It happens in all sports - one thing seems best for a certain percentage of stakeholders, while at the same time, not being seen as so great to others.
The NHL owners went to great lengths a number of years ago to institute a salary cap for players’ pay. Of course the players didn’t want that, but for the most part, it seems that they negotiated a deal that works best for both.
It is possible to have a win-win situation where both sides prosper.
Before I go any further though, I do want to state that I believe there are valid reasons on both sides of the post time drag issue, and it’s our job as an industry to come up with that win-win.
To clarify, to me, post time drag has nothing to do with the toteboard saying ‘0 minutes to post’, 6-7 minutes before the race actually goes, and to horsepeople, when this is the case, it should be 100% irrelevant. What matters more is that we stay as accurate as possible to scheduled post times.
Posting ‘0 mtp’ on the board, well before a race is run is simply done so horseplayers think a race is about to go off, to make sure that they get their bets in on your track, and that they don’t get shut out. And trust me, even though the horseplayers are well aware of drag times, when they see that ‘0 mtp’ on the screen, they react how track management wants them to more often than not.
Many of today’s horseplayers are betting in teletheatres where the audio is only turned up for one track at a time, others are betting from home and maybe trying to help get the kids to bed between races. You might not think that the ‘0 mtp’ trick is tricking many, but I know it’s not hurting, especially when it comes to driving handle.
Why do I say that it shouldn’t matter to horsepeople if it says ‘0 mtp’ when the truth is that it’s actually five minutes or more? Because for you, and your horse, and the integrity of the sport all that really matters is that we stick as close as possible to scheduled post times.
My Mom set the clock in our kitchen - yes, we used to actually have clocks on the wall - to be five minutes fast my entire youth. It wasn’t brain surgery, if you wanted to watch a TV show at 9pm you knew that you had until the clock actually read 9:05 and you were good. Trust me when I say that setting a clock incorrectly does not affect the actual time of day on our planet.
As a horseperson, if your race is slated to go off at 10:02pm, and at 9:57pm it says ‘0 mtp’ you probably shouldn’t care, as long as they’re lining up on the gate as close to 10:02pm as possible.
But that does take us to the reasons why we do have to stick to these actual post times wherever possible.
One reason is our customer, the customer that might enjoy a three hour card of racing, more than a four hour card that ends at 11:30pm on a work night.
Another reason is our horseperson, the one that often works a 14 hour day and doesn’t need to make it a 15 hour one.
To me however, the biggest reason is that the integrity of gambling on our sport insists on it. As I write this, 47 of the 108 horses racing are on Lasix tonight at Woodbine Mohawk Park, and it’s a scientific fact that for this medication to help bleeders it must be administered between three hours and 45 minutes, and four hours and 15 minutes to post time. In fact, if you’re late for Lasix you’re always scratched, to uphold the integrity of the gambling.
That has to be a two-way street. When a race is slated to go at 10:02pm and the 6/5 shot got his Lasix at 5:50pm, that race simply cannot go to post at 10:30pm. Period.
My family and I walked through Villefranche (France) a few years back while on a family vacation, and we witnessed a carpenter, covered in paint, run past us into the local PMU to make a wager on a horse race in the middle of the work day. He then ran back to work immediately, without even watching the race. He knew the exact post time of that race and planned his day around it, knowing that the odds he saw when he made that bet would be the odds he got 45 seconds later as the race went to post at the scheduled time. Our customers should matter like that.
And if someone around here gives you the absolutely incorrect statement that “handle doesn’t matter anymore” please set them straight. Handle does matter and always will. Here in Ontario for example, it’s a fact, maybe a little known one, that OSS money, for one, comes directly from the handle.
Just because your dad gave you an allowance when you were 10 doesn’t mean you were still counting on it to live on when you were 30, and just because many jurisdictions today have purse money deals with governments and casinos, it doesn’t mean they always will.
On July 17, 2012, Woodstock Raceway in Ontario ran a card of 11 races, distributing purses that totaled $44,900. The total handle wagered on those 11 races? $3,357.
Woodstock Raceway no longer exists.
Handle does matter.
Let’s find that win-win.
Dan Fisher