A Year

Internet betting can work to help racing (and increase purses) when you expand your market, lower prices and be smart. Betfair has sponsored the Ascot races. The purse will be increased by 150,000 British pounds, making it a 7 figure one for the first time.

Stephen Burn, Betfair's director of horseracing, said: "We are very pleased that Ascot understand our business and are keen to work with us in a way that we have been hoping to work with racing for such a long time – the Ascot executive has been very forward thinking. It had never been our intention to try to slap our name in front of the King George. This is a ground-breaking agreement, especially as it takes us up to and beyond the course's historic tercentenary in 2011."

Meanwhile, no change over here. We are still fighting about taking more of the pie for vested interests and crushing our players with increases in takeout. It has worked well. Wagering is off another ten percent in November.

The decline was the worst month-to-month showing for the figures since Equibase began releasing the numbers on a 30-day basis in August. Overall, according to Equibase, wagering has declined 6.2 percent this year, and is on pace to decline for the fourth time in the last five years.

Just like our post on Maylan Studart below, we seriously need to get rid of what we ideally want from racing, and start listening to what the market wants. If the King George can change, we sure as hell can.

h/t to Ray Paulick for those headlines.

Thanks to everyone for reading this mess of a blog for the past twelve months. December 4th 2007 we made our first post. I appreciate your support.