My first bets were taken on the tote. Bookmakers were way too intimidating for me in the beginning. Now, a million years later, the tote is for muggs unless you are playing exotics.
Then co-mingling reared it's head as we tried to squeeze out a few extra drops for the pot. Payouts have became wildly erratic and unreliable. What you saw 5 minutes before the off on the tote board, at the off and after the race varied greatly. Everybody who has a win bet above a few rand knows to give the tote a miss, and if they didn't before co-mingling...they definitively do now.
So it's time to think out of the box.
Normally the tote pools for wins and places is small on ordinary race days. I noticed that win pools were often R70,000 or less. Individual bookmakers can sometimes hold similar on one race what the tote is holding some bets taken at hundreds of tote terminals operating around the country.
Bookmakers have promised to get their betting to around 120% near the start of each race, meaning that if they laid bets on all the runners in a race they should be able to make 20% on turnover.
The tote on the other hand is able to lay a huge number of bets as the start of the race approaches and it's power lies in the ability to take in massive numbers at no risk.
Clearly the race operators should consider applying to the Gambling Board for permission to pay out 90% of the pool, or in other words lay a 110% equivillent book. Immediately the great majority of horses will be paying more than the bookmakers are offering.
As we know from "carry overs", bigger pools generate even bigger pools and they become self fulfilling. As it is the tote generates most of its money from exotics so they have nothing to lose by cutting their profit margin on win (and place?) pools and hope to make it back by generating bigger turnovers.
Come on tote, pay 90% for one month and see if you capture the imagination and wallets of your customers.
Certainly I would immediately switch to playing 50% fixed and 50% tote for win bets. And immediately the snowball begins....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If the win-bets turnover is as small as we expect (in comparison to exotics), the Tote could easily experiment with this. They key factor to them will have to be what they lose if it fails, and whether they'll be ablt to regain lost ground when the percentage goes up again.
ReplyDeleteMy gut feeling is they won't have the guts to experiment.