The Betting Forum
On Saturday morning as I headed to The Betting Forum in the Pavilion at Leopardstown Racecourse I was trying to get my head around the concept of the event and what its organisers All About Sunday were planning.
Noel Hayes, formerly of Boylesports, Tote Ireland and Betbright, has joined forces with Darren McGrath, the former MD of Brando Advertising Agency, to start a new venture called All About Sunday and this was to be their first event.
The pair say they came up with the idea for their business because they were tired of how everything they read and viewed about horse racing in the media was betting and gambling focused and they felt the sport is about so much more and wanted to share that with the public.
With their vision in my mind travelling to Leopardstown and knowing the panel of speakers would include some well-known racing personalities I wondered could this actually be some sort of anti-gambling event. A Gamblers Anonymous meeting on a grand scale.
Perhaps Kevin Blake was going to tell us how it all started for him by robbing a fiver from his mother’s purse to back some nag when he was still in short trousers. Or Donn McClean would tell us how he got hooked on virtual racing and FOBTs. Or Johnny Ward explaining the perils of playing online poker when pissed on a Saturday night.
No. None of that turned out to be true. It was in fact a Cheltenham Preview style talk about the different factors to take into account when betting. This event was in fact All About Gambling!
With the betting exchange Betdaq as an event partner just reinforced the betting theme.
There were around 100 people in attendance (98% male), by no means a bad turnout for an early Saturday morning gig. Tickets were priced at €99 though I doubt many paid the full fee as there were numerous discount offers available including via promotions on this website.
So what did the punters get for their buck? Well, in all truth you would be more than a little disappointed if you had forked out €99. Food and drink was available but you had to pay extra for that. The only thing guests were given was a Betdaq pen. I would have thought a nice glossy brochure explaining all about All About Sunday and some tips on betting strategies was the least you might expect.
MC Ivan Yates is a veteran of these types of gigs. He kept proceedings moving along at a pace and asked some very good questions of the panellists who for the most part knew their stuff. The biggest problem was the panellists were trying to explain some difficult concepts such as how to read a race and kept referring to how they spend hours and hours watching video re-runs of races to find the nuggets of information they use in order to back horses. Not once did they show us an example. This despite the fact that there were two TV screens set up on either side of the stage permanently showing an All About Sunday logo.
A few video clips would have really added to the talk.
All in all it was far from the worst event I’ve attended and you could see how a few tweaks might make it better. I’m still not sure what All About Sunday is actually about — they had a clothing range on offer to buy at the event and shares in horses - but they are planning lots more events so maybe in time this will become clearer.
