Month: August 2019

By Brian de Lore
Published 23 August 2019

In racing season 2008-09 in New Zealand, the thoroughbred industry distributed $58,409,592 in prizemoney which on the CPI index calculator equates to $70,675,606 in today’s buying power. Do you find it disturbing that the 2017-18 figure, ten years hence, has increased by less than $1 million and today has a 16 percent less buying power?

Equally concerning, in 2008-09, prizemoney was distributed from profits genuinely earned from the TAB while today’s figure which is practically the equivalent of 2008-09, NZRB over the past two years has borrowed $22 million to maintain the level.

It would be incontestable to say prizemoney in thoroughbred racing today has a lesser buying power comparative to the costs of getting a horse to the races than at any other time in history. Owners and trainers are feeling the pinch as they never have before.

The table below throws up some stats from the 2008-09 season and compares them with nine and ten years later (last season) and then projects where the industry is heading in ten years based on the current rate of contraction.

T’bred	08-09	16-17	17-18	26-27
Number of races	3,088	2,564	2,568	2,135
Number of runners	5,826	4,864	4,744	3,862
Number of starts	34,348	26,863	26,666	20,702
No. starts per runner	5.9	5.5	5,6	5.3
Number of trainers	?	1.013	971	551
Stakes paid	$58.4m	$58.5m	$58.3m	?
Av. stakes per race	$18,915	$23,205	$23,091	?
Av. earnings per runner	$10,026	$12,232	$12,500	?
Av. earnings per start	$1,701	$2,214	$2,223	?
Av. field size	11.1	10.5	10.3	?
At NZRB on $100,000 +	57	134	144	?
Breeding Industry	08-09	16-17	17-18	27-28
Foals born	4,557	3,457	`3,535	2,622
Broodmares served	6,498	5,465	5,311	3,923
Stallions registered	170	121	119	99

The consistency of these contracting figures is countered only by the number of NZRB employees on the big salaries which in the ten years shows an increase of 252 percent – the figure included only to demonstrate how administratively out-of-whack the industry has become.

RITA (Racing Industry Transition Agency) has been in the hot seat for less than two months and is yet to make any visible changes to the structure while the Agency assesses how and when it can implement the Messara Report.

Chairman Dean McKenzie is staying tight-lipped and is doubtless under some pressure in his position of answerability to Minister Peters, having to work with DIA, orchestrating Racing Reform Bill No.2 by Christmas and constantly dealing with a barrage of industry stakeholders looking for faster action.

In my last conversation with McKenzie on July 25th, I raised the question of the top-heavy administration but the subject wasn’t up for discussion. He said: “The executive team is the same; I didn’t say ongoing. I don’t think it’s productive for the industry to get into that conversation. We have too much to do and don’t need to be distracted.

“The Section 14 audit is due at the end of July as required by the racing act – we had a say in the terms of that audit which is due at the end of July. That’s been undertaken by Grant Thornton which is due at the end of July.”

The five-year Performance and Efficiency Audit arrived at RITA recently but from all reports didn’t encompass all the required detail and has been returned for increased content. The Price Waterhouse Coopers Audit for the 2018-19 financial year is now underway – both will deliver a compelling read.

However, it won’t be pretty reading – perhaps a cure for insomnia? The Statement of Intent released by the NZRB about a year ago will be reclassified as a work of fiction and the FOB as a failed investment which may be headed for the scrapheap sooner rather than later. The Messara Report’s principal driver for increased revenue for stakes money – outsourcing the NZ TAB – will become more obviously necessary rather than optional.

The table accompanying this blog displays a theoretical column for a ten-year projection based on the rate of contraction in the previous ten years. But those figures are possible only if nothing changes, and RITA and a passionate Minister of Racing are in place to halt the regression and reset this ship on a new course.

The critical mass figures which racing cannot afford to fall below before it reverts to cottage industry status isn’t known precisely, but cannot be too far below today’s level. The breeding industry needs its viability strengthened to maintain international interest in the New Zealand-bred and produce a level of quality to keep its share of exports up and numbers to provide a sustainable domestic racing product.

When the Racing Act of 2003 came into being racing represented a $1.6 billion industry and one percent of GDP. Sixteen years hence and we are still a $1.6 billion industry, but the country’s GDP has risen from $160 billion to today’s level of $296 billion.

Not shown on the table is how over-regulated racing has become in ten years. Health and safety, animal welfare, anti-money laundering, the gambling harm lobby, ACC levies, and other introduced agendas have all added substantial cost increases which are ultimately borne by the owner.

Successive governments have continually increased taxes on petrol and caused horse-floating charges to rise significantly as an overall cost of racing a horse. The Cambridge-Ruakaka return trip, for example, now requires a third placing at the minimum stakes level to pay the transport fees.

Of the 17 recommendations prescribed in the one-year-old Messara Report. 15 are pending. The betting levy of 13.4 million came back to racing in the last budget, albeit only $ 4 million in the first year, thanks to some robust persuasion at Treasury from Minister Peters. The second was the Racing Reform Bill No.1. Bill No 2, however, is more complicated and it’s a race against time to have it written, jump through all the political hoops, and be passed into law by year’s end.

Industry morale will improve as RITA makes inroads and can release some positive news as the Messara recommendations are ticked off. Another boost will be the launch of a new industry publication to arm the punter with a suitable form guide which has to be a factor in driving TAB turnover.

Under RITA and what will become Wagering NZ, the TAB needs a frontal lobotomy to reprogram-in the meaning of good customer relations. Its monopoly has bred a climate of customer-loathing if you are outside the VIP or Elite groups. The attitude displayed to the average punter is not found in successful businesses which invariably treat every subscriber, no matter how small, as ‘gold.’

A new publication to replace the ill-fated The Informant would renew all lines of communication including editorial – a service now missing for almost five months. An industry-supported weekly is presently under consideration with an answer due in the first week of September.

by Brian de Lore
Published 16^th August 2019

A single day in the world of racing and breeding can bring a changing industry landscape, and while discontentment at the contracting nature of the business isn’t hard to find, you will also find plenty of positivity and passion for the thoroughbred.

These pages have continually highlighted industry problems and the plans made to overcome them, but Thursday 15^th of August was one day which re-emphasised to this writer the passion of people undeterred and determined to succeed in this thoroughbred game.

In an early morning visit to Cambridge Stud I was hosted by CEO Henry Plumptre who has has been at the helm of this famous nursery for the past year and a half. I have known Henry for over 30 years having worked with him in the eighties at Ra Ora Stud when Arrowfield Stud had a two-year involvement.

On a previous visit to the Stud as recently as April, excavators and diggers were in full cry and mud was plentiful. Fast forward to mid-August and the transformation is nothing less than remarkable, although the work is ongoing.

As most will be aware, the Sir Patrick Hogan, Sir Tristram and Zabeel established land-of-honour is now the property of the former Sistema proprietors Brendan and Jo Lindsay who are in the process of transforming this iconic piece of dirt into something one might be expectant from the ownership of Sheik Mohammad.

You have to admire what the Lindsays are doing to the Stud which is marginally against recent trends of downsizing. In the days of Sir Tristram and Zabeel in Sir Patrick’s and Lady Justine’s ownership, Cambridge Stud was always considered a showpiece property – but this is a different level – completely.

It’s state of the art, and no stone has been left unturned by its new owners in their endeavours to provide the thoroughbreds bred and reared on this hallowed land with every opportunity to continue its great history.

Of course, the one ingredient missing will be Sir Patrick’s luck of the Irish. No-one, even by Patrick’s own admission, has enjoyed more luck than he, especially when considering how Sir Tristram was purchased, escaped near death and then became the dynasty which continued with that champion’s best sire-son in Zabeel.

Following the demolition of almost all the Stud’s facilities, the completed new stallion block and three of the four yearling barns look magnificent – the front barn enclosing 24 boxes of four-metre x four-metre and the other three housing 18 boxes each – with the fourth underway to complete the square. A new office located on the site of the old car park is also impressive in keeping with the architectural theme of the yearling barns. It is annexed with car parking for 25 or 30 cars.

The stallion barn comprises of four boxes of 4.5 metres x 4.5 metres at each end (each with a camera and equilume lights) separated by a feed room, washing bays and a white-board room for the stallion grooms.

Henry explained: “The interiors of the barns are of German design and were imported in kit-set form in flatpacks while and steel-work and roofing was build in South Auckland. It’s been a painless way of putting things together – you give them the specifications and they ship the flat packs out.

“The building program that Brendan has been overseeing himself literally kicked off at the end of January so he’s done all that in about seven months. We’ve been helped by the weather this year which has been good but the builders who have had about 60 sub-contractors here have done a fantastic job.

“Brendan went to the Hunter Valley last year and looked at Darley and Arrowfield amongst others,” Henry continued, “to decide upon a design – but the most important thing was to have the prep-shed, the stallion barn and the covering barn all in close proximity to make the management of the mares easy.

“Currently we are building a staff canteen which we had at Darley. We think it’s important that the staff all meet once a day which for us will probably be breakfast – during the season we will probably have about 40 employed including the farm crew and gardeners

“The museum will be built in February next year after the yearlings are gone. I think there will also be some guest accommodation built on the farm at some stage but Brendan hasn’t quite decided where that’s going yet.

On the breeding-stock, Henry said: “We have 151 broodmares which is a level we reached in antipation of having five stallions this year, especially for the support of Almanzor and Roaring Lion – we bought something like a dozen mares overseas and this year have increased the total band by around 45 or 50. The intention is that we will always be selling hard off the bottom.

“This year we will also have 16 fillies in training in Sydney and Melbourne and one in Brisbane. The intention is to give those fillies to trainers to encourage them to come to Karaka – it’s a fairly blunt form of engagement, but we live only three hours from the best racing jurisdictions in the world, but it’s also essential for us to have a local presence in New Zealand.

“We have another 10 or a dozen in training in the Waikato – if New Zealand is inching its way out of a mess which they’ve had for 20 years it’s important to give local trainers some encouragement. Some of our trainers here punch well above their weight and are world-class and it’s important we support them.”

Almanzor is highly credentialed and being well-patronised, but Roaring Lion will no longer figure in the stud’s future plans after his near-miss with death over the past few weeks. The best that Cambridge Stud could hope for is a full recovery from his colic attack, and that will be safely returned to Shekh Fahad – but without ever having covered a mare.

But the procurement of both Almanzor and Roaring Lion and the new appointments at the stud is a signal to everyone that Brendan and Jo Lindsay are more than serious about the level of success to which they aspire, and it strongly suggests they are also there for the long-haul.

Cambridge Stud, when all appointments are complete, will have 78 yearling boxes and be able to accommodate eight stallions. Fellow breeders will be grateful the Lindsays have arrived to actively boost the industry to attract overseas yearling buyers in what are difficult and uncertain times for the New Zealand industry.

___________________________________________

From Cambridge Stud, it’s a 12-minute drive to the south of the Cambridge township to the Pukekura property of Ann Browne, widow of the late Kenny Browne – Hall of Fame inductee and twice the Racing Writers Personality of the Year.

In the male-dominated arena of hurdle and steeplechase racing, Ken deservedly received numerous awards, but everyone in racing knows that the Brownes success was the result of a team effort and Ann Browne in her time has had few peers as a highly-skilled horsewoman.   

Ann has now retired from training but on Wednesday enjoyed success as an owner in the Open Steeplechase at Te Aroha with Raisafuasho trained by Team Rogerson.

The Ken and Ann Browne partnership rightly gained recognition as one of the most successful husband and wife winning stories in racing history. They trained together on the 300-hectare rolling hill country property at Pukekura that had been in Kenny Browne’s family since 1872, and dominated the jumping scene for many years with horses like Crown Star who won 17 races, all over the jumps (a record).

In 1992 they were jointly recognised when awarded ‘Outstanding Contribution to Racing.” Together they prepared the winners of nine Great Northern Steeples, four Grand National Steeples,  two Grand National Hurdles, two Wellington Steeples and seven McGregor-Grant Steeples.

Officially they trained 669 winners although that figure should have read 813 due to Ann’s name not being registered for training in the early years of their marriage. The Browne family home is full of trophies, memorabilia and racing books which provide a stark reminder of all the success they achieved and ensure that Ann is never far from the memory of the late and great Kenny.  

by Brian de Lore
Published 09 August 2019

Comparisons with Racing Industry Western Australian (RWWA) have often surfaced in these pages due to the western state being of a similar-sized industry to New Zealand.

Another shared feature is the geographical isolation of the two jurisdictions when juxtaposed against racing’s two super-power states of New South Wales and Victoria.

The Sandgropers as they are known are well to the west, and we Kiwis reside well to the east. Geographically Western Australia covers a far greater landmass at 2.65 million square kilometres against New Zealand’s 268,000 square kilometres – our land area would fit in WA’s almost ten times. But on the population score, we well exceed WA – 2.59 million for them while Kiwis are now up to 4.79 million (85 percent more).

Despite this seemingly distinct advantage, WA is very comparable to NZ in numbers of race clubs, racecourses, race meetings, races run but they offer higher prizemoney over the three codes – $30 million* higher due to the lower-cost administrative model under which they operate (one board against our five) and despite the high taxes they pay which we have now had removed.

All Three Codes	Western Australia	New Zealand
Attendances	823,000	614,678
Stakes Funding	$142 million*	$108 million*
Wagering Revenue	$322 million	$349.9 million
No. Administrative bodies	One	Five
Employee Costs	$41 million	$65m + codes
Senior Management	8	27
Population comparison	2.59 million	4.79 million
Thoroughbreds only	Western Australia	New Zealand
Race Clubs	54	62
Courses	38	48
Racemeetings	295	308
Races	2,212	2,568
Starts	20,942	26,666
Prizemoney Paid out	$61.2m	$59.3m
Racefields income	$58 m (WA race bets)	Nil
Economic Impact	$821m	$813.4

The NZ model is potentially superior, but they run racing efficiently, and we plod on with a clumsy, costly administrative structure.  RWWA make up for their lack of population with a more intense racing industry per capita than ours, which results in the economic impact of the two jurisdictions being virtually the same.

Why? Because Australians bet more per capita, so in the end, the population has nothing to do with the size of the industry. What’s important is the revenue from betting, the administrative structure, and the quality of the people in charge – NZ has fallen off the pace in all of those three very critical issues.

The NZ TAB failed to recognise the importance of the small punter and is now paying the price for its concentration on mostly its VIP and Elite customers – many of which have also now gone to greener pastures. It ignored the idea of customer service for the average Kiwi investor in the misconceived belief that the multitude of small and aging punters were no longer needed to make the TAB fire – how wrong they have been!

Peter V’landys as CEO of Racing NSW was confronted with a similar attitude a few years ago when the NSW TAB attempted to increase the minimum bet from 50 cents to $5.00. He stayed loyal to thousands upon thousands of small punters and fought against the increase and won. Racing, in his jurisdiction, has thrived under his leadership.

Our TAB did the opposite and thumbed its nose to the small punter, closing TAB stores, sacking 70 telephonist betting operators and expecting those punters to embrace touchtone telephone betting which they had never before used. The NZ TAB has, over the years, developed an appalling customer service reputation.

It has cost the New Zealand racing dearly in both turnover and defections to Australian corporates due to its failure to know the needs of the bulk of its customers and an attitudinal problem from the top down. The anecdotal evidence is everywhere you find racegoers – it’s a far cry from the organisation for which the race clubs raised the money and inaugurated for its launch in 1951.

The TAB completely lost its way with incompetent decision making by people appointed for all the wrong reasons. Former NZRB CEO and now RITA CEO John Allen was clueless two years ago when arguing the Fixed-Odds-Betting (FOB) that he was planning was not aimed at global customers but instead for the New Zealand domestic market alone.

Nothing has changed except he will now realise the concept of building something superior with a smaller budget than overseas betting operators was always pipedream doomed to fail. The scale of IT development, the scale of the customer base, weight of money and a global mindset was always going to see any number of overseas betting operators outperform the NZ TAB

As well, sports betting is what the NZ TAB FOB platform is all about (not racing, although racing has paid for it) and the net margin on fixed-odds-betting is low at around five percent because the NZRB at the sign-up time agreed to pay $17 million per annum in fees to Paddy Power and Openbet.

Betting on the tote on horses returns 14 to 15 percent which is good for racing, but the thoroughbred turnover has been cannibalised in favour of sports betting, which is the main thrust of the TAB’s promotions.

And while Allen was building the FOB platform for $25 million which turned into $50 million-plus $17 million per year in fees, RWWA was busy negotiating the outsourcing of its FOB platform to Tabcorp for an annual fee of $A7 million (no building costs) and collecting its Racefield levies which last season returned that jurisdiction $A58 million.

Which jurisdiction is being well run and which isn’t? Imagine that; instead of building your own, simply outsource to an organisation that is technologically well-advanced, has the software in place, and then plug-in for a fraction of the cost. Did it make too much basic common sense for Kiwis?

RWWA has only one board and eight executives but gets its stuff down with committees compared to New Zealand’s five boards and 27 executives – NZRB (RITA), the three codes and the RIU. It’s blatantly over-structured, over-complicated and an overly-expensive form of administration.

Now we are into a new season, and the status quo is not an option. The industry needs some action, but you get the feeling as one-week rolls into another that the pace of change isn’t happening fast enough for most participants

New Zealanders appear to suffer from a resistance to any dramatic change, and it’s recidivous. The unconscious resistance to adopting radical change is the biggest single issue holding back New Zealand’s so far tentative move to resurrect the racing industry.

This misguided thing about sovereignty has always held us back – nothing has changed. We need to think of ourselves in racing terms as just another state of Australia from which we would benefit markedly on the score of the scale of operation.

Some stakeholders seem to believe outsourcing is akin to selling your soul, but the NZ TAB outsourcing would be more about negotiating a joint venture which might be a ten-year deal but would provide the industry with much needed up-front cash and a lower expense account for the future and much-improved bottom-line – resulting in higher stakes money.

Messara outlined a very doable plan in his review. The Minister reacted favourably last September by saying, “we haven’t engaged an Australian expert to write a comprehensive review and then disregard his recommendations,” and less than a month later he also said Messara would have an ongoing involvement which has never officially happened.

It was at that point that the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) butted-in with too much influence and racing is now paying the price for its snail-pace, bureaucratic involvement.

The DIA was responsible for the terms of reference for MAC which stated, “…will involve the Committee gathering and analysing a wide range of inputs and carrying out engagement, investigation, and analysis about the effects of specific proposals under core areas of the Messara Report, including:

• the governance and structure of racing;
• finance and distribution to the codes;
• new legislation to support the various dimensions of racing reform;
• wagering and the TAB;
• club consolidation, racecourses and prizemoney; and
• any other matters that the Committee considers relevant to its work, including establishing the Racing Industry Transitional Authority (RITA).”

It was the gathering and analysing part that didn’t ring true enough – reeking of a bureaucratic takeover whereby the DIA assumed the role of scriptwriter and pacemaker. Historically the DIA knows nothing of racing and is inherently strong in its anti-gambling stance. Its wording displayed a distrust of the reviewer, so they wrote a script to review the reviewer in lieu of the Minister telling RITA to do it urgently.

As a result, we now have about 10 committees and sub-committees reviewing various aspects of the Messara Report to decide whether or not the 17 recommendations will work.  It’s a hypochondriacal assessment of the expert by non-experts – the DIA.   

It’s no different to going to the doctor, getting diagnosed, picking up the prescription but then developing some misguided suspicion and over-evaluation of what the side-effects could be.

The New Zealand Racing Industry has a similar mindset – it’s not generally a pill-taking industry. Kiwis have a penchant for the status quo. It’s in the DNA and has shown-up again in this reluctance or lack of speed in taking medicine which in this instance might rectify the problem.

The medicine came in the form of the Messara Report. The doctor said you must take these pills and take them quickly. What did we do; we brought home the pills, placed them on the kitchen table, and are still looking at them. Now we are looking for a second opinion.

A year ago when we received the pills our condition was dire.  Now it’s chronic.

It could be psychological – a fear of change, or progress or adaption. Seemingly, we are yet to develop a level of tolerance to change that will allow us to deal with transformations without compromising too much of our psychological imbalance.

Are we doing it again- more paralysis by over-analysis? The model’s been set out before us; now let’s just do it!

by Brian de Lore
Published 2 August 2019

Australians are the best gamblers in the world. It can’t be disputed – using the 2016-17 figures they bet $23.87 billion on racing alone. Add to that $10.1 billion on sports betting and a whopping $174.6 billion on gaming (pokies and casinos) and it’s easy to understand why the Aussies are the undisputed world champs.

In total, Australians bet a staggering $208.6 million in the 2016-17 season which equates to more than $11,000 per capita for every person over the age of 18. These figures come from the 34^th edition of Australian Gambling Statistics which hasn’t yet posted stats for the 2017-18 season.

The relevance in the figures to New Zealand is the $23.87 billion bet on racing because although Australians betting on New Zealand thoroughbred racing accounts for a paltry 2.4 percent of turnover, it still amounts to $572.8 million. That’s the figure that racefields or as RITA renamed it – Betting Information Use Charge (BIUC) – would be applicable for the levy if it was up and running.

Let’s suppose the rate was set at 2.5 percent – a not unreasonable figure when compared to the equivalents in both Victoria and New South Wales. The annual collect from that would amount to $14.3 million or a weekly income of $275,000 – that’s what the racing industry is currently missing out on even though the legislation became law on July 1^st and the New Zealand industry is now entitled to collect it.

Last week in this blog, the question was raised of the failure to set the rates, and why the agreements (even interim agreements) were not in place to collect the new revenue streams in time for July 1^st. After all, the legislation went through under urgency, and everyone knew well in advance that racefields and the POC (Point of Consumption) levy were two of the most critical components in the Messara Report’s ultimate goal of doubling prizemoney and turning the industry around.

The codes and RITA should have collectively worked with DIA to set interim rates and agreements that could have been in place by July 1^st. The three codes and RITA are all desperate for cash and possessed the capability to set interim rates and agreements and could have locked themselves into a vault, ordered pizzas, and not emerged before the job was complete.

That’s the racefields side of things; the other side is Point Of Consumption levies which is the act of applying fees on overseas betting operators when residents of New Zealand use their services to place bets on New Zealand racing.

A few years ago a working group estimated that around $400 million was bet by New Zealand residents on racing and sports with overseas betting operators. Realistically, no one knows the true extent of Kiwis deserting the NZ TAB in favour of Tabcorp, Sportsbet, Crownbet, etc., but the anecdotal evidence suggests it has increased substantially in the four years since the release of that report.

Using the old figure as an example, the $400,000 million would generate an income of around $8 million annually. That figure equates to $150,000 every week, and when added to the racefields calculation, the industry is probably missing out on $425,000 per week.

In last week’s chat with RITA Chairperson Dean Mckenzie the question of urgency on these matters came up, and he responded thus: “We are going as fast as we can go to get that done – absolutely we are.

“I give you my personal guarantee that we have done everything we can – we have shortened timeframes as best we can; we have work going on in the voluntary agreement space.

“We have a workstream going of which there are two elements to it – the voluntary stream and there’s a clause in the legislation that enables us to grandfather-in the agreement. So, we are working as hard as we can on those voluntary agreements with the legislation coming into effect, and we have also got and have significant work going on in the regulatory framework so that we have the second part of the legislation ready to go by the end of the year.

“The goal is to hit the New Year with the regulations all in place, and we think that’s an achievable goal – we are utilising all the specialists we can to get it done.”

Having suggested the rates and forms and agreements posted on the Racing NSW and Racing.com websites could truncate the process and work-load, McKenzie was in partial agreement:

“We are attempting to cherry-pick the best of all the template frameworks that currently exists,” he said, “and are utilising all the specialists we can to ensure that it’s done as efficiently and as quickly as possible.

“The regulations have to be in place by the end of the year to enable formal processes to start from the next calendar year.

“The key for this is that there is a process you have to go through to put the regulations in place – we have no influence on that. And all we can do is do what we are doing, and that’s why we have put all our resources into it  – and don’t forget, the betting duty has already been collected.”

The betting duty to which McKenzie refers is the repeal of the $13.9 million annual figure which Minister Peters negotiated with Treasury and announced in the budget to return to the industry gradually over three years – $4 million coming back in this financial year.

On stakes money which a year ago after the release of the Messara Report many in racing had hoped to see double in the new season, McKenzie put a sobering correction on those thoughts:

He said: “We have retained existing funding to the codes for this season, which needs putting into a positive light. There are going to challenges to us committing to that, but we have committed to it.”

The challenges that McKenzie refers to could only mean that at present the money isn’t in place, but they will find it. It’s hard to interpret that remark any differently, but everyone knows that a reduction of stakes money would be a demoralising blow for everyone concerned.

Another season has rolled over, and racing hasn’t seen anything like the radical reform it envisaged or, at the very least, hoped for after Messara delivered his Review of New Zealand to the Minister of Racing just over 12 months ago.

If you took a simple helicopter view of the progress one year on, you could safely say the majority of racing stakeholders, participants, enthusiasts or whatever you want to call them, will be disappointed.

The helicopter view defines the overview of the overall management of the business. The management of the business is the barometer for progress. The progress over the 12 months has been minimal, but RITA has existed for only one month

So far, the only tactile addition to racing’s depleted finances is a portion of the repealed annual betting duty of $13.9 million or just $4 million for the first-year portion. RITA has been awaiting delivery of the Performance and Efficiency Audit which should now be in hand, and which should have a bearing on the restructuring of the administration and a reduction in costs.

It’s been BAU for the first month, but with a full analysis of the audit, the industry will hopefully see RITA spring into stride.