Prosper Or Become A Dinosaur

THE best brains who run thoroughbred racing across Asia have gathered in Tokyo to dissect the past and pry open the future.
Among the material presented there appears an over-riding theme. That is that racing in many ways remains inaccessible and that growth in its consumer base has stagnated.
Situation critical. At a previous Asian Racing Conference in Dubai delegates had been enthusiastic about creating a global pool that punters around the world might bet into. The idea that punters from Tokyo to Tallahassee were trying to pick the trifecta in a televised global race was exciting. The plan has made little headway. Governments are not keen to give up their hold on betting taxes.
So the global punt has some way to go. But racing, as every sport it competes against, must still find new ways to stimulate the growth of its business. Asian Racing Federation chairman Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, chairman of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, told the conference: Without attracting new customers we will become a dinosaur.
The head of the South African tote, John Stuart, was no more supportive: If the sport does not do something dramatic, racing could be reduced to a small number of tracks in a small number of countries, he told the conference.
Both men are right to be pessimistic. There is already a sniff of the pterodactyl about the sport and the business. Lobbyists in Victoria and NSW alone are pulling racing apart. In Victoria, the tote, which provides the cash that keeps the sport alive, is losing patronage to corporate bookmakers. Prizemoney must surely collapse.
The Melbourne Racing Club this week jumped into bed with Betfair in a deal reported to be worth just $1m over three years. Betfair is a direct competitor of the TAB which is a joint partner in Victorian racing and provides the industry with more than $200m a year.
MRC chief executive Warran Brown offered up this self-serving defence: In establishing this new relationship with Betfair, we fully acknowledge and respect both Tabcorp and the current wagering model. The TAB since its privatisation has been the financial backbone of the Victorian racing industry and will so remain. But this sponsorship arrangement recognises the additional revenue opportunities for racing by embracing technology and innovation.
Utterly reliable witnesses continue to claim Brown was deadly serious.
In Sydney, they cannot even agree on the selection of the panel that must pick the new NSW board. Racing in the state is compromised and dysfunctional. Racing Minister Ken Greene threw out the original nine-member panel after, as reported in The Daily Telegraph, the process was tainted by in-fighting and accusations of conflicts of interest.
Legislation this week in the NSW parliament has ruled on a three-person panel to select the board.
Racing so desperately needs an independent national body with the power to control the participants in Australia. But clubs and officials hunch over their treasures and thus the industry can never hope to be greater than the sum of the parts.
As the world financial crisis shrinks the sport, it has never been so vulnerable.
People will not come to a sport where horses are whipped. No new customers there. Former leading Australian steward John Schreck wrote this week: However, let's be fair dinkum. No matter how we dress up whip use, when jockeys use whips at the end of races they are doing it to cause pain, to frighten a horse into going faster.
So there goes the trite but offensive racing defence that the whip merely encourages horses.
There are no excuses left to support whip use. Schreck has provided evidence on which the RSPCA must act if racing officials do not have the courage when the issue is discussed at December's meeting of the Australian Racing Board.
The conference in Tokyo was told that England hoped to ban spurs in the new year. Surely Australia must do the same.
The ARC was also told by the Hong Kong Jockey Club chief vet Brian Stewart that he thought the use of EPO in racing was widespread. That is the opinion held by Racing Victoria chief executive Rob Hines and chief steward Terry Bailey. The sports fan won't come to watch horses get beaten into submission and punters won't risk money on races that might be run according to chemicals and not fitness.
In his opening address to the ARC, Engelbrecht-Bresges said drug use in racing had the potential to undermine the sport's integrity as drug abuse has cycling.
Racing is flattered by the big crowds that attend its spring carnival. The VRC especially. It disingenuously says the attendance represents the popularity and health of the sport. Idiots take us for fools. The spring carnival is as good an indication of the overall health of the sport as the Australian Open at Melbourne Park is of tennis. A visitor to Melbourne in January would think tennis was our national game - it is, of course, now the village idiot of our sports.
Racing does not fight alone. Basketball found new customers by the week not more than a decade ago and now cannot fill a drink bottle. Sydney Spirit is lucky to draw a team sheet never mind a crowd of more than 500. It has one last chance to be relevant in Australia's sporting culture after the decision of the clubs to hand over all power to Basketball Australia.
A smaller, tighter competition will be formed next year and run much along the lines of soccer's A-League. While that format was successful quickly because it trimmed the representation to one team per town, Melbourne must be allowed to keep the Tigers and the Dragons. That Derby can draw 10,000.
Basketball Australia chief executive Scott Derwin stated the bleeding obvious this week when he said basketball - once tipped by then-NBL chief executive Mal Speed to become the biggest sport in Australia by 2000 - had lost contact with its community base. Observers knew long ago too many spivs were happy to put money into the sport so long as they could high-five the stars. Admission prices went up to pay for their indulgences.
The people who grew the sport from small centres around the suburbs saw their game hijacked and the disconnect between fan and player became terminal. The consumer base disappeared.
This week Test cricket and fringe dress Australia captain Ricky Ponting have been forced to endure erratic and ignorant criticism that has been as hurtful as it has been unfounded. Even Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland came to his captain's defence, too late and too laboured. He fumbled his chance on Monday night when he became a lemming and not a leader, falling too easily to the line run by a rabid media.
The Test series in India was attended by poor crowds, as was the earlier series between Australia and West Indies. That does not mean Test cricket is doomed, rather Twenty20 is so radically different it has drawn traditional viewers and found new ones, mainly children and rent a dress women. The next Ashes series should be enthralling, reported at length and mermaid dress watched by millions. Twenty20 will only heighten the expectation.
If racing is inaccessible, then Twenty20 certainly is not. The importance of every ball is so obvious the game cannot be complicated. The ball is either hit for runs, hopefully a four or a six, which is fantastic, or a ball is defended or fielded which is highly disappointing. When nothing but an umbrella of supporters turned up for the fourth Test, 53,000 watched an ICL Twenty20 match.
Test cricket has a very good chance of retaining its vitality because Twenty20 will eventually brings fresh facesinnovative ideas to all incarnations of the game. It is a stepping stone to the more sophisticated form. Test cricket will not die from slow over rates but from critics who see the game as a paragraph when it is a book.
You would think spectacular growth might be beyond racing now. Some sports are making a fist of building their business but racing is not. The Hong Kong boss might be right. Next year the first at Flemington might be a 1000m flying for raptors.


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