Well Jason....I'm so sorry that the greyhound owners that entered pups in this years Auction at Ipswich, weren't stupid enough to give em away at bargain prices.

Honestly Terry there must be a fair rooftop over that tool shed of yours for you to be thinking that small. haha.

Just consider for one minute that there are punters out there who bet in 10's, 20's, 50's, 100s.......all the way up to $M's yes $M's ............the average Joe kinda pales into the background doesn't he ?

Heard a story earlier this yr on one guy who had $2M riding on the outcome of a ladies tennis match and apparently he's a dog punter but bets on anything and everything, has blokes working for him etc.,etc.,etc. Anyway the story goes the mail he got from one of his informants was that this woman was unbeatable.......he likened the match to a kid playing club tennis, playing against Federer. The price was $1.04 he went to a corporate and due to tax concessions and rebates they get he was able to get $1.10
He apparently told another punter it was the easiest $200k he'd ever made (score was 6-0;6-0)

The TAB/State Gov't cant do a damn thing about getting that sort of business, they cant compete...........the only thing they can do is promote integrity within racing, that's all they've got left in the cupboard to attract these types back to reinvesting in this state. The guy he was talking to thought the revenue lost to Victoria was about 10%(max 20%), this punter apparently told him it was more like 60%.........that really staggered me and must be a real worry for the major player in racing RV(ironically same initials). It's a huge amount of funding going south and not into racings coffers. Apparently the money is invested thru betting agents in Hong Kong and Vietnam and those agents work on commission, so there are fees involved afaik.

So when a major horse trainer falls on his sword over the cobalt issue and the ptb say its not what we want to see but integrity is the platform we are coming from, you can sort of understand why..........they are talking about the industry losing a massive amount of revenue and they simply have to promote integrity at all costs in order to just stay alive in the game, regardless of who falls by the wayside. They have to promote racing as squeaky clean to just survive in this current environment. Capiche ?

You blokes promoting this chairmans handicap type of event excluding 'the punter' yet again by justifying excluding people like Jason and slapping that buzz word integrity in the face like you do..............just makes an outsider think, this industry deserves every bad thing they get, the media attention, the increased rules and regs, the penalties imposed, the lot!
No one in the industry wants that to be the case.

Is it worth it to run something so insular without considering the impact on the rest of the sport ?

Surely there have to be changes.

btw I'm happy to smell those roses so long as you take a bow and I cld strategically place that rose bush they come from you know where...........and no, thorns are not optional.

there are tax concessions that corporates get/pass on from what I'm told.

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I'll ask Noel, for hopefully a more sensible answer.
Noel wld you sell those pups at 9 mths if the bidding got to say $4k at the auction ?
That's approx $60p/w for rearing costs from 3mths of age.