The Woodbine Entertainment Group made relative waves leading up to the $150th running of the Queen's Plate for thoroughbreds after it announced it would be injecting $150,000 into its Pick 6 pool. Trot Insider has spoken with WEG senior vice president Jamie Martin about the possibility of such an initiative on the
standardbred side of things.
Having started on Plate Day (Sunday, June 21), WEG is putting $150,000 into each of Woodbine Racetrack's thoroughbred Sunday afternoon Pick 6 wagers until the end of the 2009 meet. "Seeding our Pick 6 carryover with $150,000 should raise some eyebrows," Sean Pinsonneault, WEG vice president of wagering services said via release prior to Plate Day. "This is not the standard pool guarantee you hear about but is real money that we will dump into the Pick 6 carryover, waiting for players to win."
"We're doing it (seeding) hoping the pool will carry over," Martin told Trot Insider. "We're looking at what we can do for our core customers. The Pick 6 move shows that WEG is trying new things to please our core customers, and our multi-legged pools are favoured by our big bettors."
Many have applauded WEG's pro-active move to make it wagering more enticing in the international market. In turn, the wagering gods could have followed suit and allowed a carryover leading into this coming weekend at the suburban Toronto oval. Unfortunately, for those anticipating a bloated pool after the first go round, things just weren't in the cards. Although, everything went exactly according to plan for one lucky punter.
After investing $4,320 on the attractive wager, an account holder in New Hampshire nailed the Plate Day Pick 6, netting him/herself $203,499.40. A total of $140,771 had been bet into the pool in addition to the $150,000 invested by WEG.
The Pick 6 is more of a popular wager among those which follow the runners. The wager has proven enticing in New York and California, and Woodbine is looking to crack the Pick 6-player market.
In terms of the standardbred side of things at WEG, Martin told Trot Insider that it is currently challenging to justify offering such heavily-seeded exotic wagers.
"Currently, I think that we've seen with our nightly standardbred Pick 7 wager that there are too many favourites and not enough long shots winning at this point to justify that sort of capital infusion into that type of pool," he told Trot Insider.
Martin added that since the inception of the $10,000 guaranteed standardbred Pick 7 payout, action on the wager has actually decreased. "In terms of WEG thoroughbred races, favourites win at a 28 per cent clip, while with the standardbreds favourites have been winning at a rate of 37 per cent."
Martin admits that the Pick 7 wager isn't a hit on a nightly basis, but it is well known that when the carryovers accumulate and the pool gets bloated, the action then follows in droves.
Though the Pick 7 will probably not see any type of seeding in the near future, Martin said there has been some -- at this point minimal -- discussion about the possibility of WEG's standardbred Pick 4 wager getting a boost.
"On the standardbred side of things, our Pick 4 pool is easily our most popular and best pool. It goes every night," Martin explained.
"On the weekends we see $40,000 to $50,000 go into it. Guaranteeing that pool is something that we've considered doing, but those types of discussions are still very fresh -- we haven't even thrown a rough figure out there for discussion."