Sweden vs SA Night racing

Something occurred to me - Sweden and Aussie trotting is really aimed at the destitute punter. He's the guy that is in the totes at 10am in the morning having a bet because he does not have a job(I'm generalising here). How many regular punters (employed) bother to place a bet on these venues unless it is a Saturday and they are planning to make a day of it? I have never heard anyone besides Viking Harry tell me to have a bet on a good thing in Sweden or Auss. Now I'm just wondering with the time difference, let's say to the USA , how many of the punters there will be thinking as we do- 'Why are they showing this South African racing' Perhaps Barry and Tommy can elaborate on how popular South African racing is in the USA. I know Hibs has stated that there is very little interest in the UK and more people punt the virtual stuff than SA. Perhaps the few that do have an SA connection or are robots or % punters that play into any market. I just wonder if the guys on the other end of the world that are wagering 10$ or 1 gbp on SA racing are in fact just like our early morning punters - destitute punters with no jobs to keep them out of the totes.(I realise some expats are punting our races but are there radical amounts of foreign based fans?) Is it not just the weakness of the rand that makes us believe that major amounts of foreign based players are betting into our pools? I don't really know and would love to hear from our foreign punting friends.

Mr H, i have been saying for years now that force feeding `punters` with all the crap is one of the main reasons the industry has lost it`s zazz.

The guys that liked to go down to their hangout/bookies every day are being raped,when bookies opened their doors at 10:00am a few years back there was always guys chomping at the bit,to get the early prices,have a blether with other punters,study form.

When they introduced all the shit,Virtual racing,Australian dogs etc etc,the `punters` would say look at that shite how can anyone bet that crap,but after a few days guys that played the same way for years were punting at Steepledowns and Portman Park,betting their favourite colours,following Virtual Jockeys,you get the picture?

Mr,h,as you have said i have said many times that it`s hard to get the Punters in the UK to punt the South African racing,but this was not always the case,When SA racing was first introduced the old guys loved the SA racing,for some reason they thought that the `jolly` arrived more and followed them blind.

Bookies in the UK used to state that horse racing made up 90% of their business now they say that it`s more like 30%,bookies in the UK used to be chocka block,bookies in the UK are now empty-Get the picture?

Hibs I'm not sure of how comingling works but if say the win pool is 50k and if we say 30% is foreign money 15k and the exchange is 7 to 1 then we have a potential 2000 clients worldwide(we know this is not true as the mystery punter is making up a big deal of the input according to tab) Each punter is also probably not only taking the minimum bet - more likly betting 5 gbp or 5 dollars etc so it makes you think maybe we only have about 200 or three hundred players betting our tote markets worldwide (maybe more are playing with the bookies). The problem I'm seeing is the remainer of the pool is local money say 35k. Now if you divide this by 6(our betting unit) you are looking at about 5800 punters. We know that owners, trainers, etc are not putting R6 only on their runners and many punters are putting big amounts (R100-R1000) into the pool per race. So you start to see that tote punters race by race countrywide might be around 1000 people that bet the win pools. The exotics are stronger because these are dream bets. Maths is not my strong point but i'm thinking that we really don't know how few punters we still have left in the game.(Obviously the really big boys are using exchanges and bookies) It seems to me that there must have been a radical drop in punter interest over the last few years. I wonder how comparable pools were when the win/place unit was only R1? A win pool of 20k then would be 120k now so it seems that not only are the tracks empty but the amount of off course punters must have dropped. I'm not sure if I'm correct but I'm sure a maths brain will set me straight.

Mr H, this is what i thought was the problem with the tote all along,when you say the win poool is only 50k for a run of the mill midweek race,your pools are not strong enough for ` big hitters` , and this big hitter story was mince anyway,have you ever known a pro gambler to punt where there was no value?

hibs with 5 mins to go the pool is sitting at about 13k win (then a late rush and it builds up) as tickets are cashed and guys bet. Sometimes in Kim the first race might only be around 35-40(3000gbp) Obviously the die hards are waiting to collect from a previous foreign race before they can get into the next pool. The quartets etc are much stronger it seems so perhaps that is where the punters are putting their cash because of fractional betting and a chance of winning big? A dark area for me as I've never really looked at all the numbers. Big days and weekends the win/place pools are much bigger - closer to 80-100k plus per race I think would be more accurate. The open bet obviously has a bearing here but my concern is the actual guys taking bets in totes must have dropped substantially over the last few years.

I'm not sure how many countries are betting into our win/place pools but lets say for arguments sake 10 then if we got only 1000 euro's per country per race we would have pools of over 100 k excluding local markets on any race. I don't know it just seems that there is very little tote betting interest on our races from abroad. Perhaps they are betting on their own totes(on our races) and it we are not comingling as much as I think.

UK punters are not big players on the ToTe,but they can punt into SAFTOTE from betfair i believe.

Hehehe.... Vaal abandoned did anyone study chariots for today

No boy but I'll give Shaheen a call I'm sure he's finished studying up for the ABBA greatest Hits stakes in Sweden. (Lovely women - poor racing)

"Waterloo" "Money, Money, Money"

More like S.O.S -the good Ship Racing is sinking dave - Send out a Supertrooper or the winner(s) takes it all and say's thank you for the music as he switches off the lights on local racing.

O'Steve at least you have not lost your sense of humor