Formgrids South Africa shuts down today

i dunno if it is funny or sad. Somehow to be surprised at Phumelela/ Gold Circle attitude towards anything new would mean you thought they were learning from all their previous misadventures.

Mister A well done on the attention gaining action. dont think anyone can blame you.

Don't expct too much from the operators as everybody should know by now that more and more value is generated by Sports betting,Soccer 6, 10 etc.

The voiceless majority in Kzn will only be affected if The Racegoer that is found in newspapers like The Daily News, Mercury and Sunday Tribune who also sponsor major events in the Winter programm, is discontinued.

The only remaining sanity is to create access by subscription, as others sites do.

i'm at sea without Formgrids have to revert to Computaform - so tedious

Willing to subscribe to Formgrids ! its an indespensible tool for studying form

Surprised that it lasted for free for such a long time . I for one appreciate what it's taught me

Hope it all works out in the end David - Good Luck

Harris, I find myself agreeing with you on some points but not on others...phumelela are not being held to ransom, as it is quite clear that they dont care if Formgrids is up and running or not all they were asked for was to help lighten the work load by allowing FG access to a direct feed from their results page so as not to have to have a data capturer spend time downloading this manually there is no cost to P should they allow this but the answer remains NO...Dave and a colleague of his then went to have a face to face discussion with them and the opening line to them was 'before we even start wewant to make it clear that we will not be funding nor aiding anything that has to do with formgrids..once that is agreed upon we can continue the meeting" what kind of response is that??..you talk about the people that Dave is "letting down" and I believe that the biggest let down has to be the situation that Dave finds himself in...having funded the site for 8 years and worked every night and spare moment to keep the site afloat he now has zero..no site and no chance of ever recouping his investment, there are some FG users (myself included) that feel they have been caught up in the crossfire and being denied access to the site with such short notice for something out of their hands, but having spoken to Dave I can understand his position, he has been put between a rock and a hard place,and without the assistance he requested the quality of the site would continue to suffer as has been prevalent in the past few weeks with some form lines not being updated etc due to the work overload ...I take it from your posts that you and Dave may or may not have an axe to grind but be that as it may don't allow your personal feelings to cloud your better judgement, Dave is 100000000% behind the punter and would not do anything as drastic as this unless there was absolutely no alternative and all channels of negotiation had been exhausted ...

I hope the point Formgrids trying make helps them as it's not helping punters.... Finances are not the issue here as there are lots of people will to pay for this service.... Anyways good luck guys..

Thanks Mr A

You comments on the thread is enlightening !

From a Punter point of view the loss formgrids is a blow to the serious punter particularly after Jackson failed in the July .

Your stance on educating the horse racing fraternity and putting out a factual form study website for access to the man on the street is commendable.

Perssistence as you know in horseracing pays off - Good Luck Again !
I am willing to sign any petition to assit the cause !

titch, you then revert to other avenues for revenue. How about a subscription fee and a bookmaker to sponsor the site. Please dont tell me it is not about money. You dont shut your doors in the face of adversity,you soldier on.

The bookmaker option may well be the way to go and there have been some offers today that are being looked at..but Dave wont go with the subscription route as that defeats the object of helping the smaller punter as well as those who can afford the fee

Another option that is being looked at is a Formgrid Pro which would go the subscription route and would include extras such as a 'nag me" type sms/email service,race video,live betting changes,a "bet now" button etc and then a Formgrids basic which would be free and the same format as it is currently with the Pro site funding the basic format.. solutions to the problem are being sought

Formgrids Pro - sounds brilliant.

mister a
I am sorry to see the demise. I cannot afford to subscribe to Formgrids, it's an economic thing (wife and kids...democracy etc) You are way ahead of your time for the narrow minded, SHORT-TERM inconsiderate morons that currently run racing (may be substituted with local government or whatever...self righteous MF)
All the best and thank you for providing a first-world product in a third world country. We may appreciate it in the future(tu)

PS I'll miss the note making on horses that I follow.