mardigras

Are you saying the horse couldn't win? They should use punting behaviour and if a punter demonstrates that level of ability, then you don't know at which point the success is going to arrive, you just believe it will. Which means that they have odds wrong overall for the bets taken by that punter. And now you want them to pick and choose which times the punter is going to show that to be the case, and which times it isn't. Imagine the weekly meeting after the Spitfire wins. How come we lost so heavily last week? We let Brodie on for $1,000 on a nag. It won. Who knew. Not us.

Brodie says he can't do that. Something about betting to win $200 or similar. if he puts $1,000 on the tote, they should take it. Might be a good bet.

Semantics it certainly isn't. I'd expect the TAB an assessment based on the betting behaviour of the punter along with other aspects relating to that, in order to determine the level to which it would be unwarranted in taking their bets. I don't believe they would look at the behaviour of Brodie and say, since it's Brodie, we're going to do this. I'd say, since the behaviour demonstrates this, we're going to do this. Why would the TAB look at individual bets? If you buy 10,000 televisions from a store each year, do you want them to possibly give you a discount due to your buying behaviour? I guess you'd be happy if they didn't give you a discount anytime you bought just one TV - since they could say they looked at the one TV buy and deemed it unworthy of any discount.

I'd expect there to be human intervention. But not human intervention around consideration as to who the punter specifically is.

It's an equal system to me if the decision is not affected by the 'person' undergoing the process. i.e. is not changed because of it being person x versus person y. The decision made being reflective of the information relating to the process. The information on crimes isn't likely to be the same from one crime to another even in crimes of a particular type.

And you have none against it. But they are tasked with making a profit. To assert they don't do that would be suggesting that for some reason, the TAB decides they don't like punter x and are going to set some level of restriction on that punter which is out of alignment with what they would do in similar circumstances for others. Do you think they pluck out the level from their back pockets?

And whilst I appreciate the situation with owners, all that should mean is that the administration should be going down a path that accelerates interest in NZ racing. Of course we want stakes to be higher for owners as it is an expensive venture. So at the very minimum, make sure that they extract the absolute maximum out of what is out there, in relation to NZ racing. Rather than 'screwing it' in the words of the chief. You can't keep destroying everything about NZ racing whilst at the same time praising how good things are going, most of which has zero to do with NZ racing. They are hell bent on smoke and mirrors given in the space of 13 years, NZ racing has gone from nearly 100% self sustaining, to at best 25%. This is all at the hands of the management within NZ TAB and the code management.

I think that is piss poor. Who is making these decisions. Fuckwits?

It used to be - Brodie, always on the money. Sadly, by his own admission, it's become - Brodie, clueless (but law abiding).

But that has nothing to with how the stake is distributed and more to do with the high cost model of administration. And doesn't change the issue around the social welfare aspect of NZ racing. In a true socialist world, I imagine all runners would get the same amount as they contribute equally of their time. The NZ model isn't like that, it is one where the government chooses to provide handouts/benefits to a certain group that would otherwise struggle to continue in the manner they do. Much like the unemployment benefit is designed to support those that still have expenses to meet, but insufficient tangible income to support that. NZ Racing is the 'unemployment benefit industry' of NZ.

Well NZ racing is a very good example of socialism. A handout to something that can't make it on its own. So instead of worrying about 10th placing getting some money, why not complain about 1st placing getting what they get? A much bigger share of the socialist pie. And you think the share should be bigger!

The owner of a 10th placed runner will be less out of pocket than without paying stake down to 10th. If they are getting screwed, perhaps they should politely bend over whilst this is all going on - since they are getting a lot more than what there is interest in what they are providing. Remember that. The issue is much bigger than where they pay stakes to. It's the entire sustainability of NZ racing itself that has been screwed - and largely supported by many along the way.

Yes, but if he is restricted to winning $200 on a race, he can put easily $30 on a runner at 15s on the tote which will have very little impact on price. That equates to more than $400 profit. Or put $150 on something at 4s. The price shift from that bet is going to be small (even in small NZ pools). He can still add his fixed odds bet and win a further $200. Heck, that's $600 now, and no minimum bet rules in place. It's punters like Brodie that have brought about the pools in NZ races being small. They changed the landscape, and now they're complaining. Odd.

They aren't 'generally'. Without knowing the outcome from fixed odds revenue, how could we know. They could take $10k in fixed odds bets and none of it on the winner. But what we do know is that across each level of stake, races do not earn revenue from tote/fixed odds and export fees that get anywhere near the stake. That is known and has been known for years. If you wanted to offer stakes that reflected earnings, we'd have average stakes around $5k - that's including Group ones.

As curious wrote, they still have to get the $10k from somewhere. Aside from returns through fixed odds being variable on a specific race, in general NZ TAB requires around $200 - $250k in turnover to generate $10k net. I'm not seeing that.

Can you explain how these races were self funded?

Start adding huge amounts of liquidity to betfair markets - to encourage others to do the same. If you are successful as a punter, laying off the rest on betfair can achieve the same result, and you have massive margin to play with given the prices on the exchange are likely similar to the TABs. i.e if you like something at 5s on the TAB fixed odds, lay the rest of the field to a market % of 80% (which will allow you to offer higher odds when necessary than the TAB is offering by around 20% on average across the field and still achieve your $5 dividend). That increased liquidity will then attract more punters to those markets, ultimately allowing you to just back the runner you want for an amount higher than what the TAB is offering, and to win more than your few hundred.

Bet on tote. Or bet elsewhere peer to peer. Minimum bet levels such as in Oz won't change that either. When the TAB decided they were going to do a big shift towards offering fixed odds, did you want that? Did you previously bet on the tote? Why should any operator be forced to deal with large losses from winning punters? If I run a business and a client causes me massive losses, I won't deal with them, or I'll change my pricing model to them.

Yep, they have minimum bet limits still in place in Australia at any operator (in additional to anything they do on course). Different rules for different states and also different rules for the different codes. Some states have no enforced minimum for harness. In Vic at Metro it is $1,000 and non-metro, $500 I think. In NSW, no rule for harness. So that is the minimum enforceable for a punter to win on a horse - not stake on a horse. And we should have some rules like that. But the limits will be small (like the $500 limit in Victoria for harness non-metro). It's good to have the rules so all punters have the opportunity, but the limits are still pretty small. Hardly more than what the mighty Brodie already seems to get at $200. If they set the rule at $500 - so that every punter has the right to a bet to win $500, would that appease Brodie. I doubt it. You can probably do that on the tote with very little impact to price.

All the punters that thought the TAB offering fixed odds was going to be a great thing will simply have to live with the new now. Restricted punters, small tote pools, limited interest in NZ racing. Yep, what a great idea for the NZ TAB. I fully support the TAB limiting punters on fixed odds (although a rule on a minimum bet level would be good so as to make things more transparent). Why wouldn't they want to take $40k off a losing punter and not offer the mighty Brodie more than $200 profit. They run a business, not a charity.

You seem to have just described what I would call, a completely stuffed track. No wonder punters are reluctant to bet on NZ racing.

I don't imagine they would set the collective prices too high since a computer does them. They can certainly set prices that the public think are wrong for some runners. Does NZ TAB publish the deductions for scratchings? The two scratchings incurred deductions of 18.5% on another betting provider. That's pretty significant when looking at price moves alone. That's effectively 5s into 4s, 10s into 8.1 etc. So to have any shift out from opening would require a 22.5% drift just to get back to opening price.

It may depend on the opening prices and the time they were set. As there were scratchings, the opening prices would be adjusted after scratchings, and therefore may make the opening prices look inflated (if those prices were set before the scratchings impacted prices). The way NZ TAB set prices, it's unlikely to happen in other ways as they would tend to tighten the margin, not drift it.

On fair share of expenses, I'd say about $500k per meeting average lost. Given real share of expenses related to revenue are likely higher for NZ racing than for sports and off-shore racing, the $600k is probably a fairer reflection. With the new track - I guess we can have more days. Bring it on. Some complain about closing Ellerslie for 3 months. I'd be celebrating that.

Sadly not. They are typically around 12-13% net betting revenue each year. After turnover related expenses and operating costs, the net result typically becomes half that. So the 13% is merely the betting based revenue, which makes Ellerslie looks dire - especially when you consider that Ellerslie holds a number of meetings compared to the likes of Westland who in the scheme of things, is a pretty good result. Losing $300k for one day at Ellerslie might be OK, losing it 16 times last year, time to have a rethink.