It is the biggest discouragement to race dogs in NSW

Of the next 6 meetings in NSW over the next 2 days, 4 of them are TAB C Meetings

In my opinion ALL TAB Meetings should be at the same level of prizemoney and grade

Good luck with that Sandro.
The reason C meetings were introduced was that the levels of prize money being paid out could not be sustained. Although the % of C meetings has increased since then. That was at a time when the controlling body was miniscule compared to what it is now since the change occurred to split their responsibilities.

I don''t mind the $1 million race, as long as everyone else in the industry is being looked after as well

After all 90% of greyhounds born won't be city winners

Gillian I would prefer all TAB meetings be on the same footing and Country prizemoney lifted as well

"In my opinion ALL TAB Meetings should be at the same level of prizemoney and grade".

I don't have the maths in front of me but I imagine they would tell me that there is not enough to go around unless all were reduced.

That aside, there are two reasons to differentiate prize money.

One is to optimise returns to all participants - ie to ensure they have the opportunity to sustain their business even when champs do not turn up. Sustenance is the operative word.

The other is to reward better performing dogs and utilising grading to show which are which. That encourages better breeding and training but also tells the public what excellence means in greyhound racing.

The Russians and the Chinese both found your suggestion does not work. But they paid a helluva price to learn that. Millions died. No, make that tens of millions. In North Korea they are just letting them die while they keep polishing their rockets.

Regardless of how you improve breeding and training some greyhound has to be graded first and someone needs to be graded last and everyone else in between

Because you don;t put your hand in your pocket to breed, own or train any greyhounds, you have no idea of the cost of raising these dogs to a point where the likes of you punt on them and make judgements of their worth

You aren''t an afficionado of the sport in any way shape or form

You live in some sort of dreamworld that everything has to be fall into place the way you want it

I don't give a rats behind what Russia or North Korea do with their people.

We aren't in a position to let greyhounds perish because they don't fit your criteria f what is worthy to punt on or not.

Our world is, every greyhound has a worth and deserves a right to race.

For that the owners and the trainers and the breeders need to be compensated properly for providing that product, not put up with jibes and judgements from someone who wouldn't know the head of a greyhound from its backside.

Really Bruce, I don't mean to be nasty but sometimes I wish you would just shut up because you make a complete arse of yourself.

hahahahahahahahahaha, you been reading my book "How to win friend's and influence people"....

Well said. Ive said this over and over again.

Prizemoney Tab C is a money saving exercise for TAB & its being exploited more & more to save money by the PTBs.
Grading needs to be more encompassing, grades 6 or 5a 5b & a novice grade can all keep dogs regional & reduce travelling long distance for same money by trainers.

In my opinion, the lack of prestige for city racing or provincial racing has affected our integrity of breeding. It used to actually mean something to breed from a city winner....not any more. Dapto, Richmond, Gosford should be provincial racing & the gateway to city racing.

Designated city tracks, designated provincial tracks (pathways to city racing) & the rest are tab racing.

This all would be a possibility with better planning of the reduced racing pool we have moving forward.

You want all TAB meetings to pay the same. Russia demanded that all workers be paid the same. Neither has worked or will work very well.

I hope you are not charging for your psychoanalysis because now I am not punting I would not be able to afford it.

You may have forgotten but TAB C got a start for a couple of reasons. GRNSW jumped on a GRV bandwagon (Tier 3), with both scrambling around to fill any vacant slots in the TAB calendar - ie aimed at increasing overall turnover. It had become a use it or lose it situation.

To do that GRNSW promoted some country meetings to TAB status - ie either those which had not been good enough to meet normal TAB standards at the time, or added C dates to existing tracks.

That situation later become overlaid with the nil-euthanasia and lifetime tracking push. GRNSW had also been criticised for not doing enough for country clubs - via admin subsidy, etc, so that was in the background.

So "normal" TAB tracks became multi-purpose tracks - ie including C standard racing and low prize money. It was never intended that one should compete with the other - rather that rewards should go deeper into the world of participants (many hobbyists) and also that GRV/GRNSW would look better as they increased annual income.

It never worked out perfectly as one tended to bleed into the other and was later impacted by the increasing shortage of dogs.

Nevertheless, as I said previously, it helped a little to sustain the interest of low-earning participants and therefore low standard dogs - a principle you also included in your rant.

The industry is now faced with a scenario where the cash flowing to participants is eroding due to (a) a decline in average field quality and starter numbers, (b) the cost of excessive and often discriminatory regulation, (c) the difficulty of controlling expenditure by state authorities and (d) a poor public image.

In that climate, there is little hope of an across the board increase in real prize money as envisaged in your basic proposal of TAB track commonality. The position is even cloudier as we all wonder what will happen with track rationalisation or nonsense like puppy bonds.

NB: The irony of all that increased activity is that much of it is not worth two bob - we have to give it all away to the gallops and trots (including during the equine influenza period).

NB2: The conundrum now is that if our masters were dedicated to efficiency and profitability alone they would immediately take the racing schedule and chop it in half. Certainly back to the 500 meeting level for which we get "full" pay. Of course, that would generate huge cutbacks in employment and breeding and lots of moves to other states. Those cuts would include staff redundancies and a serious look at the need for two separate controlling authorities.

NB3: Meantime, Sandro, remember who pays your wages. I was hacking it around the traps before you were born.

Jamie,

Well, I did almost. "Nil euthanasia and lifetime tracking" emerged directly from the post live baiting period. As did the extra regulations courtesy of Iemma and Scott, and the extra costs of funding both GWIC and GRNSW.

Call it a sermon if you like. More aptly, I tried to explain factually how we got to the current TAB C situation. Obviously, some folk have forgotten or they just want to re-write history - following which they are seeking fairies at the bottom of the garden. No chance.

Better prize money will come about when the industry starts making better profits (or surpluses, if you like). Not before.

None of the above is very accurate.

Tab C NSW, in general was borne out of the advent of Sky 2. Tabcorp went to all codes to ask for increased content. The only ones who could come to the party were greyhounds. Nothing to do with Victorian tier 3, extra meetings in Vic give them extra money, it gives nsw greyhounds nothing extra from the tab.

This increased over the years & under the vision of GRNSW at the time, who saw that increased meetings increased our returns from the corporates....not tab

Dapto, Gosford, Bulli stuck with the same amount of meetings so not all existing tracks took on a multi purpose role as you suggest. Wenty Park has stuck with 2 meetings per week except on rare occassions and of course now we have a 6 week promo on Friday night that will finish regardless of whether it was a success or not).

Glenn

That is 100% right and one of the reasons why the prizemoney needs to be equalized into one class, Non-City TAB racing

Then work on turning more Country Tracks into TAB tracks or perhaps rationalization will take care of that

In 2013, Income was $39.9 million and p/m & costs were $30.5 million

In 2018, Income was $67 million and p/m & costs were $34 million

We can afford to have TAB B p/m provided GWIC (new player in town) can keep within budget. ATM, GWIC is spending at a rate of $16 million p.a. and only receiving $4 million from the Gov't, and GRNSW has to `foot the bill'. We have to `foot' the bill for the rest of it (legislated). It's a joke.

Does anyone ever want to give us a fair share of prize money or are we always going to be supressed by decisions that ultimately lead to administration increases ?

Yes we can afford to have TAB B across all non-metro meetings with current TAB C prize money going to non-TAB meetings in the near future.

I was trying to keep the story reasonably brief and did not intend to state that all tracks were involved in the same way. However, this was a period when many things were changing, particularly around the traps in NSW.

SKY 2 arrived in 2010 and obviously offered opportunities for new coverage from Victoria, from NSW, from Sweden and from Timbuktu or wherever. So both states added TAB meetings (TAB status is always dependent on SKY coverage). All this fitted in with TABCORP's philosophy that Oz wagering was at a mature stage and therefore new challenges here and overseas were necessary to sustain growth.

In Victoria's case they had no more tracks to promote (Wang was deleted) so Tier 3 races emerged to accommodate slow dogs. NSW did have non-Tab tracks so track promotions were possible for the same low standard of runners.

In other words, Tier 3, TAB C and SKY 2 were simultaneous events. No doubt they all chatted to each other at the time. Note, in passing, that each state added a twilight meeting on Saturdays (Traralgon initially and Newcastle), whereupon turnover for the overlapping Meadows and Wenty meetings dropped. Patronage turned out to be finite, not inexhaustible.

We digress a little in describing the background.

The discussion point here is about making all TAB meetings equal - an option for which I have seen no real justification. I disagree and will continue to do so whether shouted down or not. I have stated why.

It adopts the heroic assumption that people would pay $50 to watch a game of park football (to provide a comparison). Nobody on earth would do that in any normal sporting contest. The gallops and trots certainly don't but there are signs that greyhound racing is hopeful that would work. There is a grain of truth in that - ie often poor fields produce comparable turnover to better fields. But, in turn, that is a function of the decline in knowledgeable punters and the rise of refugees from the pokies. Indeed, they are treating the runners as four-legged poker machines (literally in the case of Trackside). That's very sad.

Anyway, to take the step of common-rating all TAB meetings is to move the sport further down that negative road. Prize money heavily influences the trainer's choice of venue or race quality. Take away that option and you end up with a less predictable mish-mash of races which only the mugs will patronise.

It is now the law that slow dogs must be offered a chance to race. What will it solve if you put them in with fast dogs? Because that is inevitably what will happen if prize money is equalised across the board.

Anyway, given a fixed income, equalisation would mean a bonus for slow dogs but a reduction for good dogs. I doubt many would vote for that.

Moreover, strategically, my view is that good, solid provincial 5th grade racing is the guts of the industry. Eggs and Cups are all very nice and display excellence, which is good. But they can never replace competitive week-to-week contests throughout the year. They warrants kinder treatment, not downgrading.