A lot of points in your last post so I will have to think about it and get back to you.

Meantime, note that there has been a big increase in the corporates' share of the market - now pushing 50% in some cases - so I would be cautious about attaching the blame to any one thing.

For example, the TABCORP Egg Win pools were $28k in NSW but only $13k in Vic. That makes little sense on its own as many Vic dogs were involved.

You have betting figs on corporates ? Cld you pls post them (or PM me with them ?) Wld be really interested to see. Thx.

I am a very firm believer we could improve this straight away ..

If we increase the banking by 150mm over the span of the track from rail to outside fence this will give those dogs mid track a chance of being able to at least maintain a constant speed coming in and out of the turn and this alone will keep the dogs running line without getting slingshotted out wide ...

If we compare Geelong Shep to a track like warrnambool you can see the difference coming out of the bend ...IMO

When we ride our bikes at low speeds on a Velodrome our centre of gravity drifts closer towards the track surface... When we ride at high speeds our centre of gravity drifts away from the track surface.

I do have some understanding of how higher banking not only keeps a greyhound sounder it encourages pups down to the rail when racing and breaking in .
I worked for 18 months for a man named john Snapper30 odd years ago he had a track at carrum downs for years that track today in still in operation at Longwood ...

His track was banked on the first bend and the second bend and slightly banked on the third and home bends .I think it was about 330 or 310 box to box ...

So many great dogs over the years used this track ...

So many of the sandown dogs were also broken in there back in the day because it tawt young pups how to roll into a bend and out of a bend ,,

Dogs the caliber of African Zulu ..Kareem so on where broken in there and we know how much those both greats had with the record 23 wins each at Sandown still the record today .

Today we have only large race tracks to break young dogs in and you will see more and more dogs drift out wide because there is nothing helping them learn how to roll and run turns.

I quite liked the twin hare lure we saw recently, the dogs raced straighter and racing seemed to be 'fair' again, but we have to wait till what is it 1 May to see it trialed for 6 mths ? What then ? Yet another riveting decision awaits.

Many dogs at Geelong over shot the home bend so i am no mathematician but we need to look at Easement spiral or transition.
its where the dog changes abruptly at one point (the tangent point where the straight track meets the curve.
To me it is a easy fix ....

PS
Ryan
African Zulu and Kareem were remarkable dogs even better considering both were owned and trained by the one person .....The only dog i seen go close to the win record was Worth Backing .....Sandown should give a 200k bonus to the first dog to win more than 23 wins on a thursday night ....

Ryan,

I will have to get back to you. The most recent reference was in GBOTA-NSW commentary on POC questions where it obtained advance info from GRNSW for 2017/18 which included proportions of corporate v TAB turnover. I can't put my hands on it momentarily but the figure used for corporate share was in the 40-odd% range. GBOTA was actually pushing the wares of Ladbrokes - even though $ for $ that brings in less commission income than the TAB.

Whatever, the corporate share has been rising consistently.

............................

The Sandown Park Coursing Club (with the late Jack McKenna as Secretary) began racing on the present Sandown Racecourse in 1935 and continued there until 1952 with only a two year break during the war. Speed coursing (live hare) was then conducted at the present site until December 1955. The Sandown Greyhound Racing Club commenced mechanical hare racing on the current site on Saturday 8 September 1956 before a crowd of 6,000 and overseeing a betting ring of 53 bookmakers. The combined stake money on offer for that first meeting was $600. To put that fact in perspective, the field for a modern Melbourne Cup final would typically boast collective earnings in excess of $1 million.

What you are seeing now Rich are rewards or benefits of a reasonably well run(not perfect Bruce), billion dollar nation wide industry from the past.

What will you see with the future of this industry if "the correct" decisions aren't made now is the real million dollar question, especially when it comes to things relating to the basics of racing such as the lure. Cheers.

It is also tempting to simultaneously talk about the track layout but that would be a digression, and a very complicated one. Lets leave it on the periphery.

What we want is a system which caters well to most dogs, encourages a fair race and minimises clashes and therefore injuries.

1. The common denominator is movement. Greyhounds have been bred for millennia to chase a moving prey. By definition, that will mean prey of all shapes and sizes.
2. The second requirement is that they are able to see the prey. Therefore, for a field of 8, a high lure will be more helpful than a low-running one, particularly for slow beginners or less keen runners. (The latter points were well proven in Albion Park trials).
3. Overlapping (2) above is that nearly all dogs have a preferred angle of sight to the lure hence rail, centre and wide runners plus variations such as crashers to the rail or to the outside. (I have no idea whether this is due to eyesight or to some other part of their brain).
4. Having said that, NZ routinely offers both narrow and wide lures with no obvious evidence or claims about one being better than the other. Puzzling!
5. The intent of the wide hooped lure in Oz was to promote cleaner races. I stand to be corrected but, while I can perhaps see some improvements, the overall picture is hugely affected by other factors such as crowding or banking.
6. However you scratch your head, there seems no logic in claiming that a dual lure (as at MEA) is better than a single one. Still, if tests show it works better, then fine.
7. The GPS trials will show how each dog covered the course but that information is of little use unless it is modified by knowledge of the personal habits of each dog, and by the shape of the track, especially its banking.
8. Following on, that GPS outcome will have to be charted against the other variables, leading to a conclusion about what the average dog will do not a small task. Perfection is not achievable.

My overall summation is that there is no definitive answer so we may as well stick to high and wide. If GRV come up with any other conclusion, let them show us how and why.

I must disregard your points about betting as too many other factors are involved. A messy area.

Kevin,

The banking specs at Vic tracks are supposed to be 4% - 6.25% - 8.3% (or used to be).

Geelong and Shepparton are notable in that the turns into the home straight tend to be too flat, thereby encouraging some dogs to run off. The question is where the 8.3% stops.

This is also true of the brand new Murray Bridge track. Just the other day I saw a dog lose the race for precisely that reason.

The related point about getting around a corner is that some dogs can maintain a higher speed than others - relatively. It's a bit like some footballers being able to run quickly in a straight line but not so much when dodging to left or right. Female tennis players are similar (bigger hips??).

All of which points to factors that may override or influence the contribution of the lure position.

Ryan,

From GBOTA submission to government on POC Bill Sep 2018, quoting figures obtained from GRNSW.

NSW Turnover

All $1.491 (+13.5%)
Corporates etc $739.5 (+30.3%)
Tote etc $751.8% (+0.7%)

So 49.6% share and rising.

GBOTA was pushing for 8% increase in POC, rather than 10% proposed by government. It lost.

The lower figure would have helped Ladbrokes (a big financial partner and sponsor of GBOTA) but would have disadvantaged the industry as (a) the 10% rate reimbursement pays the industry more in the end and (b) the corporates return less than the Tote on a dollar for dollar turnover basis.

This was prepared during the reign of Brenton Scott, who also represented the industry on the so-called Reform Panel headed by Morris Iemma (now GRNSW chairman).

Rich is right, there wasn't a need to adopt it because the old lure system wasnt broken.

================================================================

Bruce I agree that Corporates etc $739.5 (+30.3%) is 49.6% share of All $1.491 (+13.5%) but surely they cant say that it's all come across from the TAB.

The Vic TAB win pools for city races have dropped by between 50% to 75% in some races from 2 yrs ago, so that's between 100% to 200% decrease per race in city race pools, where as the corporates & tote combined have had a 31% increase according to those figs. They may have put on extra meetings to make up the shortfall for example, I don't know, but to say the corporate increase is due to customers moving across from the TAB is drawing a very long bow imo.

Even if the corporate increase was all attributed to TAB customers there's still a massive amount unaccounted from what I wld call genuine city dog punters despite how they want to make their figs look. Mine for example has been distributed between the horses and the afl.

The real question is where did that 10k - 15k per city race go from the Vic Tab win pool? Certainly not to the corporates which is not at all promising for greyhound racing in the future from a betting perspective on city races.

As with many subjects today, the ingredients in the recipe are constantly changing. Probably one of the most important is the rise and rise of mug gambling proportions in overall turnover. For TABCORP, that is evidenced in the parallel rise in products like Mysteries, Quaddies, Next Up and First Fours, the erratic nature of win pools, favourite overbetting and actual dividends fluctuations. For both TABCORP and corporates the popularity of Fixed Odds is large, despite the prices often being rip-offs and despite the anti-consumer rules in place.

First Fours have also been recently added to the Mystery list.

Concurrently, corporates have been using their surpluses (if any) to sponsor clubs and maximise the incentives to bet (where legal).
All of that uses your money, not theirs.

Allied factors are the fall in usage of decent formguides and the rapid increase in apps on hand-held devices (a general community trend). None of these encourage a sensible study of form in any traditional sense. Then you have risky Maidens and low standard races making up a bigger proportion of the total and attracting comparable cash to better races.

There is no logic in assuming that overall turnover decreases in TAB turnover are caused by some remote factor. For whatever reasons, the corporates are numerous and are catering to the same old public as the TABs. Indeed, their products specifically try to out-muscle the TAB.

The fact that there are so many operators would itself help improve the overall market - quantity, not quality - but the Oz market is essentially a finite one. Gamblers bet on what's in front of them, while punters bet only on stuff that makes sense but there are fewer of them.

On top of all that the original and prime marketplace has been stuffed by the progressive reduction in the size of tote pools, meaning that it they are now so unreliable as to be useless. It is in a vicious downward cycle.

Anyway, every pointer suggests that turnover has moved from the tote to something else, including sports betting, but mostly corporates. The NSW figures tell you precisely that. Vic cannot be much different.

The addition of Ubet money to Tabcorp will help a bit but will hardly be able to stem the tide.

No, it is not promising but I see no fix outside of a massive shift to a common national betting pool - or at least a common NSW/Vic pool. This is why I wrote elsewhere that the betting product has forced me to stop punting at all. Even if I win, I lose.

Or do you think it's too late for that and we continue to say 'how high' to every TAB jump request and just take the money. It's certainly easier to do that than provide alternatives.

I honestly thought when the GRV changed the lure system the TAB wld step in and stop it because it was bound to affect turnover as I believe it has, but other than the delays(probably around 12mths), finally getting the centre track lure operational at the end of April'17 the TAB appear to have skirted the issue of decreased turnover and found a way of it's own to adapt at the expense of greyhound racing. The delays in getting the centre track lure operational actually gave me what turned out to be false hope in the end that greyhound racing was a viable betting medium, which as you say it clearly is not anymore.

It's getting so hard it makes my head hurt.

First, I can't sensibly comment on what happens inside GRV, despite their recent hiring of a betting expert (ex trots). There are too many details I don't know.

That leaves me with just bits and pieces to talk about - those where the info is clear. A real example of this is that none of us know what individual corporate houses are doing, much less all of them together. GRV could tell us, but don't.

Cumulatively, I can say the end result is poor and has influenced me to quit altogether. I know I have some mates but I don't know how many in total.

Your basic question was answered a long time ago when all the codes sold out to TABCORP at the time of privatisation. Previously, the codes, or the clubs, controlled betting within their own boundaries. You might remember that many once contracted outside firms to run the tote and they then pooled with the offcourse TAB.

Concurrently, that effectively gave TABCORP more power, which they have used to mop up peripheral groups like SKY and radio stations. In company with the need to have someone co-ordinate start times etc - TABCORP again - this meant they were able to tell you how high to jump. There has been some resistance to that, but only from the thoroughbreds.

That task was made easier, especially with dogs, because their contribution was a function of bureaucracies, not commercial entities which may well have done better deals.

Short answer - yes, it is too late, with the sole exception being the possibility of radical reform to the above bureaucracies.

There is related evidence. One would be the fact that declines in breeding were showing up long ago - well before Feb 2015 - yet their existence or impact were either not noted or were ignored. That could be likened to Ford failing to recognise that V8s were not the way to go and that small cars/SUVs were the future. The same thinking goes for the transition to mug gambler increases that I mentioned earlier.

As for your problem with lure styles - too hard, mate. Again, there were other factors in play throughout the period so even if I had really good data it would be hard to isolate one thing from another.
Still, I must say I don't see a great problem.

It was a few years ago that TABCORP formally stated that the Oz betting market was "mature" and so they increased their efforts to gather in overseas races, buy casinos and then buy Ubet. However, note that Ubet's big attraction is not so much its betting turnover as its highly profitable lotteries.

To TABCORP, the best thing about the dogs is that they sustain activity over a longer stretch of the 24 hour period (as do UK horses) thereby making better use of TABCORP's investment in both hardware and software. Keeping that dollar turning over is the be-all and end-all.