T.A.B. ‘Costly To Racing’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31322, 18 March 1967, Page 3

T.A.B. ‘Costly To Racing’

(From Our Own Reporter* WELLINGTON, March 17. Mr A. J. Parris, a South Canterbury racing administrator, believes that racing is meeting more than its share of the expenses of the Totalisator Agency Board.

When told at the meeting of the New Zealand Racing Conference in Wellington today that expenses of running the T.A.B. were met equally by galloping and trotting, Mr Parris said that the burden was disproportionate and to the detriment of racing. Mr Parris said racing had subsidised trotting to the extent of £449,244 on the first 14 years of the T.A.B. under the system devised for calculating profits.

“Now they are taking more from us by not having to meet all the extra expenses their meetings create,” Mr Parris said.

Mr Parris said that most of the betting on galloping programmes was finished by 3.30 p.m. But it was costly to staff and run the T.A.B. for night trotting meetings. “We can’t go on subsidising trotting like this—it would have us all on the rocks,” Mr Parris said.

The majority of delegates approved a resolution that the conference make representations that the basis of distribution should be that the allocation of the racing and trotting pools be according to offcourse investments.

Mr R. I. Sewell (Wanganui) said that the present system of calculating profits, based on combined off and on-course turn-overs, had been devised as something of a compromise. The two-pools system introduced two years ago had improved racing’s position but trotting had been a big winner since the establishment of the T.A.B.

Mr Sewell said any move by racing representatives on the T.A.B. board to introduce the off-course profit system the year the Racing Conference president had the casting vote as chairman could be countered the next year when the Trotting Conference president would have the casting vote.