2 year old bonus

[Slippery Slope]

An outsider to the NZ harness racing industry could look at the following 4 decisions in the past 12 months and ask itself what is HRNZ actually doing to enhance and sustain owner and punter investment the harness racing product when it is competing against the explosion of competition for the gaming $ from global/ Australasian/local racing and sports betting products, that Entain are very happy to deliver whilst it works through its 5 year commitment period and then likely lets everyone fight for themselves ?

(1) Doing nothing to fix the huge subsidy being given today to the poorer performing venues in the North Island, which the statistics already show punters and owners do not support.

(2) Supporting the addition of  even more meetings to those North Island venues whilst doing virtually nothing to reward/ further incentivise/ trial more race opportunities to the owners/ trainers/ venues  in the South Island which are the core of the industry and again as the statisics show provide almost all the best betting product and the vast majority of owners and trainers

(3) Accepting substantial new thoroughbred competition on our best day for betting/ lower class racing (Sunday) without signalling anything that will strengthen our competitive offer on Sundays.

(4) Giving these new large incentives and subsidies to small field 2yo racing, generally on races and at venues that already require a substantial stakes susbidy taken from betting revenue generated elsewhere.

Put all of the above together and ask yourself about the 80:20 rule. The proposition that 80 per cent of harness racing particpants are losing ever increasing amounts to fund the 20% of the industry that provide a product the punter has less and less interest in every year, and that the above "business/ industry development" decisions will actually only make this scenario worse is something that HRNZ and Entain should be held accountable to answer for in the 4 years to come, along the lines the Galah has suggested earlier in this thread.  HRNZ's strategy update this month can't come soon enough.