competitive advantage as they do not pay NZ betting duty, fees for the use of NZ racing and sports information, problem gambling fees etc. The intention of the Amendment Bill is to level that playing field by charging either an information use charge and/or another consumption charge (they already pay NZ GST), for bets taken from NZ customers. Hope that makes sense.

I replied to the above in the Messara thread but perhaps somewhat glibly. I thought the subject may be worthy of its own thread. The above Bill which had its first reading last August is currently in select committee with the Primary Production Committee due to report back to parliament in July 2018. Interestingly that is immediately subsequent to the due date for John Messara's report. The bill proposes two charges for overseas operators, a consumption charge and an information use charge. There seems little issue with the latter except how and at what level the minister sets fees for that. Currently, it would generate only a small amount of revenue which I think operators will be happy to pay assuming the fees are fairly set. The consumption charge however, is way more complicated. In direct response to your question, estimates of the quantum of that vary widely and as I noted the DIA itself is not convinced of the NZRB figures and rightly so in my view. The legality of such a tax has also been called into question. Sportsbet's submission for example says: The Bill, if enacted in its present form, will : (a) Have an overall detrimental impact on the New Zealand racing industry; and (b) Violate New Zealand’s international trade agreement obligations, including the New Zealand–Australia Closer Economic Relations Agreement, Protocol on Trade in Services (CER Services Protocol). Sportsbet is concerned that the provisions contained in the Bill are anti-competitive and protectionist in nature. We believe they constitute arbitrary and unjustifiable discrimination against offshore betting operators and therefore breach New Zealand’s obligations in the CER Services Protocol. With respect to the quantum of that and your question though Chief Stipe, The DIA Regulatory Impact Statement concludes: Conversely, the proposal that offshore gambling operators pay a charge when they take bets from people in New Zealand is not recommended. This option is considered to carry a higher risk of non-compliance than the information use charge. The projections for the possible revenue from this charge, while based on the best available information, are subject to large margins for error. This means that there is a chance that the returns could vary significantly from what has been predicted and could end up being lower than the cost of administering the charge. https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Racing-Amendment-Bill-Regulatory-Impact-Statement/$file/Regulatory-Impact-Statement-Offshore-racing-and-sports-betting.pdf Of course the likes of Dillo who it seems can not only not count or multiply but also can't read or can't be bothered to, blithely continue, along with NZTR and the NZRB, to bandy about ridiculous and unfounded figures like the million a month without considering or reporting any kind of balanced view. Meanwhile, the NZRB are happily and quite irresponsibly spending that money in advance at this stage. I assume it will be part of Messara's brief to consider, comment on and make recommendations in relation to the Bill. I'm pretty confident he will come to a more sensible conclusion.

Yep, quite likely. He has been spruiking those figures for a while Turny. When I questioned him a couple of years ago at a road show, he would not or could not elaborate on their basis, so I gave up going to those. Subsequently, the DIA have questioned them and reading between the lines from Peters' recent comments, so does he. They are miles out of line with the published peer reviewed data from AUT on the matter. Simply not believable.

I've said many times that I've no idea where they get those figures from and they won't make the detail of the analysis available. The DIA don't agree either. My best guess is they are out by an order of magnitude of about 1, i.e., 10x the best estimate. I don't think Dillo can count, let alone multiply. Just reports what he hears without any investigation.

I prefer to believe de Lore over the Herald because he actually talks to Messara before he writes stuff. And he quotes Messara in the article you posted above: "I have been retained by the government". There is no cost to the racing industry though.

lol.....did Dillo write that?