curious

3 hours ago, Hesi said:

Anything to do I wonder, with the priority given in the allocation of funds from Entain towards mainly stake money and disregarding infrastructure of facilities, mainly tracks, when we have seen so many problems with tracks.  Problems too numerous to mention, that at the end of the day NZTR are accountable for, made George's position untenable

As many have alluded to, including George himself, punter confidence via track integrity is a key to wagering growth.

As I said, he who pays the piper plays the tune, and Entain have just played the Last Post on Cameron George.

Will Bruce Sharrock be next?

 

I like the guy. He was a good stipe. But what has happened under his rein at NZTR is not very flash.

1 hour ago, VC! said:

I imagine Cameron George’s work requirement’s at the Warriors has increased somewhat as probably has his pay packet Warriors already selling out their first two rounds at home, and strong whispers the Wah’s will be off to Vegas next year if that’s the case so will I 

Which casino are they going to?

Spent 1700

Return 1100

Still has a licence but no runners this season.

Spent 1600

Return 1100

12 minutes ago, von Smallhaussen said:

so they knew there was an issue and still went ahead with Lowland day??

 

It doesn't sound like they knew anything much.

5 minutes ago, RJB said:

Keep pouring money into stakes ...may as well pour it  down the gurgler until the tracks are fixed its on thin thin ice...a joke...but oh we dont meed all the tracks that are deemed uselesss..chickens are coming home to roost. and what about the preps for these fillies for the Oaks now how unfair on them now too ...its a house of cards.

But then Cameron says we can't fix the tracks because we don't have enough tracks available to divert the racing to while we fix them.

1 hour ago, BarryB said:

To be fair, it was torrential rain, would have been unsafe for Jocks riding in it.

I understand the deluge lasted about 10 minutes. It must have been that the rain left the track slippery afterwards? No stipe's report yet to explain what the issue was.

9 hours ago, mardigras said:

Without further investment?

Yes. That's~the total for 3 years with 450 split over the 3 years and whatever else they bid payable up front.

Results

Average - $691,667

Aggregate: $6,225,000

Median: $700,000

Slot 1: John Chew - $725,000

Slot 2: Kerri Spence Bloodstock and Clotworthy Racing - $675,000

Slot 3: Wexford Stables - $700,000

Slot 4: Daniel Nakhle - $675,000

Slot 5: Te Akau Racing - $675,000

Slot 6: Ozzie Kheir - $700,000

Slot 7: Entain New Zealand - $700,000

Slot 8: Andrew Forsman - $675,000

Slot 9: Cambridge Stud - $700,000

Yes. Has me a bit perplexed. Also, the idea in that thread of betting multis on an exchange but maybe it's in reference to their sportsbook which I don't use either.

20 minutes ago, Hesi said:

The other possible factor in this, that we would not be aware of, is any arrangements NZTR are having with Avondale JC for the sale of their land and how much money may be available to NZTR from whatever arrangement is agreed upon

Not sure that could have much to do with it. Any resulting funds are probably years away and would have to go to the Avondale community or Auckland racing, not the rest of the country.

9 hours ago, Hesi said:

I would be surprised if Entain have not been closely involved in the allocation of their money.  A lot of the money they have put up, I think, is extra and above the money for stake increases.  Such as the $350K races, the purchase of horses to train, the promotion on the special bet with the Everest that someone won.

Part of achieving increased wagering must come with punter confidence in tracks, so they are not going to allow money to just be squandered on stakes.

 

 

Entain don't have any control over that. They pay the guaranteed amount to NZTAB which distributes it to codes to do with as they see fit. NZTR only sees fit to distribute it to stakes as they have now for decades. Entain can encourage the codes to improve their product to increase wagering revenue, but NZTR have a long history of disinterest in doing that despite the talk like Cameron's to the contrary. Since they won't do so, I think Entain will shift focus to other products such as sport and overseas racing to build their revenue and hopefully profit. They don't need NZTR to make the deal work, though they are making considerable additional investment to get them on board. NZTR generated wagering revenue won't increase until these track infrastructure ,along with handicapping and programming issues, among other things, are sorted, and a much better product is presented to punters.

11 minutes ago, Hesi said:

Probably lose his job if he got too forthright with his questioning.

That would be a good thing.

5 minutes ago, Hesi said:

I thought part of the Entain money was to go to infrastructure

Only enough to finish Awapuni (which I think they already had) and a few dribs and drabs. The talk is just tokenistic. It's same old same old.

From the strategic funding document.

2)ENHANCINGTRACK/SURFACEPERFORMANCEFORBETTER
RACINGOUTCOMES
Implementation of plan for annual renovation windows for all tracks and
increased funding to support the annual renovations at all venues
Provide a framework to ensure our Track Managers are adequately resourced in
all ways to be retained and developed to create a succession pathway
Increase usage of the synthetic tracks and non-racing venues for Trials
particularly in the Northern/ Central Region during the winter months
Upgrade irrigation systems around multiple venues
Complete the Awapuni reconstruction

Exactly. They just got a windfall for five years and at least $100m of that needed to be allocated to track infrastructure. Great opportunity for Guerin to ask the question but he either doesn't have the wherewithall or the balls.

12 minutes ago, mardigras said:

How much have they got in this infrastructure fund? They will need a massive amount of money and skills every year.

They spent 180k on infrastructure last year and transferred zero to the infrastructure fund which stood at $10m FY 23. Think that's mostly committed to the Awapuni restructure

The handling of the track infrastructure issue is awful. Cameron says the main reason is that we don't have enough tracks available to fix the existing ones but they keep closing tracks? Really?  Wouldn't that have been a good follow up question. Or why when we've had decades to do this? Or wrt to resourcing, they get distributions every year but don't have the money to fix the tracks? Because they put it all in stakes. What about the cost of horse injuries, notably and contemporaneously, those from Karaka Millions night?

What hard question?

Did you see the grossly uninformed question at 37? Then Cameron says there's probably two answers to that, dives into some hype, doesn't answer the question and neither of them follow up. In fact Emily changes the subject. Complete waste of time.

The last time I was there was 3 or 4 years ago. mardi was actually there that day too. Haven't looked at the track for years though. When they fixed the drainage system some years earlier they tried to get water to run uphill. It seems that plan still might not be working very well.

I doubt over watering during the week is the issue if as reported 11mls applied Monday, 10mls Tuesday, then 5mls on Wednesday and Thursday. Given the temperatures, that would hardly match the evaporation rate and shouldn't have created runoff to the inside.

Has there actually been any general communication from NZTR that they've scrapped the SNS and what they are changing to? I mean other than Sharrock's announcements at the roadshows.

1 hour ago, mardigras said:

Yes, Access is not planned for the scrap heap at this point.

The only major issue is if they were using a feature of an older version of Access that has been since deprecated (and now fully removed from the product), then they wouldn't be able to migrate to the latest version of Access with their current software, so would need development to address that if they wanted to move to a later version.

If that was the case, and they haven't yet moved to a later version, there is the chance that the version they are running on is unsupported by Microsoft. That doesn't mean it won't continue working, it just means you won't get any support for, or updates to the product - from Microsoft.

OK. That's a possibility then. I'd like if they would just say so briefly in their communications in that case though to make them understandable.

I've used Access on and off for maybe 20 years. It's the only DB software I know anything about but that's because it's what was provided to individual users in my organisation and supported by our IT team. Seemed fine for those purposes, so as you say, individual to SME use. I think it also can be given a bit more grunt when linked to or overlaid on an external server such as SQL? It may be that was the problem.

Spent 1500

Return 1100

It seems a bit odd to me given mardi's comments that they would now be reverting to Access since they have decided to scrap the implementation of the Racing Australia SNS. The quote in the headpost is originally from an April 2021 release by NZTR. As far as I can make out it is wrong anyway, as MS never suggested they would withdraw support for Access. It looks to me that someone at NZTR got the wrong end of the stick when MS announced withdrawal of support for Access 2016 which had long since been replaced by Access 2019. Don't see how they could stop supporting the current version when that remains part of the widely used MS365 package. If it is true that NZTR are reverting to Access and that is inadequate for their DB needs, then it sounds like we may be facing more problems with the NZTR system in the future.

As noted, this has nothing to do with the TAB software that failed at the weekend and that Entain are replacing this year.

A few million dollar races aside, the rest of the shit show continues to go from bad to worse.