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The new way of looking at horse racing

THE TIPPING POINT

We were reading about Zack Snyder recently, the film director who will work on the movie that will finally bring Batman and Superman together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m05YaiPnRHU

After his work on The Man Of Steel, Snyder has suddenly become the new “go to” director in much the same way Christopher Nolan still is and who is co-Executive Producer of this movie that brings together these DC Comics icons and Tarantino once was.


It was inspiring stuff to read for anyone in the creative field and our minds thought just how much this type of thinking and these types of individuals can bring to the music and racing industries, two industries that should be working far closer together, combining their marketing efforts and expanding each other’s customer bases.


(Source: Hub Spot)

One has the hardware, the other has the software, both have incredibly boring corporate websites few visit and need to realize that this partnership is much more than bunging in some ‘live’ music onto racetracks.

With huge data bases to share and music today being all about streaming and downloading and legal file sharing, those dinosaur corporate sites can finally be made useful and woken up from being sleepy, archaic and which either look like the dog’s breakfast with Information Overkill or so stark, there’s nothing there.


(Source: Sessions)

Just like the music industry has their star attractions- the artists, the producers, the concerts etc- the racing industry have theirs- the riders, the horses, the trainers, the owners and the races.

A dying breed in music today are the record reviewers- guys like Chet Flippo, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Cameron Crowe etc- have gone and can never be replaced as the media scene has developed and music fans have become more savvy, more knowledgeable and more cynical. It has become a DIY world.


People once read the reviews by Cameron Crowe etc as they knew the artists very well and so knew why certain songs were written- and for whom.

They had cred, they had the respect of many, and told us what we never knew about artists and inspired many to be writers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qn3tel9FWU

Racing’s equivalent of record reviewers are tipsters.


(Source: Tip Tele)

Are we fans of tipsters? Not really as we don’t really understand their business model- if there is one.

Is there a point of difference and is this a kinda game of thrones built on ego to say, My tips are better than yours?


(Source: Truth Dig)

Like penis envy, it’s tipsters envy and for every good day, there are around ten bum days. But have ONE good day and the tooting of one’s own trumpet is like the Blues Brothers seeing the light and testifying with Brother James Brown.


For tips to be relevant, how they are presented needs a huge makeover- but is that enough?

Aren’t so many of these tips also known by a reasonably savvy punter?


(Source: Strike Studio)

Who, for example, in Oz is the Cameron Crowe of tipsters? Deane Lester?

Yes, The Deane had a good day of tipping last Saturday on a Heavy 8 track, but we know six punters- and not in Oz- who put him to shame.


(Source: Photo Bucket)

So, are these tipsters overrated and, more to the point, necessary and, therefore, an endangered species?

Of course, there are Tipsters Anonymous who have a right group of clients and to whom they “rotate” their tips so they just cannot lose. Throw that line in, hook them and reel them in.


(Source: LA Weekly)

It’s not unlike certain jockeys who give three of their clients a win bet and cover it with boxed quinellas given to eight others and ask for a huge place bet at fixed odds which is given to their biggest fish.

Somewhere along this food chain, the jockey MUST win.


(Source: Groffs Girl)

Forgetting the avalanche of tipsters in Australia and the UK, in Hong Kong, for example, on a Wednesday night there are tips for that day’s races in every Chinese newspaper, the SCMP, there are tips in racing magazines, websites and on track, more numbers from the paddock and the racing pundits plus the compere at the Beer Garden.


For the newbie to racing who barely knows how to bet a quinella and wouldn’t know a Six Up from a six-pack, it’s overkill and mumbo jumbo.

Who to follow and what do all these numbers mean when they can’t even fill in a betting ticket?


(Source: Funny Junk)

Until “tipping” is “streamlined” and simplified into something like a Betting For Dummies app, tips will be part of racing’s Old School that might only matter to the seasoned punter whereas all those numbers will continue to fall on the deaf ears of the professional punters who are form analyst and back horses with the courage of their own convictions.


(Source: ABE Books)

Kinda joined at the hip, especially in Oz, are tipsters and bookmakers and this can make for a marriage made in hell for various reasons too complex to get into here.


(Source: Gladys Speaks)

But with the onslaught of new betting sites has come a sameness to it all- the FREE $50 bet for new clients, another $100 in FREE bets for referrals etc- and other obligatory and ubiquitous come-ons.


(Source: Aslc)

Thinking out-of-the-box? Nah, it’s been like this for ages, the wheel ain’t broke, they think, and the only thing new are online websites and off they go with this business model along with changing the goalposts the moment a client starts winning.


(Soruce: Cee Square)

Will there soon come a, er, tipping point where things reach a saturation level and a screeching halt?


(Source: Screeching Halt)

Of course it will as there already is over-supply and demand,plus, like many trainers are facing, rogue owners who simply won’t pay their debts. Bookmakers can hire tough-nut debt collectors, but if the cupboard is bare, the cupboard is bare.


Perhaps this is why certain bookmakers are being selective about what clients they take in and wanting some form of “minimum spend”.


(Source: Danieljmitchell)

Is this smart? Dunno but it sure sounds like desperation and survival and where the newbie punter is immediately shut out of the game and needs to make that trek to one of those horribly managed and rundown TAB outlets.


(Source: Sappy)

The other problem has to do with some real knobs and gremlins getting into the bookmaker game thinking its all money for jam.


(Source: PC World)

Perhaps this is why one bookmaker working quietly out of Wanawatu by way of Sydney that’s been around for two years has already changed hands twice, couldn’t pay the wins of its clients and are well-known for totally fucking up their accounting “system” and demanding clients pay twice.


What’s also laughable to us is the sheer arrogance of many of these corporates: Read the fine print in some contracts and it’s all one way traffic: How and when to pay up and the consequences of not paying up.

Anything about how and when a winning punter gets paid? NOT A WORD.


And here lies the problem: A lack of creativity, broken business models or no business models at all, over-supply and demand, a saturation point and with no one looking at changing the wheel, but instead happy being a pitiful puddle of lemmings.


(Source Wiki)

There is so much the racing industry can learn from the foibles, arrogance and stubbornness of the music industry which never ever saw that the lunatics also known as consumers had taken over the asylum while The Who rocked their world to Won’t Get Fooled Again.



(Source: Deep High Lands)

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