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Commencing on Saturday, Racing Victoria will be trialling a new race schedule which will see the first race at Caulfield jump at 2.25pm.
The change is being trialled to enhance betting turnover which – while it has not been explicitly mentioned by RV – squarely targets the lucrative Asian market.
The first race of the Saturday metropolitan meeting has traditionally started around 12.30pm with the final race jumping around 5.00pm. With this new change, the final race will be run around 6.30pm.
Valuable East Asian markets including Hong Kong and Singapore sit three hours behind AEST. This means the final race of the Australian metropolitan meeting will fall ideally to be broadcast to East Asia around 3.30pm (Asian time) to maximise wagering turnover through a wider audience.
This was trialled earlier during the spring carnival when feature races at Caulfield and Moonee Valley were pushed back to be the final event of the card.
Although the official reason for the move was to have the feature race run into Channel Seven’s 6pm news bulletin, the synchronising with Asian time zones is no mere coincidence.
Hong Kong’s betting turnover per capita is the highest in the world and their industry is also the most efficient and arguably the least corrupted due to the most stringent wagering laws.
Exporting a simulcast to Asia therefore becomes highly valuable to both Australian, Asian broadcasters and punters in what is just about an ‘everybody wins’ scenario – except for the losing punters of course.
Although wagering on horse racing in China is still outlawed, the China Horse Club’s emergence over the past 12 months suggests these laws will be overturned any day.
Illegal betting still remains a lucrative underground industry in China and gambling turnover in Macau is more than ten times that of Las Vegas.
Australian sports have had a long-standing pattern of running events into the broadcaster’s 6pm news bulletin, which is most fiercely contested time slot among the major networks.
Sporting events have had delayed broadcasts to ensure such timing while the AFL has happily scheduled games so that they can be broadcast live and still taper into the 6pm bulletin.
For Racing Victoria to take broadcasting delays one step further and take on the 6pm time slot is unique and goes against the spring carnival broadcasting strategy.
This suggests that the commercial pull from Asian markets is much stronger than the pull from Australian broadcasters.
While this will only be a trial period and free-to-air broadcasting of Saturday racing does not commence until the February 8 for the C.F Orr Stakes, the move signals further intent to advance Asian audiences into the Australian industry.
Whether or not this could cause issues in the future is still yet to be determined.
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