Minimum stakes?

[Murray Fish]

I see at the meeting at Wingatui on 28/3 has 7 races each worth 18,500 and one worth 25,000. On the 23/5 8 races all for 17,000. 

[Freda]

Yeah.  Back to the bottom for the peasants. 

[curious]

Just remember that 3 years ago it was 12,000 per race at that Wingatui meeting. Enjoy it while you can because I can't see how it will be any more than that again in another 3 years.

[Doomed]

Meanwhile three $50,000 races at Tauranga and Wanganui today with 5, 6 and 7 starters. You do wonder whether there might be a problem somewhere.

And those bloody stupid twilight meetings with shit fields running for $25,000 each. The extra $6,500 per race has zero impact on the field size or quality. $52,000 or $58,500 extra in stakes per meeting to achieve nothing.

If the twilight meetings ran with $18,500 stakes that would leave enough money to run $18,500 minimums all winter.

I just can't see how we can continue to run those $50,000 open races with 5 or 6 starters. They surely are not self funding.

I think we have a problem. Still we have a brand new slot race, so who am I to complain.

[Chief Stipe]

1 minute ago, Doomed said:

I just can't see how we can continue to run those $50,000 open races with 5 or 6 starters. They surely are not self funding.

If you haven't  noticed it's been like that for the last ten years. 

[Doomed]

14 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

If you haven't  noticed it's been like that for the last ten years. 

We haven't had minimum stakes of $50,000 for open races for ten years.  People often complain about the state of racing in the CD, but it must be a great place to race a handy horse. I heard one of the presenters at Wanganui today commenting about several horses on a quick back up. Why wouldn't you? When you can race for $50,000 in a six horse field. There are a lot of benefits to be had by astute placement of a horse in the CD.

As Curious mentioned, I have absolutely no idea how the stakes are funded. The turnovers surely aren't sufficient to fund the current stakes levels. It would be interesting to see some figures that break down where the funding comes from. It is probably only about 50% from turnover, virtually nothing from sponsorship, the rest from some mystery source. Basically just a donation from Entain for some benevolent reason.