With the challenge of overlooking The Championships, the Inglis Easter Yearlings sales, racing vision ending in the collapse of TVN, and all racing related issues in the state of NSW, The Roar was fortunate to have an interview with the Chief Executive of Racing NSW, Peter V’Landys.
(Editor’s note: V’Landys held this interview with The Roar in the days leading up to the big wet which forced the postponement of the races to Monday. The interview focuses more on issues surround racing in NSW and Australia.)
V’Landys’ discusses tax parity, the racing vision issue, the way The Championships are marketed, and much more.
An early pressing issue discussed was the re-election of Mike Baird’s NSW state government. As it currently stands there is a large tax disparity between Racing NSW and the Victorian Racing Club.
Baird’s current government takes $3.22 out of every $100 bet on the NSW TAB, while in Victoria, the state government tax rate is only $1.28, which is something V’Landys hopes will change.
“It’s unfair if Victoria gets – in thoroughbreds – $70-something million a year more than us, and $100 million more for the three codes across harness, greyhounds and thoroughbreds,” V’Landys said.
A lowering of the tax will lead to a more competitive Racing NSW and an improvement to the state of racing as a whole, V’Landys believes the government should be giving racing what is truly theirs.
“As we said from day one, we didn’t want a handout, we didn’t want a grant. We just want what’s rightfully ours, which is a greater share of the punter’s losses. We’re looking forward to parity coming very soon,” V’Landys said.
In it’s second year of running The Championships has been one of the big success stories for racing in Australia, and has given Sydney Racing a spotlight to shine in.
One of the great initiatives was the introduction of the Provincial and Country Championships, which has given country tracks throughout the state a feature race day, with horses winning qualifying heats to run in Sydney for the final.
With big prize money up for grabs the initiative created great interest wherever it went.
“The punter, the customer themselves has loved the concept of the country provincial championships, and that’s just as important. It’s important to have our participants embrace and engage it,” V’Landys said.
“But it’s just as important the customer embraces it. And we’ve never seen betting turnover jump like this. Even just from the Muswellbrook race meeting turnover was up 40% or 50% on betting turnover and that’s extraordinary.
“I’ve been going around the country side with my Deputy Chairman, Naseema Sparks. We couldn’t believe how much it’s been embraced. I’ve never seen excitement like it and how people have adapted it. It’s been terrific, which gives us that incentive to do it bigger and brighter next year.”
The Championships was formed in partnership with the ATC with the initiative to have a ‘Grand Finals’ of racing which is able to compete with other sporting codes.
“The situation with the ATC is that it’s a partnership. It’s not Racing NSW, it’s not the ATC; it’s the both of us. It’s an initiative of Racing NSW, but it’s a partnership with the ATC,” V’Landys said.
“We were very fortunate that the ATC already had those traditional races that need no introduction: the Doncaster, the Derby. Naturally we’ve included the Queen Elizabeth and made it a substantially high profile race.
“Realistically, it is a grand final. In every sporting event, the pinnacle of that event, of that sport, is its grand final. The AFL has the highest ratings and the highest attendance at the grand final of the AFL.The NRL, same thing; whatever competition you have, the grand final is the pinnacle.”
V’Landys admits that the Victorian Spring Carnival, culminating in the Melbourne Cup, is a fantastic event and acknowledges that The Championships has greater competition from other sporting codes. V’Landys hopes that The Championships can get even bigger and with the Inglis Sales in the middle it can become an even bigger attraction.
It’s hopeful that if the NSW government lowers it’s taxing on the betting industry in NSW, that The Championships could become even bigger in future years, and if this year’s appetiser is anything to go by it’s a mouth watering prospect for fans of the sport.
“We have all the sports against us, but what we have that the other states don’t have is the capacity to have it as the grand final. That’s what’s important to us, and that’s what we’re going to build on,” V’Landys said.
“Now with the Inglis sales as well, we’re calling it ‘Destination Week’. You’ve got the two pillars with Day 1 and Day 2, and then you’ve got the Inglis Sales in the middle.
“I don’t think you’ll get better racing anywhere in the world than the first of The Championships. If we do get [tax] parity and we can increase the prize money, it’ll just get bigger, and we’ll probably put more money into The Championships.”
Racing appeals to an older demographic, but the excitement is something that can capture a new generation of racing fans. Racing writers Ken Calendar and Max Presnell were critical of the ATC in regards to their marketing of the Golden Slipper and The BMW.
It was believed the marketing was more focused on the food than the racing, V’Landys explained while it could have been marketed a little better if you aren’t creating an ‘experience’ patrons won’t be interested.
“They have to appreciate one thing racing’s done wrong over many years is that it hasn’t really attracted the younger demographic. The ATC is trying to rectify that situation by aiming at the younger demographic,” V’Landys said.
“Although I agree […] that the horse is the real hero, but you also have to get people excited to get to the races. Get the lure to get into the races. Once you get into the races, to have the product to be able to have them engaged.
“As I understand, Ken and Max have been around a long time, and … they say the “The hero being the horse,” and I have no argument with that. But at the same time, you got to get a sense of who the horse is, so you need to get them there in the first place. It’s a balancing act.”
One of the most important parts of the racing industry are owners, and without them this industry wouldn’t exists, currently Racing NSW is looking at ways it can further look after owners by looking at increasing prize money returns and introducing an owner’s card similar to Victoria.
“When they have the 30,000, if you include all people in all syndicates, there’s a lot of owners in New South Wales,” V’Landys said.
“That is decreasing because, unless they can get their expenses back what they put into racing, they go out of racing. That’s the reason why parity is so important. We need to make the return to owners even greater, so they can absorb the cost that they’re paying out.”
Again one of the main issues of why NSW has only a 30% return comes back to the fact that Victoria gets a larger share of their betting turnover, which is something V’Landys is quick to point out.
“You can do a lot of things when you get $70 million a year more than us. Absolutely – we have a few things that we were looking at if we get parity,” V’Landys said.
“If you don’t have the funds, you try to balance your budget as much as you can to be kind to everyone. At the moment we get $70 million less than Victoria, so they can do a lot more than we can do.”
While NSW Racing has a deal with the television rights of the racing in NSW a medium for online digital streaming has been missing in the industry. V’Landys said while they have a television partnership with Tabcorp there is a non-exclusive deal for the digital rights of racing in NSW.
“We’ve always said that we would look at doing a strategy on digital. We need to sit down with the ATC and country and provincial clubs and determine. That’s when we’ll decide who we’re going to give streaming rights to – the board of Racing NSW hasn’t considered the matter,” V’Landys said.
“All we’ve done at the moment isn’t sure that it’s going to be non-exclusive. It’s got potential to reach out on the new platforms. There’s only one real service provider to the pubs and club – even when TVN was around. That’s Sky; we’ve done that deal.
“The last pillar is the digital, and as I say, it’s not inclusive to Tabcorp. They haven’t got it exclusively. We’ll be looking at providing it to other operators. That will be done in the next month or so.”
One issue that has plagued Sydney racing in recent times has been the lack of field sizes for Sydney metropolitan meetings. V’Landys believes there are a number of factors that contribute to this, and why there is a difference between Sydney and Melbourne.
“The Victorians have got a big advantage with race fields, is because we get an hour out of Melbourne, you have so many centers. Here in New South Wales, we got a great geographical area,” V’Landys said.
“It’s hard to get all the horses to come from all the different areas, whereas in Victoria they can get them from anywhere with an hour’s radius.”
“In New South Wales, there are also barrier trials, which they don’t really have in Victoria. I know they got jump outs, but nothing like New South Wales.
“There’s the compressed weights, which is certainly affecting us, with the jockeys minimums going to 54 kilos when they used to be 47kg. The weighs are compressed, so it’s really favouring the top weights and the bigger trainers.”
When looking forward past The Championships V’Landys would like to invest money into the integrity of racing.
“The priority’s always going to be integrity and getting everyone on a level playing field. We’re going to invest a lot more money in integrity. When a punter has a bet, he knows that he’s got an equal opportunity as every other punter,” V’Landys said.
“That’s what I enjoy about racing. It’s a competition, not only for participants with their horses, but it’s also a competition between punters.”
One big criticism of Racing NSW was the lack of communication during the television rights black out. In a frustrating time for punters and racing fans there was little to no communication of when the television rights would be re-instated.
Especially when Racing Victoria gave regular updates of the issue.
“There’s a lot of things that are commercially sensitive and commercially confidential that you can’t release,” V’Landys said.
“Getting into the vision situation at the time we don’t think was appropriate.
“We were dealing in a commercially sensitive nature. Releasing things from board meetings is not appropriate, and it should never be done. These are things that are confidential.
“I can’t speak for Racing Victoria, but I think that we’ve acted professionally. We’ve acted in a way where we’re only looking out to the interests of thoroughbred participants in New South Wales at all times.”
The Roar would like to thank Peter V’Landys for taking time out to speak to our writer Jason Cornell, you can read the full interview here.
Have you ever tried your skills in a Racing daily fantasy competition? Put your best picks to the test for one day and see if you can scoop the pot with Draftstars. Looking for great odds on racing and sport? PlayUp is your best bet. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
Without a Fight completed the rare Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double on Tuesday as star jockey Mark Zahra went back-to-back in the big one after…
The race that stops the nation is upon us again. Every horse in the Melbourne Cup has reasons they can win, and reasons they…
Those who want to have a really big collect on Australia’s greatest race, without risking too much, have to look at the exotic bets.
While most of the attention is on Ciaron Maher and David Eustace's Gold Trip, there's no reason why stablemate Future History cannot upstage him.
Champion jockey Damien Oliver is quietly confident his Melbourne Cup mount Alenquer will be passed fit to give him a farewell ride in the…
Melbourne Cup day is here again, and it’s never anything less than exciting. The Cup itself will of course be full of drama and…
