No oncourse TAB in Au, could that happen here?

[Murray Fish]

Wagering

On-course wagering no longer a window of opportunity for Tabcorp

By Warwick Barr - December 02, 2024

The totalisator, once the financial backbone of the Australian racing industry, has reached a critical intersection as a viable on-course method of betting.

On course totalisator betting could become a thing og the past. (Photo by Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images)

In a decision blamed on the changing habits of customers and expedited because of the end of a joint venture agreement with Racing Victoria, Tabcorp will remove its on-course service, which also included fixed-odds betting, at selected meetings across the state.

The move came into effect on Sunday, and while the Jericho Cup meeting at Warrnambool offered a TAB option, a midweek Victorian provincial fixture this week will provide a glimpse into life without an on-course totalisator.

TAB windows will be shut at Bendigo on Tuesday, signalling the end of an era as Tabcorp winds back its on-course presence.

Patrons wanting a cash bet must do so with one of the on-course bookmakers fielding at the meeting. The other option is to be through digital channels.

It is a decision Tabcorp insists is a response to a rapidly growing digital market that has changed how punters are wagering.

There is also the matter of reducing costs as Tabcorp implements a reset of its business strategy under new chief executive Gillon McLachlan.

Tabcorp announced a $1.36 billion loss in the 2023/24 financial year, revealing a non-cash impairment charge of $1.38 billion because of a sluggish wagering market and additional taxes it pays in NSW and South Australia.

McLachlan eyes national tote pool as part of a ‘fitter’ Tabcorp

McLachlan has made no secret Tabcorp will be run as a much leaner operation, promising to make the wagering firm a “cost-effective” outfit.

Reducing its foothold on Victoria’s racetracks in all three codes appears is designed to save costs.

In a statement, Tabcorp says it will be business as usual for its on-course cash facilities at major meetings across Victoria.

What the wagering company didn’t say is that Racing Victoria will bankroll the employment of on-course TAB operators at the selected meetings until the end of the racing season.

“To minimise any potential impacts on clubs and their customers, RV has reached agreement with TAB to fund on-course wagering services at 140 race meetings throughout the remainder of the 2024/25 season,” an RV spokesman told The Straight.

“This will include metropolitan meetings and a large selection of feature country meetings, including country and picnic cups.

“With on-course cash wagering continuing to decline as more punters migrate to digital wagering, TAB have made the decision to reduce their on-course services to save costs.”

Run The Numbers – The not-so slow death of the Australian tote

Tabcorp’s decision to withdraw on-course cash wagering facilities, including electronic betting terminals (EBTs), was delayed until the end of the spring carnival.

However, what the Victorian on-course wagering landscape might look like in 2025/26 remains to be determined, according to RV.

“RV will be working closely with Country Racing Victoria throughout the remainder of the 2024-25 season to best understand the impacts, in the knowledge that on-course cash wagering has been minimal at those meetings which will no longer carry the service,” the spokesman said.

"RV has reached agreement with TAB to fund on-course wagering services at 140 race meetings throughout the remainder of the 2024/25 season." - RV spokesman

Tabcorp says it is merely accommodating a wagering environment reshaped as punters migrated to different ways of betting during the pandemic and haven’t returned to traditional outlets.

“Tabcorp is transforming to meet the changing needs of our customers,” a spokesman for the ASX-listed company said.

“We’ve launched a new TAB App and new products which give our customers more innovative bet types and ways of placing a bet than ever before. 

“This is all part of creating the ultimate racing and sports entertainment experience, whether it be at home, in our 4000 retail outlets nationwide or at the track. There’s never been more ways to place a bet with TAB. 

“As part of that evolution we will be reducing the number of cash terminals at Victorian racetracks because a majority of customers have told us they want to bet digitally. 

“As the partner … TAB will continue to offer full cash services at race meetings that are the most important to the Victorian racing industry. 

“This includes metropolitan meetings and feature race days on the provincial and country circuit. 

“These changes better reflect the evolving betting patterns and feedback of our customers.”

The last bastion of on-course bookmaking

Under the terms of the historic VicTAB joint venture, the TAB was obligated to have cash outlets at all Victorian race meetings.

RV lobbied the state government but failed in its bid for the service to be retained under the new Victorian wagering licence, which was put in place in August.

As such, there is no requirement on Tabcorp to provide on-course wagering services at any Victorian race meeting.

Tabcorp’s move in Victoria could be a forerunner to on-course TAB betting going the same way in other states, most notably NSW.

Tabcorp NSW deal under review as it plots ‘level playing field’

Discussions between Tabcorp and the NSW government about the wagering firm’s exit from a deal locked in until at least 2033 have been ongoing.

Tabcorp claims it is disadvantaged on issues such as the taxes it pays compared to its chief rivals Sportsbet and Ladbrokes.

The Straight understands finer details of the Tabcorp-NSW government review have taken longer than expected to work through, with an announcement is expected in the first quarter of 2025 at the earliest.

[Huey]

WOW ,inevitable but sad!

[Chief Stipe]

At least in OZ you still have bookmakers as a cash option. 

[Trojan]

Attending a recent provincial meeting there were more tote staff than customers.  Even on Trotting Cup day you didn't have to wait too long to get a cash bet on.  So the margin on cash bets oncourse must be low.

[mikeynz]

I often wonder if it's financially viable sending the tv crew to some meetings, particularly greyhound meetings.

[Murray Fish]

Run The Numbers – The not-so slow death of the Australian tote

By Bren O'Brien - August 05, 2024

Run The Numbers is sponsored by Inglis

At the start of the 2000s, totalisator betting made up 85 per cent of turnover on thoroughbred racing. Now it is 16 per cent and falling fast. So what happened? Run The Numbers explores the decline.

On 2022/23 figures, Australian totalisator betting now accounts for just 16.4 per cent of the wagering market. (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

In its heyday, totalisator betting was an on-course and retail phenomenon. A New Zealand invention which proved widely popular in Australia, the tote and the TAB brand, established state by state as a government agency in the 1960s, changed betting on horse racing forever.

It did more for the commercial success of sport than anything else in the 20th century, driving up prize money and professionalism. The golden goose proved too good an asset for the states not to sell, and bit by bit, these monopolies were privatised, with the exception of Western Australia.

At the turn of the century, $8.1 billion of the $9.5 billion wagered on horse racing every year went through the tote, either through on-course, retail such as TABs, pubs and clubs, or phone betting.

Eight years later, as the High Court made the historic Betfair v Western Australia decision which paved the way for widespread corporatisation of Australian bookmaking, tote betting in Australia was still riding high, generating $9.7 billion in thoroughbred turnover annually, or 67 per cent of the market.

The most recent figures, from 2022/23, shows how dramatically this landscape has changed. In that year, TAB on-course, retail and phone/internet betting contributed $4.3 billion of the $26.4 billion turned over on thoroughbred racing. That is just 16.4 per cent of the market.

Put simply, while overall turnover on racing has nearly doubled in the past 15 years, tote turnover has more than halved.

In 2008, the average combined win pool hold for a major Sydney or Melbourne race would frequently exceed $1 million. On Saturday, the best combined hold at Flemington was $388,000, while it was around $350,000 at Rosehill.

It is also worth noting that the decline of the tote pools continues. A quick survey of home tote win pools from on Saturday reveals overall TAB turnover down 33 per cent at Flemington (albeit with one fewer race) and 11 per cent at Rosehill compared to the same meeting last year.

We can break the decline of the parimutuel betting into several pieces, each of which are significant in their own right.

Run The Numbers is sponsored by Inglis

The first is on-course TAB turnover, which in 2009/10 reached just short of $1 billion Australia-wide, up from $572 million in 2000/01. This growth had come at the expense of on-course bookmaking, whose turnover had fallen from a height of $1.2 billion in 2001/02 to $613 million by 2009/10.

But the upward trend in the on-course tote hold proved temporary. By 2015/16 it had collapsed to $391 million and by 2018/19 it was down to $277 million.

The pandemic then took a huge toll as on-course attendances plummeted. In 2020/21, on course TAB turnover dropped to $65 million (6 per cent of what it was 11 years earlier). It recovered slightly to be $90 million as pandemic restrictions were fully eased in 2022/23, but is expected to decline again in the just completed 2023/24 season.

It’s hardly a surprising trend when you consider the amenity offered by mobile technology and the tote derivative products offered by competitors, as well as declining attendances. This has also led to a decline in the number of on-course tote operators.

The pandemic also proved brutal for retail betting through pubs, clubs and agencies. At the turn of the century, close to $7 billion a year was turned over on thoroughbred racing through retail. That represented close to 77 per cent of all turnover on racing.

In 2022/23, the contribution of betting on racing through a retail setting was 6.5 per cent, or $1.7 billion of $26.3 billion.

It had been a relatively slow decline for retail betting for the decade before the pandemic hit. In 2009/10, retail turnover was $6.1 billion, but the burst in corporate bookmaking saw that reduced to $4.5 billion by 2013/14. By 2018/19, that had fallen to $2.8 billion, as the corporate bookmaker sector grew to $11.1 billion, having been $6 billion five years prior.

It was the outbreak of COVID-19 restriction that changed the landscape forever. By 2021/22, the turnover on racing through corporate bookmakers and betting exchanges, with no retail dependency, had ballooned to $19.7 billion. In contrast, retail, beset by the consequences of lockdowns, had slumped to $1.4 billion.

The third aspect of parimutuel betting is online and phone betting.

In 2000/01, this was already worth $1.1 billion to racing turnover a year, or 11.3 per cent of the total. A decade later, as internet betting grew, parimutuel pools benefited to the tune of $2.47 billion, meaning 17.2 per cent of racing turnover was through TAB-based online and phone parimutuel betting.

However, the TABs were getting in on the fixed odds game and that meant driving more punters to a different market. Fixed odds betting turnover through TABs grew from less than $100 million to $2.6 billion in five years from 2007, most of it done online.

As a result, parimutuel online turnover pretty much stayed steady through the 2010s. It took off during the midst of the pandemic, getting to $3.3 billion, but has quickly reverted to the $2-$2.5 billion range it has occupied since 2007/08.

The Tote is dying in Australia, eaten away by both competition from tote derivative markets and the Australian betting public’s willingness to embrace fixed odds.   

It is a reminder of how dramatically the wagering landscape can change in the space of 15-20 years. Those regulators and governments making long-term calls on the funding structure of the racing industry need to be aware that what is accepted logic now is unlikely to apply a decade or so down the line.

Parimutuel turnover on Australian racing by year (inmillions)

*Source: Racing Australia Fact Book

 

*Source: Racing Australia Fact Book

Season	On Course	TAB Retail	TAB Phone & Internet	Overall
2013/14	$550.95	$4,479.24	$1,974.55	$7,004.74
2014/15	$515.28	$4,166.96	$2,068.96	$6,751.20
2015/16	$391.21	$3,785.99	$2,119.54	$6,296.74
2016/17	$350.25	$3,347.00	$2,068.15	$5,765.40
2017/18	$311.96	$3,039.79	$2,135.18	$5,486.93
2018/19	$276.85	$2,758.56	$2,171.47	$5,206.88
2019/20	$183.29	$2,021.10	$2,356.41	$4,560.80
2020/21	$64.96	$1,863.34	$2,816.49	$4,744.79
2021/22	$66.73	$1,482.56	$3,308.22	$4,857.51
2022/23	$90.17	$1,698.87	$2,542.21	$4,331.25

from: https://thestraight.com.au/run-the-numbers-the-not-so-slow-death-of-the-australian-tote/

[Murray Fish]

oncourse bookies not going that well either..

Wagering

The last bastion of on-course bookmaking

By Matt Stewart - May 03, 2024

For the first time in his 45 years of bookmaking, Anthony Doughty drove to Warrnambool this week with a sense of dread.

Veteran bookmaker Anthony Doughty says the on-course bookmaking industry is in its death throes. (Photo by Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images)

The May jumps carnival is famous for history and solidarity. Everything stays the same; grown men behave like teenagers and stagger home alone, no one finds the $81 leg of that $100,000 quaddie and days begin with a “hair of the dog” and a nostalgic wander into the betting ring.

Driving through Geelong, Colac, Camperdown and Terang, Doughty hoped that these expected things would still be there. The betting ring, mostly. The way it’s always been.

The art of on-course bookmaking is in its death throes (as Doughty described) yet Warrnambool has been the stoic aberration.

Not even death could kill it.

After a spate of fatalities 15 years ago, Racing Victoria declared jumps racing deceased. Rob Hines, who then held the seat on the spinning RV CEO carousel, commandeered the stewards’ room at the Bool after three horses perished during the 2009 carnival.

Shortly after, the sport was suspended. This would rip the heart out of The Bool.

Protests and new safety measures were drawn up by the jumps’ fraternity and the jumps “did a Galleywood” and rose from the dead (as the famous horse appeared to do in the 1984 Grand Annual).

Could the betting ring, that other last bastion, keep doing a Galleywood? To Doughty’s relief, it did.

“There was lots of cash. You don’t see that any more. Lots going on. What a relief,” Doughty said of this week’s festival.

The casino started it, then the internet, then the corporates, Doughty says of the demise of the bookies ring, which had always been the star act of a day at the races, with all-or-nothing plonks cloaked in often hilarious exchanges between the bagmen and punters with comic nicknames like The Babe, the Hong Kong Tiger, the Fireman, Eyes, Ears, the Lady In Black and the Goanna.

Warrnambool had a rich history of betting ring plunges and not all from the “good old days”. Harbour Views had the bagmen on their knees in 2019.

Throughout our history of horse racing, the racetrack is where it happened, the betting ring where it mattered. It heaved with dreams and dread.

Doughty was musing about all of this when he arrived for what he guessed might have been his 46th May carnival.

“I came here a bit negative,” Doughty said. “Everywhere else the on-course bookie industry is in its death throes.

“Off course everyone’s got their phones and their corporate.

“On course suffers, we’ve definitely seen the best of it. The younger generation, they either don’t have cash or they’re not smart shoppers.

“In the olden days you’d come on course and go up and down the ring looking for 13-2 when everyone had 6-1. Now all they’re interested in is multis, free bets and sports. It’s a whole different world.”

Anthony Doughty estimates there are only about 20 full-time bookmakers left working in Victoria. (Photo by Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images)

For now, one little pocket of the world has remained untouched.

“Like I said I arrived at Warrnambool pessimistic but there was demand all day, lots of cash. They were backing six or seven horses in each race,” Doughty said.

“It was great. It’s the last surviving carnival in that sense.

“You’ve got to get off your arse to experience the bookies at the track and thankfully Warrnambool is a place where they get off their arse.”

Doughty counted 25 bagmen in the main ring on Tuesday. Most were getting on a bit.

Others were dotted around the track. It was a week of jumping and nostalgia. Only a big day at the picnics, like Balnarring on Australia Day, can boast a betting ring vibe like The Bool.

“As good as it was it was nothing like the betting rings of 20 years ago. The demand from members and the public before the corporates came in … it (on-course bookmaking) was the biggest game in town,” Doughty said.

Wagering through the ring was in fact down but that was solely attributed to extreme track bias for most of the carnival and lack of punter confidence in the track.

Crown Casino first opened across the river at the World Trade Centre in 1994. Before then Victorians, mostly retirees, would hop on buses to the other side of the Murray for their pokies hit at RSL’s and golf clubs. The mobile phone hadn’t yet been invented when Mavis and Graham were heading to the river.

The corporates and their now reined-in enticements began to take hold. Punters hopped on their phones, not the race-day tram or train.

The betting ring, the engine room of the racetrack, was being dismantled.

Bookies were treated as cute relics.

Warrnambool is one of the last surviving racing carnivals to offer a vibrant on-course betting ring. (Photo by Pat Scala/Racing Photos via Getty Images)

Flemington built a new member’s grandstand and literally left the bagmen out in the cold.

“Flemington is the only racetrack where you’re working in the elements. You’re exposed to strong winds, glare and rain. It’s an unhealthy environment. Try sitting in your backyard watching monitors in the glare of the sun,” Doughty said.

Doughty has been a leading rails bookmaker for longer than almost anyone when the VRC drew up their lavish plans. “I don’t know if anyone was consulted. I certainly wasn’t,” he said.

Another rails bookie has described Flemington as “Siberia”.

“The other tracks, at least you’re indoors. I haven’t seen the new Caulfield plans but I believe we will at least be indoors,” Doughty said.

There is no clear link but it’s interesting that the creation of casinos in Singapore contributed to the death of its racing, just as Crown and the explosion of suburban poker machines sapped the racetrack of traditional customers.

“The Casino was the beginning of the end. Before that (on-course betting) was 90 per cent of our turnover. Now it’s less than one per cent,” Doughty said.

“You’ve got to get off your arse to experience the bookies at the track and thankfully Warrnambool is a place where they get off their arse” - bookmaker Anthony Doughty

Bookies regard cashless or tap-and-go betting as a helpful on-track innovation, but while some bookies use it, others have had their modems shut down by the tap-and-go providers.

It seems they don’t want to be linked to gambling.

Doughty believes there will always be an element of on-course bookmaking but says it will morph into a pursuit for hobbyists.

“To my knowledge there have been no applications for (on-course) bookie licenses for four or five years,” he said.

“Some bookies are only working 10 times a year, mostly as a hobby. There are only about 20 of us (traditionalists) left.

“As a profession, it’s just about finished. Do you want your kids doing this? Of course not, there’s no future in it.”

It’s such a shame, the death of the traditional bookie.

Punters used to flock to racetracks because there was really no stay-at-home alternative to betting. Besides, the racetrack heaved, and the betting ring was intoxicating. It was a magnet. The phone or TV screen couldn’t get near it.

The closest thing to it is The Bool.

Doughty will always be nervous making his way to the famous May jumps carnival. There are no certainties in horse racing and new bookies aren’t replacing old.

Phones are glued to hands like extra appendages. You sense change, even where very little has changed, like Warrnambool in May.

The Galleywoods of horse racing don’t always keep rising to their feet.

 

https://thestraight.com.au/warrnambool-carnival-lives-on-as-a-last-bastion-of-on-course-bookmaking/

 

[curious]

Bound to happen here I'd say, possibly as soon as next year.

[Chief Stipe]

51 minutes ago, curious said:

Bound to happen here I'd say, possibly as soon as next year.

With or without Bookies?

[curious]

Don't think Entain will want to be introducing competition somehow. As noted in the article above, they are on their way out in Oz too.