Quote:
Originally Posted by Poindexter
What is amazing? That with everyone ordered to stay at home that nationwide handle is back to normal. As touched in on my last post the best way to minimize the late odds swings is to reduce takeout and eliminate rebates and that coincidentally (lowering takeout and eliminating rebates) is the only way this sport will ever see any kind of major growth period. As long as we live in the world of high takeouts and rebates this sport will never maximize it's potential.
Because of the parimutuel betting format, every player that does better than the track take and also gets rebates is increasing the takeout on the rest(I have illustrated this in too many posts in the past) When you already have excessive takeout to begin with the effects of all of this means the game becomes too hard for new blood to compete enough to enjoy the game. It is really this simple.
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90% of the audience here has zero understanding that all that matters is
revenue from handle. The raw handle numbers fed to CNN and anybody else who cares to look them up are barely even tethered to the bottom line, particularly in times like these (where nobody is on track, and all gate and concessions income is gone).
Most of these tracks are getting creamed in present day 2020 and are staying open merely because
something offered to their horsemen (and to scant few employees) in an empty box is better than doing exactly nothing with an empty box while still paying rent/taxes/mortgage on it.
As for your last part, it isn't precisely
because of the parimutuel betting format. That's like blaming the teeter-totter for the fat kid on one end of it.
The more appropriate targets for that ire are track operators who still refuse to play to their strengths instead of to their weaknesses. And it has zero to do with the takeout as well. (for the point you think you understand would be parallel no matter whether the takeout were 20% or 2%)
In teeter-totter terms, racing has invited scores of would-be
fat kids to load on one side of the teeter-totter while racing and the fat kids just sit there wondering why nobody will get on the other end. The rebates and the direct computer lines into the pools (which are more the cause of those seeming past-posting wagers
which really aren't past post than random
whales could ever be (without those computer tie-ins)) only
exacerbate the problem.
The computer guys, betting at the end, are betting the overlays and getting the full odds picture back in-line with what it
should be... thus they are doing most of their playing when the
live horses are an overlay, and are
noticed by everyone almost exclusively in similar circumstances. (nobody cares when a 21-to-1 shot moves to 47-to-1 on the far turn and then runs eighth)
Back in the 1970's, the distribution of wagering humanity was far more near to equal on both sides of the teeter-totter, and thus John Q. Public could more easily with$tand the typical $helling he might endure on his first few trips to the track. It was track management alone who evolved to seal its own 2020 fate over the past 30 or 40 years by catering only to the tiny sliver of the fanbase and giving only the finger to everyone else. (well, now it's 2020 and everyone else left - and track management did this to themselves, to some degree without even understanding what their actions were doing to them)
The obvious way to correct the stupidity is to support the other end of the teeter-totter, which is what racing should have begun in earnest three decades ago.
The first result of this done properly is that one by one, the rebate people who are barely able to make it in 2020 will fall into to proverbial tank, as John Q. Public at large begins to know a fighting chance for the first time in his racing life. With time, the next set of
barely-above-barely-making-it rebaters will fall into the tank, and the rest of the public at large will collectively move higher (in terms of ROI).
In due time a far more
competitive game will be genuinely
approachable by the semi-intelligent non-players out there who now are far too wise to step-in and prep for the ass-rattling that is their only possible outcome in 2020 (whenever the fat kids decide to step off the teeter-totter for a moment, to go and cash another windfall).
The horse racing venue is the rare business in society which does precisely nothing for its customers, and they continue to wonder aloud, and to themselves why their businesses are dying. The horsemen are putting on the show, the bettors are playing and bickering among themselves, while those operating the venues just stand around with their hands out.
The most horse racing can hope to gain from Covid 2020 is
renewed exposure and a lack of competition for entertainment... but every dollar wagered brings only a relative pittance into track coffers under these make-do conditions, so nobody is making any money, and horsemen are (or should be) somewhat thrilled to be getting anywhere near their annual purse revenue.
All while the habitually clueless remain as clueless as ever about all of this.
