" For example, it shows very small turnover increases for greys over the last 10 years,"

Let me repeat ....

In the 10 years to 2019 the RA Fact Book shows greyhound turnover increasing by 6.5% to $3.1m, which would not cover inflation. I don't actually trust the figure as it is possible it is missing some corporate business.

Thoroughbred turnover (probably reliable) went up by 45.6% to $20.9m while the trots fell and Sports skyrocketed.

Whatever, published turnover is not a sensible guide these days - either annually or race by race. The system has been corrupted.

I am mystified. I offered some figures and corrected another lot but readers have preferred to tag these as opinion and rubbish. I even repeated my comment and still some folk don't want to accept the facts.

TABCORP's earnings - repeat earnings - cannot be directly related to betting turnover. Apples and oranges.

I suppose I could go back through a host of annual reports from around the country to try to fathom total turnover and how it has varied. But that may or may not provide an accurate answer because they all have different ways of reporting results. So I have not bothered. (But someone should).

On the question of differences between turnover on the shorts v longer races - that might be theoretically possible if you can access all the state databases. Otherwise it is not a practicable task. Additionally, I doubt any of those methods would be able to isolate the corporate/FO turnover by race distance and then add it to the TAB takings.

In any event, as I mentioned before, there are several "artificial" factors which influence race by race turnover significantly so, even if you had the basic race figures, it would not tell you reliably whether one set of races is preferred to another. It's a dead end. Move on.

A correction. In a couple of my earlier comments I showed annual turnover as $Xmillion. That should read billion.

I think there should be a greater emphasis on trying to breed 500m plus dogs, I think in NSW we should be pushing for atleast one race with city prizemoney for a 600m race. We don't have a 600m city start at Wenty but I don't see why we can't have a 600m city prizemoney race shared amongst the provisional tracks.

You wrote twice:

"Hi Mal good to see these figures, they do show we should be getting more ?? But what is needed is a breakdown ie greyhound races only and as a punter , we watch pool totals before even considering a bet, now that shows a massive decline in the pools, and not all is because of the corporate books ?? Please watch the pools on some of our main races, not a good measure are the million dollar events, they have a lot of extra attracted cash input ?? The amount of sport betting is putting these dollars shown above the past for sure, ; Bob Glover

Valerie Glover wrote:

The " shortage of dogs " is the reason for all this short distance racing?? Less people breeding, less dogs; so what we need is to encourage people into the sport ,more people ,need more dogs bred to fill the needs ?? but as well this will need to expand the the nursery,of racing ;the non tab tracks that have been slaughtered in race dates to save money, as we were told ?? So that's why there are more short course dogs making up the race program on the tab tracks, ;I will keep saying till Iam black and blue {what the thoroughbreds have done, ? expand the focus out to provisional racing, with decent money to bring in the needed interest ?? Bob Glover

First of all, I repeat, the chart Mal quoted is irrelevant. It tells you what TABCORP and its shareholders earned. It is not turnover and has almost nothing to do with pools.

Turnover is what you see at the bottom of a TAB race page and then later in annualised figures - such as those published by Fact Book and elsewhere (albeit the actual Fact Book data clearly has problems with greys).

Second, certainly the shortage of dogs has led to 280s at Wenty and all the rest of it. But was that the best way to solve the problem and how much prize money should they attract?

Here's a proposition to sum up what I put forward. No TAB track should program any race shorter than 400m. Let the non-TABs take over that job completely (as they once did).

In that event, some trainers will try harder to build their supposed squibs up to the 400m or greater mark OR will revert to non-TAB.

Remember, all this got a kick along because, following the advent of Tier 3 and Class C, country tracks with short races got promoted to TAB status. Far better to make it a condition of TAB status that the club runs nothing shorter than 400m.

Right now all you have in the Wenty 280s are trainers with either poor dogs or good beginners which are suspect at anything longer - all getting city prize money. At half a dozen other tracks lesser dogs are getting full TAB-track money. That's crazy.

The gallops have raised interest in the country by allocating them more money but not to city levels. Nor does the city run 900m/950m races as the bush does. (V'Landys did that by allocating them cash from the tax parity change - cash which should have been going to the dogs by rights). The odd country>city series still pays much smaller prize money than a standard city race but better than they would earn at home - eg $75k v $15k/$40k but never $125k.

My basic principles would be that you pay for excellence and excellence mostly equates to distance, at least up to 500m/600m but beyond when circumstances require it - which is now (but don't expect overnight results).

I do not really buy the argument that a smaller population of dogs means fewer stayers emerging. To some extent, perhaps, but the most common features of distance racing today are short fields and dogs that cannot run out the trip.

Note: so far this month the 720m fields at Wenty have had 7-6-6-0-4-4 runners. In contrast, every 280m field has had 7 or 8 runners.

What has happened is that the current situation has just grown like Topsy with more bits and pieces added every year. Always added, never deleted or even modified. No-one has gone back to scratch and re-organised the whole sport to suit new conditions (GRSA is a minor exception).

A good general idea would be to set a decent standard for a solid 5th Grade TAB-track 500m or 450m - say, a bit above today's level. Below that, pay less. Above that, pay more. And I would not give GBOTA a vote - it has a conflict of interest. It has to be a true management decision in the interests of the breed and the long term industry.

Then there was a leap upwards for three graded races, after which the same low, or lower, figures returned. All much of a muchness.

Of interest is that three of those early maidens included odds-on favourites ($1.70, $1.60, $1.30), all trained by the same bloke (his name starts with Thom). Two of those three were having their first race start and there are no PTs in Victoria. One won and two lost so favourites backers were obviously not big punters and they lost anyway.

We are talking about 440m races here as Sale has nothing shorter than that. Nevertheless, the times were quite smart for Maidens.

My point is that race to race investments are often random there are many ingredients, including whether you were still in church or not. Race to race analyses are never going to tell you about distance or quality preferences except for premium events. So dont bother looking.

You can make up your own mind about gamblers who bet on unraced dogs.

On your Richmond/Meadows comparison for last Friday night, there are more oddities.

I compare only Win figures as the others can throw up even more peculiarities. But note that the Meadows meeting was their prime weekly event, transferred from the normal Saturday as GRV plays musical dates whenever there is a Cup meeting on somewhere.

For the 9-race Richmond meeting, the Vics consistently bet more per race than NSW gamblers did - up about a quarter. Very strange. Either way, there were no great differences between 330m races and others.

Many high profile trainers were present in the 330m races, which may suggest they don't much like the dicey 400m start. Many of their charges seem to swap back and forth between 400m and shorter trips.

Across the board, race to race popularity showed many ups and downs with no pattern. The highest Rich turnover was in races 5 and 8 (NSW) or 1 and 5 (Vic) - all longer races.

On the Meadows meeting, the Vics bet about double what NSW gamblers did - which is to be expected. (Vics love Quaddies, too, NSW not so much).

In all cases, there is usually a blip upwards around the 9:30 pm mark which is normally when a trot meeting fades out or there is a gap in the footie (two major matches were running). This comes despite the habit of many social Club attendees to disappear after 9pm, or ClubTabs to close down.

Any or all figures can be affected by nearby race starts, particularly trot delays (eg people buying Next Up tickets).

It's a dog's breakfast mate.