Cheltenham Festival News
A few tidbits from this year's Cheltenham Festival, which began Tuesday and ends today:
Betfair is livid with broadcasters at U.K. horseracing station Channel 4 over its failure to credit the betting exchange during its extensive Cheltenham Festival coverage. C4's exchanges expert, Tanya Stephenson, on Wednesday referred generically to "the exchanges" rather than Betfair by name during a report of the in-running prices available during the first race. Betfair feels it should be given credit the way bookmakers are when traditional prices are mentioned. C4 said there was no bias in its reporting and that Betfair is regularly mentioned.
Britain's bookies had their best day at Cheltenham Wednesday, while punters had possibly their worst in the festival's history. "We couldn't have written the results better," William Hill spokesman David Hood said. "Punters in the U.K. and Ireland will have left behind the best part of the £50 million today--as much as the Securitas robbery, only ours is legal! We ended the day with two 33/1 winners, and it's been a bloodbath for punters."
Five horses died Thursday at Cheltenham, bringing the festival total to seven. Holy Orders was killed in the Ladbrokes World Hurdle, Basilea Star, Millenaire and Mr. Babbage in the Letheby & Christopher National Hunt Chase and Olaso in the closing Pertemps Final. Racecourse Managing Director Edward Gillespie insists the deaths were unrelated. "With the exception of the horse in the last race, all of the horses were killed in falls," Gillespie said. "And while the death of any horse is very regrettable and difficult for all of us there is no evidence to link them in any way. The going is good, no faster than that, and we are entirely satisfied there isn't a problem with the ground. We will continue to undertake a full veterinary review on every single injury and fatality that takes place at Cheltenham."
Former Cheltenham Festival winning jockey Shaun Keightley has been given a date of April 24 to have his appeal heard over a three-year ban from racing imposed by the Jockey Club in December. Keightley was the first trainer in 16 years warned off from the U.K. Jockey Club after a disciplinary committee found him guilty of a string of offenses linked to the performance of Red Lancer in a Wolverhampton Selling Stakes race in October 2003. The offenses include aiding and abetting a breach of the rules of racing, intentionally not running a horse on its merits, associating with previously warned off Christopher Coleman and intentionally misleading a Jockey Club official.
Extra Ladbrokes
North American racecourse owner Magna Entertainment Corp. (MEC) unveiled a new service Wednesday, "Ladbrokes Xtra," through which its Austrian subsidiary will distribute North American horse racing content directly to Ladbrokes' licensed betting shops throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. "This is a great opportunity to build direct relationships between high-quality U.S. tracks and the largest distribution network in the U.K.," said Tom Hodgson, president and CEO of MEC. "As British betting shops turn to international racing to extend their product offerings, we believe there is great potential to build U.S. racetrack brands with some of the most avid fans in the world."
Harsh Words for Racing NSE, Tabcorp
The Virtual FormGuide ran an editorial this morning (March 18 in Australia) blasting Racing NSW for failing to keep up with the times. While Racing NSW CEO Peter V'Landys attributes an overall decline in wagering to "the split TV signal," the publication argues that the organization has done nothing to appeal to the next generation of bettors. "Their failure to put measures in place to make New South Wales racing more popular across the board is responsible for a lack of new racing fans, which in turn leads to a downturn in everything - attendance, participation and wagering," writes Bill Saunders, who penned the article. At the heart of the matter, he says, is Racing NSW's dependence on Tabcorp as a wagering partner, and he refers specifically to four areas in which Tabcorp has failed to maintain its market share:
- It has no strategy to acquire new wagering clients, "other than letting the population increase and hoping it gets more new players than those who die."
- It has no working Internet strategy. (Only 10 percent of its clients place bets via the Internet.)
- Its attitude toward TV rights has alienated it from a huge portion of its client base.
- Its insistence on taking a 16 percent cut (the legislated maximum) from its pools makes it unable to compete.
The article also criticizes Racing NSW for ostracizing Betfair and corporate bookmakers as pirates rather than establishing relationships with them. Finally, Saunders writes, Tabcorp is alienating itself by doing a lousy job of making its real-time prices available to remote bettors, while threatening legal action against outside entities who are picking up the slack.
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