Paul Roy and Betfair

Take no notice of me, I'm just in a pet about it. I will recover my cheerful charm soon enough. (Whaddya mean 'recover', woman?) Unfortunately, you are quite right on all those adverbs and adjectives, EC! Really - didn't know that about Dennis. No shame at all - I mean, why bother to slag something off when you're busy piggybacking it for what you can get? What is the point? You just make yourself sound a plonker - well, even worse, someone who can't be trusted.

God, I wish I'd realised that 100-1 shot was worth an e/w tickle today, don't you? All me troubles would be over, guv!
 
EC1 said:
Barry Dennis is as as bad as Roy anyway..one of the biggest ever critics of Betfair..but is a major trader on there

these people have no shame..but they aren't alone..not when there is money to be made

greed - rules
Click to expand...

Barry Dennis is a fraud. He does the Betfair/Betdaq shuffle all day; his prices fluctuate according to what the magic machine says, no matter whether he has laid a bet or not. Most of the quotes attributed to him in the papers are pure fantasy as well. Yet he still sees fit to 'hold court' sitting on his deckchair in the middle of the ring before racing - often on his todd, which is hilarious.
 
krizon said:
Of course directors influence investments!
Click to expand...

Directors influence the strategic positioning of the business (whether that be new acquisitions of businesses to grow their own, cost cutting, pushing market share etc etc), not the day to day operations which is left to middle management. Of course tone from the top is crucial to any business but there are very few directors who will indugle in the day to day running of the business. You're supposed to have god middle management for that. tHese guys are investing other peoples money and are custodians of their funds. It's not Roy putting in his own money into Betfair. And I'm sure Roy has a number of other companies where he feels the investment managers should not be investing, but does he pull the plug on those too, letting personal views get in the way of commercial sense.

Gal, you ask what an event is. An event is one where your view would be influenced. Suppose roy's sole objective in the BHA is to destroy Betfair. If he was taking control of Betfair, it would hardly be likely he would destroy it, if he his company had a £5m investment, it's less likely he would be worried although I agree it might influence him. But mildly I'd imagine. So size in this case does matter.
 
krizon said:
Take no notice of me, I'm just in a pet about it. I will recover my cheerful charm soon enough. (Whaddya mean 'recover', woman?) Unfortunately, you are quite right on all those adverbs and adjectives, EC! Really - didn't know that about Dennis. No shame at all - I mean, why bother to slag something off when you're busy piggybacking it for what you can get? What is the point? You just make yourself sound a plonker - well, even worse, someone who can't be trusted.

God, I wish I'd realised that 100-1 shot was worth an e/w tickle today, don't you? All me troubles would be over, guv!
Click to expand...

i was as annoyed as you are about Roy with Dennis tbh at the time

when you think that Dennis appeared on the Morning Line - in front of many casual racegoing viewers..openly dissed Betfair on numerous occasions - then has the cheek to trade on there and have his Barrys Bismark thing..which openly encourages people to lay horses on Betfair

now when you are talking about hypocrisy..he is the king.

I know he isn't in the same position as Roy..but many casual racegoers will know who Dennis is..but not who Roy is

its about appearance..neither have painted a good picture of themselves or racing over betfair

i've no objection to people dissing betfair..but have the good grace to not be involved with it in any way if thats how you feel
 
Songsheet said:
Guys, despite what you may want to hear, size always matters ....:cool:
Click to expand...

I was waiting for someone to take the bait :lol:

And is it not what you do with it that matters?? You know, it might only be a small, £5m investment but if he's pateient, works in hard, identifies the sweet spot and gets out at the top wouldn't it be a good job and leave everyone satisfied ;)
 
Knowing a bit about these things, albeit mostly now draped in the cobwebs of the past, it'll be more like a rush to get in, too little time taken to let things work to mutual advantage, a quick retreat, leaving others to clean up the mess...
 
Why Paul Roy carries most blame for failure of levy negotiations
Racing's absurd demand for £130m poisoned the whole process and Roy's position is untenable

    • Greg Wood
    • The Guardian, Tuesday 2 November 2010
    • icon_font.gif
      larger | smaller
Roy-006.jpg
Paul Roy, chairman of the British Horseracing Authority, must carry responsibility for the failure of the levy talks. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian This should be a column looking forward to a weekend that promises to be among the most memorable for many years. A thrilling contest for the Flat jockeys' title is into its final week, while Kauto Star, Midday and Workforce are all due to race in the next five days. Above all, two of the greatest racemares of all time, Goldikova and Zenyatta, will both go for unprecedented third victories at the Breeders' Cup meeting.
Instead, thanks to the stubborn refusal of both racing and the bookmakers to act like adults and reach an agreement on the levy, it must be about the period of drift and uncertainty facing an industry that employs tens of thousands of people. Until Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, decides on the appropriate sum to be returned from betting to racing, racing can only inch forward into a murky future, and if he fails to consider it a pressing priority, frankly, who can blame him?
While he ponders whether to lean towards the bookies or the British Horseracing Authority, it seems likely that Paul Dixon, the president of the Racehorse Owners' Association and chairman of the Horsemen's Group, will be organising strikes designed to "exert maximum harm" on the bookmaking industry. Rich people striking for more money from their hobby. That's really going to play well with an austerity government.
Dixon is one of several people – all of them men with big egos, by no great coincidence – who emerge from this sorry mess with no credit whatsoever. Ralph Topping, the chief executive of William Hill, is another. Topping seems to pick fights with racing as much because he enjoys fighting as anything else, which is not in the long-term interest of bookmaking or racing (or, for that matter, William Hill's shareholders).
He is also willing to use the levy process as cover in a separate, commercial battle with Betfair, which he loathes because it offers some punters – though not necessarily the most profitable ones - such an innovative, low-margin betting product that traditional bookies struggle to compete.
But Ralph Topping does not represent the views of every bookmaker any more than Paul Dixon reflects those of every owner. They are just louder, more belligerent and more blinkered than the rest, unable to see beyond the boundaries of their own, narrow self-interest.
For the real architect of the levy deadlock, though, it is necessary to look to the very top. Bookmakers have contributed to the failure to reach an agreement but, throughout the process, they have been able to sit back and wait for a determination, safe in the knowledge that the eventual figure will be much closer to their offer than to the racing industry's ludicrous demand for a minimum of £130m, and ideally another £20m of icing on top.
The BHA's insistence that racing deserves an unprecedented boost to the levy at a time when everyone else is cutting back has poisoned the whole process, and for that the ultimate blame must lie with Paul Roy, the Authority's chairman.
It is, or should be, surprising that Roy is still in charge, following the disclosure that his City firm invested heavily in Betfair when the exchange floated less than a fortnight ago. Given his repeated (albeit highly questionable) claims that Betfair is leeching money from racing, buying its shares suggested that either Roy is very stupid, that he employs very stupid people, or that in his list of priorities, racing comes well behind the (further) enrichment of Paul Roy. None of these scenarios makes him fit for office.

There are plenty of people with questions to answer over the failure to reach agreement on the levy. The first, and ideally only, one for Roy to address, though, is: why are you still here?
 
I think the first is, shouldn't he be in a tongue-tie?

I already put forward the remarks made in the last large paragraph, so nothing to add there, but I don't agree with Wood's remarks about Paul Dixon. I'd have thought it was painfully obvious that racing has always attracted egotistical males, from Alpha Jockeys to Alpha Trainers and Alpha Owners, so it's a bit superfluous to mention his ego as if it's something unusual or untrustworthy. Of course it's a bit of a pissing contest between racing and bookmakers at present, but since bookmakers have seen fit to dismiss racing as of no real importance to their £2bn profits, let's just take that threat seriously.

And as for racing being 'rich people striking for more money from their hobby' - that's total nonsense. If owners begin to dwindle because they think they're increasingly being taken for a ride (we've done all this before, snore, snore, sorry to say it again), then it will impact on all of the business. I'm surprised at Wood for sounding so 'them and us' - here's a guy who makes his dosh out of the industry, who should be supporting it, not sniping at it. If ownership decreases, smaller yards with distinctly unrich owners will fail, breeders (already battered enough, thank you) will do even less well, stable staff will be 'let go', and all of the periphery which racing supports - horsebox transport, feedstuff companies, farriers, world without end, will see very unpleasant downturns in their businesses. None of which is good for racing.

Prize monies have dropped like a stone over the past five years in particular, while not one other aspect of racing has proportionately reduced its costs. You cannot feed your horse correspondingly cheaper, your trainer/farrier/box driver hasn't sympathetically reduced fees, your jockey doesn't offer a BOGOF deal on rides. It is ridiculous that so many people feed off people - egotistical, self-effacing, rich beyond the dreams of avarice or in a 24-strong friendly syndicate being totally irrelevant - who are willing to present the product daily, expecting very little, but getting less all the time.

It can't be helped that men are clashing like stags in rut over this issue. I'm not sure that Barbie-like kewpie-doll women would arrive at a better result, though. I think gender and personality really don't come into it. In the end, I thought that strike action would be the only way to demonstrate whether racing was of so 'little importance' to bookmaking. Let's try it. Let's see.
 
Krizon - couldn't agree more with you - your eloquence knows no bounds!! This is a sorry state when owners who are the lifeblood of racing have absolutely no chance of getting a small proportion of their money back - all the want is a chance - with a reasonable horse to maybe break even every once in a while!! How anyone in their right mind would run a horse to win a pot of £1,000 at Wolves or Southwell is beyond me!!
 
Do the likes of Arena Leisure and Northern Racing contribute to the levy?

Surely a percentage of the profits they make on a more than regular basis as a result of racing, the racecourse etc. should go back into racing (and subsequently out again via owners prize money).
 
Gawrsh, OTB - thanks for the very kind words, but this nonsense is going to run as long as 'the Middle East problem' if we're not careful! Nobody's expecting to even break even all the time, let alone come out quids in - that's something which clever punters might manage to do more often than not, although going by some of the very frank remarks on here, even that's sometimes quite a small margin, and not to be assumed as a done deal.

IS: not sure what individual racecourse holdings contribute, to be honest. But NR and Arena contribute the least out of their own purses to prize money. All courses do put some money into owners' winnings, but some more than others - although at the bigger meetings (and the biggest), most of that's coming out of sponsorships.

As I've mentioned before, racecourses separate their accounts for commercial, non-racing activities (hiring out space for exhibitions, fairs, weddings, seminars, etc.) from racing action. While a course might overall be making an excellent profit, the money garnered from non-racing events will not go into the course's racing pot. Thus, the £100,000+ Brighton r/c makes by providing parking for cars and safekeeping for bikes for the London-Brighton bike ride, for example, doesn't go towards horseracing. It'll go towards any general improvement or repairs to the fabric of the course's buildings, and certainly towards the salaries of those engaged in sales and marketing, but not, for example, towards a new irrigator for the Clerk of the Course.

Courses do garner picture rights per race from SIS (Satellite Information Systems), which goes to the racing side of the business and is very lucrative, but don't forget that huge water bills (an example is £20,000 per season for Brighton), track maintenance, and the salaries for everyone engaged to put on the racing, have to be funded from those and the gate take.

I imagine that portions of other expenditures, such as stationery, office furniture and equipment, etc., are split between the two incomes, as both use them. But courses keep their two functions - racing and non-racing events - separated. Thus, prize money for owners comes purely from the racing income. Their profits go back into the company's hands - all nine courses from NR, if they show profits, go into the NR pot, not into their own accounts. The HQ accountants then decide on which courses get what sort of cut of funding for the next season, etc. The more they make at course A doesn't necessarily mean that course A will get the biggest slice the next season: the Board might decide that course C would do better if it could refurbish its stands, for example, and that's where the money will go. (To course A's disgust, no doubt!) There are just a few totally stand-alone, indie courses - like Plumpton, for example - which don't have to divvy up their takings with sister tracks.
 
It seems harsh to have a go at bookmakers for not putting more in than they should do (ie. a proportion of their profits from UK horse racing) whilst there are courses run by Northern Racing (think Chepstow) who seem to have a reduction in prize money every year, lower quality races, lower class of horse and increased attendances.

Surely any complaints about prize money should go towards racecourses and not the levy board who merely take the money away (in proportion of course) from those who do well out of racing?

If for want of a better example Wolverhampton are getting say £1,000 per race from the Levy and are only putting in £500 in race sponsorship or out of their own pocket a "blank racing" day at Lingfield, Chepstow and Kempton won't change matters.

The best way forward would be for trainers/owners to refuse to run at a particular/a few particular tracks due to prize money levels. Would be interesting to see which owners and trainers would take part in this - would only need to be over a monthly period, i'm sure when a track starts to lose runners and having to cancel race days due to lack of runners and ultimately lose paying customers through the gates that they'd soon start upping the prize money by say £1,000 a race.

I can sympathise with the independents and Plumpton have the great Cheltenham bonus scheme worth £50,000 which they run throughout the year and has seen a great increase in the quality of horse racing at the track - Pipe's Notus De La Tour, El Dancer, The Betchworth Kid etc. all racing at the track last season is evidence that even in these times of recession the racecourses can put something back into racing and that new ideas will be rewarded.
 
It worked that well the French abolished it and the Aussies have many different Tote's and plenty of on course bookmakers ;)
 
Ok - apologies - Paris Mutuel and several "totes" in Australia - what I tried to suggest was a state run monopoly which guarantees a 25% gross return to racing - a slight hybrid of this with on course bookmakers only licensed :whistle:
 
There's nothing wrong with the way things are aside from need a competitive Tote and a fair way of moving forward.

Do breeders contribute to the levy at all?

Seems that the only people being asked to pay more are the bookmakers which strikes me as being unfair - should we have a 10% tax on all stud fees that goes into a levy type pot for prize money and the like?

The Tote as it stands doesn't attract any business in terms of single bets, place bets, and some of it's multiples due to sky high takeout rates - if the Tote reduced that i'm sure that it could be more competitive and pay the same rates back into racing as the bookmakers do at the moment.
 
Back
Top