Hi Rick and Anne,
I wasn't at HRV at the time, so don't know all the reasons for introducing tiered racing, but what I can say is that prizemoney that we have paid out for the first four months of this financial year (July to Oct) is $700k more than the same months of 2016. We have committed to programming races so that we can pay out $40m in prizemoney this year. That's never occurred in HRVs history. We have also committed to programming the same or more of the $10k races as last year. By the end of October, some of those $10k races haven't stood up because of Noms/Acceptances, so instead of just saying 'oh well, we programmed them', we are going to re-program more $10k races in the first half of 2018 in order to try and hit the target. If however owners/trainers don't nominate for those races, then we may well fall short of our desired and publicly stated target.
To clarify, if a field is small, the prizemoney saved by not paying to a full field size remains in the total $40m pool, i.e. we will just utilise to run another race. Our overall goal remains the same, i.e. to exceed $40m in prizemoney.
The broader issue of a desire to increase stakemoney levels is hindered by the decline in HRV market share of the Tabcorp JV. In 2009/10, HRV had an actual market share greater than 15%, and in all but one year from then, market share declined to the extent that by 2016 HRV's share had fallen to below 12%. That's over $5m in revenue every year that HRV is not receiving as it once did. That puts pressure on the whole industry, owners, breeders, trainers, drivers, HRV itself, country clubs, etc., etc. It's the prime reason why HRV lost money in 2016/17. And it's the main reason why we can't increase stakemoney levels. That's the bad news.
The good news is that the current strategy is working to improve HRV's financial position and therefore our ability to support and grow the industry. And we've done so in a way that has sought to minimise the impact on the industry, i.e. we haven't reduced prizemoney levels, and we have instead increased the total prizemoney bucket of money to exceed $40m. Given the complexity of the problems faced, I can't see any other approach that would work, but I'm welcome to hear from anyone with an idea that will work within these constraints.
Cheers, David