Posts Tagged race
Probe starts into AW races
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 22nd, 2011
On top of rumours of another scandal about to break, the BHA is investigating unusual betting patterns at all weather courses: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/horse_racing/9465233.stm
One horse race
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 16th, 2011
I was going to write about the FA Cup semi final today as it looks a really tantalising prospect. But the thing that really caught my eye this morning is racing’s continued struggles to adapt to modern commercial realities. The result of which is a race that includes just one runner at the 17:10 at Leicester this afternoon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/apr/14/one-horse-race-leicester-protest
It’s unfortunate that prize money is under pressure, but in any other commercial regime you would simply incur less cost to try and balance the books. If prize money is too low, then cut out some of the lower quality racing and that will give you capacity to increase the prize money elsewhere. There is plenty of chaff each week and I can’t imagine many people either attending or betting on some of the low quality stuff you see on a Monday on Tuesday afternoon in the summer. So why not cut those out and put that resource elsewhere?
OK there are more complex arguments in play underneath this simple approach, but at least racing is in control of its biggest cost, prize money and hosting meetings. If it wants to develop the sport and raise it’s profile, it is better off tailoring the end product and allocating resources more effectively in my opinion. That’s what any other sport / business would do.
The two grand race
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 11th, 2009
Ok not quite two grand and also it shouldn’t have been! But thanks to Betfair’s well documented problems this week, a failure to turn markets in play, I fluked a big gain on one race today. See below: -
To be honest I’d rather forgo the money and have the whole system working as it should do. It serves no one to have a faulty platform and it would be much better to be sure that you know what is going to happen next. I also take issue with the fact that Betfair were not correctly backdating “at inplay take sp” orders. A very errant approach in my opinion. While a bonus is nice it isn’t real and these things work both ways. Earlier in the day at the 15:00 at The Curragh, I got a big negative. I decided then not to risk anything further but the issue didn’t seem to be present at UK races so I got suckered at Nottingham. As luck would have it, the right horse won and I got the benefit. But that’s it for the moment, no more till I am confident that Betfair is working properly again.
Betfair quote ‘technical issues’ as the problem. I strongly suspect that it is the SP reconciliation process that is broken. I also suspect that Betfair are placing their own SP orders into the market at this moment. I can’t confirm this but from the evidence I have seen, the way the SP is shifting, this problem and the delayed SP reconciliation this evening make me suspect that this is what the problem is. I’ll ask Betfair and let you know what they say. Clarification on the issue would go some way to pacifying what must be a whole bundle of unhappy customers. I was lucky today to escape, but I suspect there are many out of pocket.