WARTIME RACING BOOM DECLINING

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22821, 16 December 1948, Page 8

WARTIME RACING BOOM DECLINING

SYDNEY (By Airmail)

Leading Australian race club officials are concerned at a recent decline in attendance and bettingturnovers at metropolitan meetings —signs that (he wartime turf boom is declining.

Racing is Australia’s most commercialised sport and chief of the sporting industries that return the Government more in taxes than any other and on which the public has been spending £500,000,000 a year in bets, legal and illegal. War inflated racing attendances and betting figures as much as any other amusement; plenty of free money in the years following its end further swelled the' coffers of the clubs. But spiralling living costs coupled with a greater variety of available consumer goods appears to have steadied the public tendency to chase "easy money.” The betting depression may be temporary as sonic racing writers contend. The wider view that changing living conditions will have a more permanent effect is, however, shared by a Melbourne race club secretary, who contended that money had tightened considerably because of threats oi industrial unrest and general commodity price increases. If this is the fact and if attendances continue to decline with consequent loss of revenue to the clubs, the high stakes at present offered (and which have been increased considerably even in the last week or two) must be reduced. Reduction in stake money would in turn cause owners to think twice before taking their horses to other States, a costly business, and competitive race form would consequently decline.

Coincident with this is a lack of good class stayers, a lack loudly lamented and unexplained. Columnist and Royal Gem, stars of last spring in this division, did not strike form and there was nothing to replace them and nine of 15 distance and middle distance handicaps run in Melbourne during the spring were won by horses carrying 8.0 or less, a certain indication that the class of horses is not as good ns usual. Valiant efforts are being made by the Victoria Racing Club to encourage stayers in (hat State by increasing the distance of weight-for-age races and long handicaps and similar encouragement is being offered by ttie Australian Jockey Club in New South Wales.