Beleagured Bookmakers

On the Friday of Galway Races I attended a local parish fundraiser at Newbridge Greyhound Stadium in Co. Kildare where somewhere in excess of 2,000 people turned up. What was a major surprise to me was that there was no bookmaker in attendance. There are normally two but both had gone to Galway for the week.

Besides a few regulars bemoaning the fact that they ‘couldn’t have a bet’ no one else seemed in the slightest bit bothered and the Tote did a roaring trade. The audience for the most part were one off visitors and probably didn’t even notice the absence of bookies.

Could something similar happen at a race meeting? Would you care?

The beleaguered on-course layers, like print newspapers, are casualties of a rapidly changing world. There is no doubt they offer a valuable and unique service and bring a huge amount of colour to a day at the races but less and less people are availing of them as is borne out by the recent turnover figures for Galway Races. The overall attendance more or less mirrored previous years but the total wagered with the on-track bookmakers dipped to €7.3m [8% down on 2016]. Back in 2003 that figure was more than double at €16.1m.

This decline is mirrored across all courses and it seems an almost inevitable conclusion that at some point in the future a race meeting will take place with no bookmakers.

The latest proposal to stem the tide is an increase in off-course and online betting tax [around 2% to be charged to the punter] to create a competitive advantage for the on-course layers. This might have worked if implemented in the past but in a rapidly changing gambling landscape it appears too little and most probably too late.

Racecourses are currently rolling out free wifi to their patrons which on the face of it is a good idea but may only serve to compound the problems faced by the on-course bookmakers.

Even the cash which fuels the on-course ring is becoming increasingly hard to acquire. My local branch of Bank Of Ireland now only deals in cash transactions two days a week. No doubt that two will become one and then none as they herd us to an ever more online future.

The official launch of Longines Irish Champions Weekend took place last week with a star-studded affair in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin — Ryan Moore even took a day out of the saddle to help launch the event. Next month’s Flat Racing showpiece will be the fourth renewal and there can be little doubt that the weekend is becoming a significant player on the international stage at least in terms of prestige.

Flat racing is never an easy sell to the Irish racing public and while bums on seats is not necessarily the prime objective of Irish Champions Weekend it would certainly copper-fasten the success of the event if attendances were to rise significantly in the coming years.

With that in mind the organisers of Irish Champions Weekend may have been dealt a blessing in disguise by way of the redevelopment of the Curragh. The concluding day of the Weekend will take place in the restricted environs of the Curragh for the next two years and the limited capacity of the venue for that period will give the organisers some breathing space on the attendance front.

Irish Champions Weekend should be a much easier sell to the public than the contrived Shergar Cup at Ascot which boasted a sell-out crowd of 31,696 on Saturday.

Lastly, a simple change in the race description of Rated Races would be welcome. Rated Races are basically limited weight range handicaps. The only difference to a standard handicap is that on some occasions horses without an official handicap mark are permitted to compete off bottom weight.

Here are the conditions for a Rated Race run at Sligo last Wednesday: A steeplechase for four yrs old and upwards which at entry are rated 100 or less (also open to horses rated 101-110)

In other words a handicap for horses rated 110 or below with a weight-range of 11 pounds from top weight to bottom weight.

Because these races do not carry the word ‘handicap’ in their title the bookmakers and Tote Ireland treat them as non-handicaps and reflect that with their each-way terms. Regardless of the number of runners the bookmakers pay 1/5 odds 3 places.

Brian O’Connor is on holidays this week and normal service will resume next Monday.