Jimmie says | The usual suspects

SUPREME Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL) on Saturday celebrated its ‘First Reggae 6 Anniversary Raceday’ with a mandatory payout on its Reggae 6 pool, touted to exceed $16 million.

That’s correct, an estimated pool of $16 million, inclusive of what was expected to be wagered on the day. The bulk of the pool would have been amassed over successive racemeets, via carryovers, after no ‘single-winner’ ticket was able to solely claim the full jackpot on previous racedays.

Question: Outside of the usual suspects, how much of the population knew, or would have cared, that there was a possible $16-million jackpot on offer at Caymanas Park, its Off-Track Betting parlours and online via SVREL’s MBet platform?

SVREL had surely advertised its Mandatory Payout Day in the horse-racing publication, the Track and Pools, which doubles as the official race programme, as well as its website, plus announcements were being made by the track commentators from possibly two meets prior.

However, those were merely reminders for the usual suspects, a closed-user group (CUG) – horsemen and week-in, week-out punters – to dig a little deeper in their pockets for a bigger-than-usual wager on the Reggae 6.

Before pushing SVREL off a cliff with a noose around its neck for not getting the town crier out and booking full-page adverts in the major newspapers, stop to ponder how much of a difference either would have made.

Despite having the most religious following of any sport in Jamaica, horse racing remains a mystery to the general population, even with the advent of jackpot-type bets introduced to rival the lotteries, which some racing-industry insiders blindly blame to be a major reason for the decline in betting on horse racing.

SYSTEM OF RACING

Horse-racing insiders tend to suffer from tunnel vision, failing to recognise that the sport will never consistently attract newcomers, should potential bettors not be able to, on their own, stake bets on an easy-to-comprehend system of racing, especially online.

Lottery players exist on whims, dreams and just about anything that catches their fancy, hoping it’s their lucky day in the numbers game. However, even the most superstitious lottery player knows racing is a horse of a different colour – one has to understand the sport to, hopefully, make a successful wager.

One of the main reasons cited for the decline in betting on horse racing in the United States has been that it remains a sport that is too hard to understand, overwhelming potential new bettors, who already have at their disposal far-easier-to-understand options of leisure and betting opportunities.

What did Caymanas Track Limited do in 1993? It adopted the North American system of racing, claiming and conditions, which was sold to the regulatory body as opening up horse ownership to the ‘small man’, as well as being better for punters because connections with ‘non-triers’ would lose their horses to other owners when entered in claiming races.

Claiming and conditions gave birth to the CUG, resulting in a system of racing in which a horse rated among the third-highest group, by performance, will be among his equals this week, yet, by the following week, fail to finish among the lowest group of claimers, crashing punters’ bets, or, at the expense of the promoting company, plunder a purse intended for genuine runners at the level.

INELIGIBILITY

If claiming races will confuse the hell out of newcomers, what of ‘conditions’, which recently resulted in all of four runners being disqualified from a 2019 event, due to ineligibility, which had escaped, of all persons, racing-office personnel, who themselves write the conditions?

Potential new bettors of substance, online punters, can’t be expected to join the existing CUG, craving telephone numbers of jockeys, trainers, grooms, clockmen and railbirds for ‘information’. Intelligent newcomers, who indulge especially in sports betting, must be presented with a system of racing at Caymanas Park that can be easily understood and wagered from a distance.

Horsemen in the CUG will resist change but need a purse increase while doing so. From whence does the money come to pay purses? It is time to stop preaching to the ‘converted’, the usual suspects, who spend practically the same sum every racemeet and top up a little on Mandatory Payout Day.

Ainsley ‘Jimmie’ Walters has been covering horse racing for more than 25 years for the Gleaner Company (Media) Limited and is the editorial and production coordinator for the Track And Pools race form.