hobbes
05-09-2002, 04:26
Wednesday, September 4, 2002 ON THE RAILS
Punters want fair play, not gizmos. More stats and comfort zones are welcome, but Club must get the basics right - starting with accurate dividend payouts
Turnover on Sunday was down 11 per cent, and most likely will be down five or six per cent for the season when it wraps up in June. Clearly the biggest factor is the economy, and that is external to anything the Jockey Club can influence. The path of Hong Kong itself has been downhill and slippery since the 1997 handover, mirrored in the Jockey Club's turnover, and appears unlikely to change in the near future.
There are more specific reasons for an inevitable turnover drop this season, with two of the biggest punting syndicates packing up or suspending operations. In recent seasons, the bigger players have complained of narrowing margins on Hong Kong racing, which has become far more predictable with better policing, the improvement in information and a lift in the overall standard of riding with fewer apprentices.
The Jockey Club will this year embark upon the STRIDE timing system, which will enable the regurgitation of endless streams of information on each horse, every step of every race. On opening day, the horses were subject to a raceday reweighing and this information circulated to the public via the media on and off course. What a punter makes of this information, if anything, will be up to him or her but there is no denying that the Jockey Club is dispensing as much information as it can to assist.
Whether punters individually are finding it or not, all these things have made picking winners easier and now the comfort of on-course customers has been lifted. Punters can rent a comfy chair for the day, or be fed and watered at a reserved table with private television. They have a wider range of food available and the Diamond Vision screens at both courses are superior viewing to anything seen anywhere.
Yet, for all this obvious effort and expense, the Jockey Club has not tackled some squeal points in punter dissatisfaction.
Once again last weekend, we had the situation where early punters were backing a horse which had been replaced. Jeune King Prawn would certainly have been in the market for the Chief Executive's Cup - in overnight markets, Race 6 No 2 was listed at $60 for every $10. Unfortunately for those early bettors, though, the horse they had backed was the reserve Winning Counter, who eventually went off as a 47-1 chance in the race.
As we noted last season when this occurred a couple of times, there is not a lot of money in the pools for overnight prices. But there is money, and by the betting figures it is clear those punters were not aware of the horse on which they bet.
Situations like this have an annoyance factor for punters which no comfy chair or Diamond Vision screen or relay of horse weights can rescue. Jockey Club employees are not permitted to bet but, if they were, they might have a better understanding of just how some things irk the customer out of all proportion with the money lost.
The Jockey Club's biggest competitor for the gambling dollar is soccer betting (leaving aside the stock market). It is hard to imagine West Bromwich Albion being substituted for Manchester United after betting had commenced, with little or no notification for early punters, or that such bets would stand.
We understand that the Jockey Club computer betting system could easily signal an alert for early bets when a reserve has been promoted, to ensure the customer has all the facts. However, it does require some communication between the betting and the technology departments. Presumably that's the problem.
Last season, punters were also subjected to a wrong declaration of the dividend for a Six-Up, and the exposure of arcane betting rules which allowed a no-race to turn the Six-Up Bonus jackpot into a Five-Up with no bonus, and the underpayment of a Triple Trio consolation dividend. On June 5, the TT consolation fell subject to a curious rule which does not allow the dividend to be more than two per cent of the Triple Trio dividend - regardless of how it slices up amongst the consolation collectors.
In other words, a TT consolation pool with one $10 ticket holder and $100,000 in the payout pool would not actually pay $100,000 unless the TT dividend had paid at least $5 million for $10.
Ordinarily, this might not be a problem, but the rule is foolish in those instances where the unusual occurs. That TT consolation should have paid $435,727 but, due to this rule, paid only $240,401. Nothing illegal, no mistakes and, yes, it is there in the rules, but the rule needs to be changed.
Then cast your mind back to May 22, when the final race at Happy Valley was abandoned after jockeys would not ride in the heavy rain and lightning. With a Six-Up Jackpot pool of $10 million, most punters cranked up their investments in the hope of a big result.
However, it ended soggily for those with five winners when the last leg was abandoned and the rules decreed that only a Five-Up be paid. Those with five winners to that point got the same payout as those with five second placings, and the $10 million jackpot, which had attracted extra investments, was no longer a factor. The rules decreed that in the event of a void race in a multi-race exotic pool like the Six-Up, the jackpot returned to the jackpot pool. It was not illegal or mistaken, but was out of step with customer expectations.
On March 30, the Six-Up Bonus was incorrectly calculated when the manual addition to the pool of a $3.76 million jackpot had failed to occur. The dividend was revised up by just over $10,000 when the error became known, but that was a day or two later, and doubtless there was plenty of red tape ahead of getting paid for those who had cashed their tickets on the day.
The failure to correctly calculate dividends has a consumer confidence fallout, too, that the Jockey Club can ill afford. If this dividend was wrong, could there have been others wherein the mistake was never discovered?
Betting customers don't ask for much. They don't ask for lounge chairs or food courts or Star Wars timing systems, but punters do feel entitled to fair and reasonable treatment and expect a simple matter like calculation of dividends to be perfect.
Instances like these may be rare and might not seem important to the Jockey Club, but they are a real turnoff factor for horseplayers. In the Jockey Club's new era of customer service, it would be nice to think that the punter is going to come first every time from now on.
Punters want fair play, not gizmos. More stats and comfort zones are welcome, but Club must get the basics right - starting with accurate dividend payouts
Turnover on Sunday was down 11 per cent, and most likely will be down five or six per cent for the season when it wraps up in June. Clearly the biggest factor is the economy, and that is external to anything the Jockey Club can influence. The path of Hong Kong itself has been downhill and slippery since the 1997 handover, mirrored in the Jockey Club's turnover, and appears unlikely to change in the near future.
There are more specific reasons for an inevitable turnover drop this season, with two of the biggest punting syndicates packing up or suspending operations. In recent seasons, the bigger players have complained of narrowing margins on Hong Kong racing, which has become far more predictable with better policing, the improvement in information and a lift in the overall standard of riding with fewer apprentices.
The Jockey Club will this year embark upon the STRIDE timing system, which will enable the regurgitation of endless streams of information on each horse, every step of every race. On opening day, the horses were subject to a raceday reweighing and this information circulated to the public via the media on and off course. What a punter makes of this information, if anything, will be up to him or her but there is no denying that the Jockey Club is dispensing as much information as it can to assist.
Whether punters individually are finding it or not, all these things have made picking winners easier and now the comfort of on-course customers has been lifted. Punters can rent a comfy chair for the day, or be fed and watered at a reserved table with private television. They have a wider range of food available and the Diamond Vision screens at both courses are superior viewing to anything seen anywhere.
Yet, for all this obvious effort and expense, the Jockey Club has not tackled some squeal points in punter dissatisfaction.
Once again last weekend, we had the situation where early punters were backing a horse which had been replaced. Jeune King Prawn would certainly have been in the market for the Chief Executive's Cup - in overnight markets, Race 6 No 2 was listed at $60 for every $10. Unfortunately for those early bettors, though, the horse they had backed was the reserve Winning Counter, who eventually went off as a 47-1 chance in the race.
As we noted last season when this occurred a couple of times, there is not a lot of money in the pools for overnight prices. But there is money, and by the betting figures it is clear those punters were not aware of the horse on which they bet.
Situations like this have an annoyance factor for punters which no comfy chair or Diamond Vision screen or relay of horse weights can rescue. Jockey Club employees are not permitted to bet but, if they were, they might have a better understanding of just how some things irk the customer out of all proportion with the money lost.
The Jockey Club's biggest competitor for the gambling dollar is soccer betting (leaving aside the stock market). It is hard to imagine West Bromwich Albion being substituted for Manchester United after betting had commenced, with little or no notification for early punters, or that such bets would stand.
We understand that the Jockey Club computer betting system could easily signal an alert for early bets when a reserve has been promoted, to ensure the customer has all the facts. However, it does require some communication between the betting and the technology departments. Presumably that's the problem.
Last season, punters were also subjected to a wrong declaration of the dividend for a Six-Up, and the exposure of arcane betting rules which allowed a no-race to turn the Six-Up Bonus jackpot into a Five-Up with no bonus, and the underpayment of a Triple Trio consolation dividend. On June 5, the TT consolation fell subject to a curious rule which does not allow the dividend to be more than two per cent of the Triple Trio dividend - regardless of how it slices up amongst the consolation collectors.
In other words, a TT consolation pool with one $10 ticket holder and $100,000 in the payout pool would not actually pay $100,000 unless the TT dividend had paid at least $5 million for $10.
Ordinarily, this might not be a problem, but the rule is foolish in those instances where the unusual occurs. That TT consolation should have paid $435,727 but, due to this rule, paid only $240,401. Nothing illegal, no mistakes and, yes, it is there in the rules, but the rule needs to be changed.
Then cast your mind back to May 22, when the final race at Happy Valley was abandoned after jockeys would not ride in the heavy rain and lightning. With a Six-Up Jackpot pool of $10 million, most punters cranked up their investments in the hope of a big result.
However, it ended soggily for those with five winners when the last leg was abandoned and the rules decreed that only a Five-Up be paid. Those with five winners to that point got the same payout as those with five second placings, and the $10 million jackpot, which had attracted extra investments, was no longer a factor. The rules decreed that in the event of a void race in a multi-race exotic pool like the Six-Up, the jackpot returned to the jackpot pool. It was not illegal or mistaken, but was out of step with customer expectations.
On March 30, the Six-Up Bonus was incorrectly calculated when the manual addition to the pool of a $3.76 million jackpot had failed to occur. The dividend was revised up by just over $10,000 when the error became known, but that was a day or two later, and doubtless there was plenty of red tape ahead of getting paid for those who had cashed their tickets on the day.
The failure to correctly calculate dividends has a consumer confidence fallout, too, that the Jockey Club can ill afford. If this dividend was wrong, could there have been others wherein the mistake was never discovered?
Betting customers don't ask for much. They don't ask for lounge chairs or food courts or Star Wars timing systems, but punters do feel entitled to fair and reasonable treatment and expect a simple matter like calculation of dividends to be perfect.
Instances like these may be rare and might not seem important to the Jockey Club, but they are a real turnoff factor for horseplayers. In the Jockey Club's new era of customer service, it would be nice to think that the punter is going to come first every time from now on.