How do we make Harness Racing strong via today's sports betting market

[Messenger]

CEO Andrew Kelly has been interstate but he got back to me this afternoon and said he will be bringing the thread to the attention of the survey Working Party next week.

[HarnessFan]

Hi Mitch
Your suggestion regarding the consolidation of services is an absolute must.
I am certain the savings will tally well into the millions.
There is an unbelievable amount of wastage in replicating across all states functions such as prizemoney distribution, driver fee distribution, ownership transfers, horse registration ...
I have been pushing this since Australia developed a national database.
This suggestion may just get traction but it needs a lot of pressure from participants as statewide legislation is strangling our wonderful industry.

[cyclone george]

Mitch while I'll agree with most of your points ,the thought of closing down tracks has been our biggest mistake in Victoria. About ten years ago hrv decided in there great wisdom that the punting dollar was the be all of everything and as long as people were betting on there phone accounts there would be always plenty of money but what they forgot was patrons generally end up owner who bring there friends and so on . Traralgon is the classic example ,that area now has over 200000 people ,no trainers left,galloping track( we're the old 800 track was) have picnic meetings every couple of months and average 5-10,000 people. if you think hrv were interested in patrons why would they build a track with a parade ring behind a stable complex,no roof over a grand stand,and function rooms that don't even face the track ,shit weren't they keen on getting people to the track. The cost of lack of participation in small country towns far outweighs the small costs of maintaining a few tracks each year. The little brown jug is on the worst track I've seen,run down facility's ,but is the best day I've spent on a race track maybe they should close it down.

[Mitch]

A couple of small points. I understand that night slots are preferable but I am worried about making day meetings non TAB as I am not sure they would survive and I would miss nice sunny days at the trots. Of course this also means a lot of country tracks would have to light up or die. Most of us want a shorter time between races but I wonder whether the TAB has something to do with this too.

I don't mean get rid of all TAB meetings throughout the day however like the thoroughbreds have Wednesday as their mid week metro meetings and Saturday is their main metro meet every week without fail, harness racing should have Tuesday or Wednesday night as the main mid week meeting in each state and Friday or Saturday night at the main metro meeting in each state every week without fail. These meetings should all be night meetings in my opinion.

All states must work together and negotiate hard with Tabcorp to get 30mins between races where possible and explore the commercials on some dedicated Sky 2 action.

[Mitch]

Mitch while I'll agree with most of your points ,the thought of closing down tracks has been our biggest mistake in Victoria. About ten years ago hrv decided in there great wisdom that the punting dollar was the be all of everything and as long as people were betting on there phone accounts there would be always plenty of money but what they forgot was patrons generally end up owner who bring there friends and so on . Traralgon is the classic example ,that area now has over 200000 people ,no trainers left,galloping track( we're the old 800 track was) have picnic meetings every couple of months and average 5-10,000 people. if you think hrv were interested in patrons why would they build a track with a parade ring behind a stable complex,no roof over a grand stand,and function rooms that don't even face the track ,shit weren't they keen on getting people to the track. The cost of lack of participation in small country towns far outweighs the small costs of maintaining a few tracks each year. The little brown jug is on the worst track I've seen,run down facility's ,but is the best day I've spent on a race track maybe they should close it down.

We need to be smart about which tracks we close but unfortunately we simply can't afford to keep them all. I take your point about the Little Brown Jug but that's an exception not the rule. If we have a manageable track landscape across each state all with an appropriate standard of facilities and track quality, you can then tailor marketing and attraction strategies based on the local demography & target audience to maximise on course attendance.

We need to maintain a good balance of 800m, 1000m & >1000m tracks but we cannot keep them all.

[Messenger]

I cannot imagine which tracks you would close down my way Mitch - you obviously are not a believer in the strong case mounted on this thread that closing tracks loses us participants and snowballs on. The only thing I would say is that with 100 days between meetings sometimes (I do not know why this is the case at Stawell at the moment) the tracks are definitely underutilized for racing at times. Hamilton and Horsham are very good tracks now, Ararat has lights for night racing as does Terang. Charlton is strong and popular ......
I notice you are from Sydney and although originally a city boy too I notice that things are different in the country. I visit country towns in the region just because I have never been there and want to put a picture to the name. Most of these towns are a shadow of their former selves but you might find they still have a Showgrounds of all things eg Coleraine that I visited yesterday. Infrastructure like tracks and showgrounds would seem to be maintained on a shoe string and are part of the fibre of the town. There is no other purpose for the land they are occupying - generally there is an abundance of land in country towns. If we lose the town as well as the track we are in danger of becoming a Melton and Menangle code one day instead of a national code.

[Mitch]

I cannot imagine which tracks you would close down my way Mitch - you obviously are not a believer in the strong case mounted on this thread that closing tracks loses us participants and snowballs on. The only thing I would say is that with 100 days between meetings sometimes (I do not know why this is the case at Stawell at the moment) the tracks are definitely underutilized for racing at times. Hamilton and Horsham are very good tracks now, Ararat has lights for night racing as does Terang. Charlton is strong and popular ......
I notice you are from Sydney and although originally a city boy too I notice that things are different in the country. I visit country towns in the region just because I have never been there and want to put a picture to the name. Most of these towns are a shadow of their former selves but you might find they still have a Showgrounds of all things eg Coleraine that I visited yesterday. Infrastructure like tracks and showgrounds would seem to be maintained on a shoe string and are part of the fibre of the town. There is no other purpose for the land they are occupying - generally there is an abundance of land in country towns. If we lose the town as well as the track we are in danger of becoming a Melton and Menangle code one day instead of a national code.

Hi Kevin,

The statement 'closing tracks loses us participants' is a generalisation. I am not for a minute suggesting a mass closure of tracks. I would encourage a robust review and analysis, by state, to ensure SMART decisions are made. I don't want to bore you with a long winded detailed explanation of how this can be done but it most certainly can be and to the benefit of the industry.

Sensible consolidation is a fact of life in many industries these days, harness racing is not exempt. Re-building this sport is probably more about making unpopular decisions than it is popular ones.

Mitch.

[Danno]

Hi Kevin,

The statement 'closing tracks loses us participants' is a generalisation. I am not for a minute suggesting a mass closure of tracks. I would encourage a robust review and analysis, by state, to ensure SMART decisions are made. I don't want to bore you with a long winded detailed explanation of how this can be done but it most certainly can be and to the benefit of the industry.

Sensible consolidation is a fact of life in many industries these days, harness racing is not exempt. Re-building this sport is probably more about making unpopular decisions than it is popular ones.

Mitch.

G'day Mitch,

always like to see your thoughts expressed on the forum, you are a thinker and like the rest of us passionate about the game, I agree with some of the points you have made on this thread, but I don't think you can accurately say 'closing tracks loses us participants' is a generalisation. It is a fact some of our older posters have witnessed this very same thing a few years ago, some "SMART" people conducted "a robust review and analysis " carried out a "Sensible consolidation" removed the racing licences from many tracks and told us "we simply can't afford to keep them all".

Please forgive me mate if you get the impression I'm a bit cynical, but we have been down this road before and it had devastating impacts on participation levels in the sport/industry, to the point that we now struggle to fill fields everywhere and our market share in the racing gambling dollar is shrinking well below the other two codes.

We were once a true competitor for the thoroughbreds and now even the dishlickers are going stonger than us.

Make some enquiries about how you get a dog trainers licence Mitch, the process is nowhere near as convoluted as getting a harness trainers licence, which reminds me that is another idiotic debacle that needs to go, while you are at it ask anyone who has had to go through the "tech course" to get the harness licence and they will tell you they had to endure being "educated" by people that have never had a harness horse in their care in their lives!!! Talk about make it difficult for people to enter the game! and all for absoluteley NO GAIN! That shambles is all in the name of making the game more "professional".

We all want the game to prosper Mitch and we will all have differing ideas about the ways in which to do that.

New ideas that make us more relevant with a changing market place together with the knowledge that time and experience has given us will hopefully combine to save our struggling game, but lets not make the same mistakes all over again, the sport/industry needs more participants not less and anything that hinders new participants entering our game or pushes existing people away should be given the punt.

Cheers,
Dan

[jackthepunter]

These are the things I would change if given the chance.

I would bring in drivers colours why? Because someone has to be the stars of the sport. You Need to able to promote the sport and give people and fans somone to follow. Its works fantasticly well in usa and other parts oversee, where drivers have fan days , sign auotgraphs talk to fans and have a human connection. Drivers need their own colours so they can have their own brand and get sponsorship. Its like any afl or nrl team with a star player, people know their buy their colours, and if their were to change colours every week their brand and sponsors would mean nothing.

I would ban stand start racing. I know its part of tradition in harness racing but its messy and to me makes the sport look unprofessional. There is no right way for standing starts, their tryed many ways and none work.They all most always run late causing prombles for all the other races program. All most always a horse will gallop and ruined its chane in the first 20 meters. And a lot of the time they cause interference to other runers also ruining their chances. Thats why I wont bet on them.

I would make all horses start on the front row like menangle. Because the tracks are so narrow down here in victoria we can properly only get 8 across instead of 10.
Where would I want this? Because every horse get its chane to go forward, there very little interference. And if a horse is gallop they just go without it. Instead of a driver deliberately crashing into a horse on the second row to cause a false start. And again stoping the race from runing late.

I would have all races with only a 20min apart, so the enterainment keeps going and the night is not stop start. The reality is a lot of punters as soon as they win look to put it staight on the next race. Im sure this is one reason the greyhounds have had a massive increase in market share because of the 20min gap. This also means you can shorten the night by a good couple of hours. I would also only have one meeting a day or night with a 12 race program. So all the best trainers and drivers can attend. Shorely this would help with turn over. Also it would stop drivers, driveing at dangerous high speeds trying to get to 2 meetings in a day. I'm amazed there hasn't been any bad accident.

The praticpants(Trainers,Drivers,Owners) should be able to vote who is the ceo and board. They should be only given a 4 year term. Then be put up again. If their doing a good job they get voted back in, if not have another 3 people to choose from. As it stand now practicpants have NO say in how the industry is run. Been from victoria, I think we need an immedaite clean out of ceo , board ,steweards and start again. Their had 10 years and to say the results have been disapointing is an understatement.

I would get the tab to fix their app and website its so slow. Surely the industry is losing millions of dollars a year because of this. As the tab is the only source of income for the sport. today if punters don't get what they want staight away they simple bet with another site that gives very little back to the industry.

Their needs to be massive amounts spend on marketing. Outside of the industry no one knows it existes. You could walk down the main stree of melbourne or sydney all day asking everyone what harness racing is, and whats the name of a trainer or driver and I would been stunned if anyone could answer you. Thats not good enougn its a great sport and everyone should know about it.

[cyclone george]

Jack the punter. - great post could not have said it better. When they tried to bring drivers colors in a few years ago the trainers cracked the shits and hrv backed down,but now they have all these promo colors for different causes and haven't heard a ripple of discontent, won't effect trainers who drive there own. Owners who have there own colors shouldn't complain if turnover goes up even 1 % they'll end up with more in there pocket. I can't remember the last time a trainer promoted our sport ( lance does his best with some colourful quotes) but who else. Go to nz yearling sales and all the big stables ,studs have Marques promoting there business and encouraging new owners. Driver colors give you a new race to bet on every meeting with a drivers market ,drivers and there colors in the form is so easy to follow. I would say the majority of once a week punters generally just like backing there favorite driver. HRA are the only orgisisation that doesn't believe sex sells ,I am sure of that because with the amount of goog looking female partication in the trots now it should be simple to market. Hrv if you haven't got the guts to do it you shouldn't be there because your not doing the best for the sport.