Trentham!

[Joe Bloggs]

16 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

Sandown is targeted for closure.

Moonee Valley is set for a major suburban housing and facility development.

Caulfield is set to receive a $500m transformation into a major sports and entertainment zone 10x the size of the MCG.

Next point?

Ah, you need to get out more, The've never trained at Sandown, well from 1970 when I lived in MEL, and from it's conception I'm sure, same as M Valley and I lived a stones throw from the track, and Caulfield is a public heath, the centre of the track belongs to the public from 10am each day, no horses there anymore, but the track will remain and will need to be maintained......

[Chief Stipe]

5 minutes ago, Joe Bloggs said:

Ah, you need to get out more, The've never trained at Sandown, well from 1970 when I lived in MEL, and from it's conception I'm sure, same as M Valley and I lived a stones throw from the track, and Caulfield is a public heath, the centre of the track belongs to the public from 10am each day, no horses there anymore, but the track will remain and will need to be maintained......

You miss the point Joe and you live in the past.  A facility dedicated to racing must remain a training facility to be financially viable and sustainable.

If some effort had been put into promoting Training and facilities at Trentham it may not have become the substandard white elephant it is today.

[Chief Stipe]

Of course with Sandown @Joe Bloggs you overlook mentioning that it was a motorcar racing circuit as well.

[Huey]

1 hour ago, Chief Stipe said:

Sandown is targeted for closure.

Moonee Valley is set for a major suburban housing and facility development.

Caulfield is set to receive a $500m transformation into a major sports and entertainment zone 10x the size of the MCG.

Next point?

Which is quite possibly what is going to happen in NZ  , meaning wouldn't they be better to centralise things somewhere this type of thing isn't a threat to the actual survival of the sport?

[Huey]

2 hours ago, The Centaur said:

I like your analysis.

Petone is just down the road from Trentham. Its where all the high salaried staff of TAB and NZTR work. What were they doing all week apart from socialising?  Whats the point of head offices in Petone? Quicker they can be transferred to Ellerslie racecourse the better.

You've mentioned the elitist European model. The problem begins with the proliferation of parasitic bookmakers. The bookie format of betting is expensive and inefficient. Something Hong Kong has known for a long time.

 

Yeah but do we have bookmakers or anyone who wants to bet on our product?

[Joe Bloggs]

29 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

Of course with Sandown @Joe Bloggs you overlook mentioning that it was a motorcar racing circuit as well.

Yeah, but cars run on bitumen, not grass.

[Chief Stipe]

12 minutes ago, Huey said:

Yeah but do we have bookmakers or anyone who wants to bet on our product?

@The Centaur believes that Ellerslie will be the saviour of NZ Racing.  In my opinion it will be the death knell.

Auckland lacks a sense of community and the centralisation away from the smaller communities achieves the opposite of what is needed for Racing to survive.

[Chief Stipe]

Just now, Joe Bloggs said:

Yeah, but cars run on bitumen, not grass.

@Joe Bloggs you are being either facetious and or sarcastic.

Sandown did not survive on Horse Racing alone.   

As for horses not running on bitumen put 30cm of sand on it and call it an AWT and they can.

[Joe Bloggs]

58 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

You miss the point Joe and you live in the past.  A facility dedicated to racing must remain a training facility to be financially viable and sustainable.

If some effort had been put into promoting Training and facilities at Trentham it may not have become the substandard white elephant it is today.

I don't understand Chief, Caulfield will have no horses training there, M Valley didn't need horses in training to survive, it was the most profitable of all the tracks in MEL and Canterbury in SYD does ok without horses in work, Doomben has SFA horses working each day, in fact the horses wouldn't pay the wages of the track staff there, they survive and derive income from conferencing, weddings and events, I don't know of any track anywhere that is dedicated to racing, the Events Centre at Flemington is amazing, Trentham should have done better, the lunacy isn't exclusive to Petone. Diversify or perish.

[Chief Stipe]

16 minutes ago, Joe Bloggs said:

Centre at Flemington is amazing, Trentham should have done better, the lunacy isn't exclusive to Petone. Diversify or perish

Sure diversify but don't do it at the expense of your sole reason for being.  If Trentham had spent as much money on its track and training facilities as it had on its now decaying conference facilities it might find it still could hold a race meeting without abandonment.

The same applies to Awapuni.

The rest of your post is nonsense.

[Reefton]

11 minutes ago, Joe Bloggs said:

 Diversify or perish.

Or examine whether racing is really the best option for the land holding you have in big cities.  The question being are you better off to cash up the asset and use the huge financial windfall to set up in a less desirable(but still accessible) area(ie out in the outskirts somewhere) and have a very substantial nestegg to finance your racing activity.  This is especially applicable when those assets are not at all well attended like Wellington would have been on Saturday, Riccarton is on 90% of its days and Ellerslie the same.

If nobody is interested in attending(most of the time) it is madness to have assets of the NZ industry worth billions sitting there so they can be used once or twice a year(by a decent crowd I mean) 

[Huey]

29 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

@The Centaur believes that Ellerslie will be the saviour of NZ Racing.  In my opinion it will be the death knell.

Auckland lacks a sense of community and the centralisation away from the smaller communities achieves the opposite of what is needed for Racing to survive.

I agree and lacks empathy for anything be it trainer , owner etc beyond the Waikato.

[Joe Bloggs]

As I said, I don't understand you, I've named track after track that is self sustainable, they don't need horses in work to make it work! Ballarat created an entirely separate training facility, so to did Cranbourne. Pakenham sold their old track and created an entire racing precinct, but it's miles from the CBD......city is vastly different to provincial, but the fact remains, you don't need horses in training to sustain a viable and prosperous race track.......so many tracks in America have a casino attached to the course, their prize money subsequently has increased and racing in the States is doing well......over and out!

[Chief Stipe]

19 minutes ago, Joe Bloggs said:

As I said, I don't understand you, I've named track after track that is self sustainable, they don't need horses in work to make it work! Ballarat created an entirely separate training facility, so to did Cranbourne. Pakenham sold their old track and created an entire racing precinct, but it's miles from the CBD......city is vastly different to provincial, but the fact remains, you don't need horses in training to sustain a viable and prosperous race track.......so many tracks in America have a casino attached to the course, their prize money subsequently has increased and racing in the States is doing well......over and out!

I know you don't understand as that is clearly evident in how you fudge the facts to suit your hypothesis.

Take Doomben for example.  It is less than 1km from Eagle Farm.  The BRC which owns both courses centralised the stabling of horses at Eagle Farm yet Doomben still provides facilities for training.  How many horses are in training at facilities owned by the BRC?

You talk about diversifying but the club administrators in NZ struggle to run a racing venue let alone be successful at running hospitality or casino businesses.  Their sole reason for being is to promote and provide horse racing!

You mention Ballarat but overlook the fact that the Ballarat Racing Club provides and promotes HORSE TRAINING FACILITIES.

As for using the USA as an exemplar on what to do with racing you really need to dive into the detail of what is happening there.

The point is ALL the major clubs in OZ that are growing and are successful offer and promote training facilities.

That's a strategic weakness with Ellerslie.

Meanwhile in NZ we are intent on centralising and closing every decent training facility to centralise at shit holes.  But they forget one thing - where are the horses coming from?

Answer this question @Joe Bloggs - how many horses are trained within a 30km radius of Flemington?

[Huey]

30 minutes ago, Huey said:

I agree and lacks empathy for anything be it trainer , owner etc beyond the Waikato.

Ellerslie that is.

[Doomed]

1 hour ago, Chief Stipe said:

 

Take Doomben for example.  It is less than 1km from Eagle Farm.  

A bloody sight less, try across the road, you could throw a stone from one to the other.

[Doomed]

1 hour ago, Chief Stipe said:

I know you don't understand as that is clearly evident in how you fudge the facts to suit your hypothesis.

Take Doomben for example.  It is less than 1km from Eagle Farm.  The BRC which owns both courses centralised the stabling of horses at Eagle Farm yet Doomben still provides facilities for training.  How many horses are in training at facilities owned by the BRC?

You talk about diversifying but the club administrators in NZ struggle to run a racing venue let alone be successful at running hospitality or casino businesses.  Their sole reason for being is to promote and provide horse racing!

You mention Ballarat but overlook the fact that the Ballarat Racing Club provides and promotes HORSE TRAINING FACILITIES.

As for using the USA as an exemplar on what to do with racing you really need to dive into the detail of what is happening there.

The point is ALL the major clubs in OZ that are growing and are successful offer and promote training facilities.

That's a strategic weakness with Ellerslie.

Meanwhile in NZ we are intent on centralising and closing every decent training facility to centralise at shit holes.  But they forget one thing - where are the horses coming from?

Answer this question @Joe Bloggs - how many horses are trained within a 30km radius of Flemington?

You seem to enjoy going off on a tangent to pick an argument with people Chief. Most of the people on here make very good points and I enjoy their input. People may approach the argument from different angles and may have slightly different points of view, but that is all healthy. There appear to be very few nutters on here, so they should be encouraged and not attacked.

We are getting distracted from the original subject here, which is the poor performance over many years of Trentham and the prospects for the track going forward. We are surely at the point where the big decision must be made about whether to pour many millions into redeveloping Trentham, or rebuilding it elsewhere, or even redeveloping another existing track.

Messara's answer to NZ's problems was to close down heaps of smaller tracks, and some not so small ones. Most people on here seem more inclined to think the problems rest with some of the poor performing metropolitan tracks.

[Chief Stipe]

9 minutes ago, Doomed said:

You seem to enjoy going off on a tangent to pick an argument with people Chief.

I don't "enjoy going off tangent".  However I've seen years of Racing Club administrators forgetting their Clubs reason for being and going "off tangent".

They've neglected their core business and  now the chickens are coming home to roost.  

I've seen Clubs "diversify" into conference centres and other entertainment venues.  How many have been successful?  How many have earnt sufficient profit to sustain the diversification let alone enough spare to provide safe and consistent race tracks and training facilities?

Trentham is now a White Elephant because those that ran it forgot what their core business was.  They now have a stuffed track, no horses trained on course and decaying facilities.

When was there ever a business case for a sustainable hospitality and or conference venue at Trentham that could compete with Central Wellington?

What have we got left?

Ellerslie - track stuffed.

Te Rapa - track stuffed and some say so much sand in it now that it's dangerous.

Trentham - the track stuffed and can't sustain one shower on a Grp 1 day.

Awapuni - stuffed.

Riccarton - probably now the worst turf track in the country.  But at least is still a training facility although with problems.

I don't believe I'm going off tangent when I make the point that for a race track (Club) to be financially sustainable it needs to have training facilities.

Trentham went off on a tangent which has turned out to be a dead end.

[Freda]

 Riccarton does not make a profit on its training operation..Rangiora,  just up the road 20 minutes and a much more modest facility,  doesn't either.

Both would be more sustainable financially if they didn't have to provide training grounds.

Can't answer for other tracks however.

[Joe Bloggs]

18 minutes ago, Freda said:

 Riccarton does not make a profit on its training operation..Rangiora,  just up the road 20 minutes and a much more modest facility,  doesn't either.

Both would be more sustainable financially if they didn't have to provide training grounds.

Can't answer for other tracks however.

I knew you'd get it.

[Reefton]

problem with the big clubs and their dilapidated facilities probably is attributable to this:- for years they used to get exclusive access to the Amenities Fund and most of those facilities were built using those funds(from the old Racing Authority and early NZRB days).  Now like most outfits that get something for nothing(ie someone else is paying the bill - councils and government departments for instance) they had no appreciation that they should be caring for the assets they had been very generously provided with.  The reasoning being that when they needed replacement the industry would come to the party again and the hundreds of millions or whatever financial assistance was necessary to replace the stuffed facilities(including stuffed tracks) would appear from nowhere as it always had done.  In the meantime of course the industry has gone broke and they are now on their own two feet financially(unless Winnie organised a nice little PGF contribution to facilitate AWTs of course).

The free starting gates and running rails they all got would, I would say, have been the last roll of the dice.

So they have been selling off bits and pieces of surplus property  to keep themselves afloat but the sort of dosh required to replace/bring those facilities up to standard is far too high to fund using the sale proceeds of the family silver.

I know this because the Greymouth Club was in on the act as well(as was each of the 'Metropolitan' Clubs that held all the power under the old District Committee structure).  Greymouth's stand for instance was built 100% funded(about $850,000 as I recall in the mid 80's) by Racing Authority funds - it would be worth $10m to replace so you can see that there is no realistic prospect of them being able to do so.  Not that it needs to be at present though there was a suggestion of earthquake risk a few years back.. Greymouth's admin block and stabling were also courtesy of Racing Authority funds which needless to say caused quite a lot of angst among the other Coast Clubs at the time.  The same would have applied in each District around NZ

Now because the small Clubs had to scrimp for every cent it tended to make them very careful with their spending and very mindful that they had to look after what they had.  There was no fairy Godmother to come along with a fat chequebook and cure all the trouble with their facilities.  And so hence the comparatively strong financial position of many smaller clubs and the precarious state of many big Clubs.  And why the Authorities want to grab the small clubs hard earned assets and in turn why the small clubs are resisting.

Obviously the ARC are an exception in that their property is so valuable they can and have developed strong revenue streams outside their racing activities.

But look at the old 'Metropolitan' Clubs and then think about who has the biggest issues  Southland RC, Otago RC, Canterbury JC, Greymouth JC, Wellington RC, Manawatu RC, Hawkes Bay JC, Waikato RC and Auckland RC. Any common thread there?

They have had hundreds of millions and pissed the lot up against the wall

 

 

 

[Freda]

Bang on.

And - I can add  [ although, as a club sec and accountant you will know amounts EXACTLY ]   small clubs have had their funding from TAB revenue selectively attacked over many years;  the percentage and method of distribution has changed over the decades, but their payout is proportionately far less than that of the metropolitan clubs.

So,  then, as money becomes tighter and tighter, and the willing volunteers become older and and just can't be arsed any more, the ageing facilities are pointed at and used as a reason for closure.

[Chief Stipe]

11 hours ago, Freda said:

 Riccarton does not make a profit on its training operation..Rangiora,  just up the road 20 minutes and a much more modest facility,  doesn't either.

Both would be more sustainable financially if they didn't have to provide training grounds.

Can't answer for other tracks however.

You miss the point entirely.  They don’t need to be profitable on training alone as part of their core business.  If training revenue covers marginal costs then that is OK.  It isn't necessary to make a profit however it provides direct revenue to maintain HORSE RACING AND TRAINING ACTIVITY.

If you don't have the product to fill your race fields then you have no wagering income. 

If horse numbers in training are in free fall then of course providing training facilities isn't going to be profitable.  

Building a high cost model of operation e.g. AWT's isn't going to improve the situation.  Unless several hundred more horses come into work every week of the year.

 

[Chief Stipe]

10 hours ago, Joe Bloggs said:

I knew you'd get it.

No she doesn't "get it" nor do you.  Nor it appears do any of the successful Clubs in OZ appear to "get it".  According to you they must be doing it wrong by providing excellent state of the art training facilities.

What's more there is ample actual evidence to show that your hypothesis of diversifying away from the core business doesn't work.

If you dont provide facilities to train horses then you have no horses to race and provide wagering income.

If you can't provide a decent racing surface then you also have no quality product to sell.

If the CJC had focused on their core business and invested in that then they may have found that their core business was profitable and sustainable.

[Joe Bloggs]

Oh just shoot me