Making predictions has never been for the faint hearted.
Get it badly wrong and you face abuse and ridicule.
Be a bit too good at it, and risk getting burned at the stake.
Thankfully, the former was more likely than the latter.
But there is barely a day goes by whereby someone isn’t asking. . .
How do you see the situation? Which direction is the game going? What have you heard that you can’t write about?
People who disagree with your views usually label you naïve, stupid, crooked or just plain wrong.
Then there are those who know you are right, but don’t want to hear it when you deliver bad news that will affect them.
They are the ones who rant: ‘in your position you should be talking the game up’ (rather than telling the truth as you see it, presumably)
My plan is to make Editors Chair more varied and frequent going forward. But for reasons that will become clear, this particular column will once again concentrate on the industry’s biggest story – the media rights battle.
To make sense, it needs just a brief reference to history and the power struggle which first hit the headlines on August 9 2016, the day that Greyhound Media Group announced its formation.
From day one, it was about industry control.
The history books would suggest that it was SIS who metaphorically shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand when their ‘ten/twelve track’ plan for the future was revealed to the track promoters.
(“If you want a betting shop contract, you will have to meet criteria in terms of winning favourites, starting prices, empty traps. You can earn points”.)
How times have changed in relation to quality control.
Some people within SIS have since suggested that it was one of their stakeholders who ordered them to load the gun . . .
Anyway, the GMG tracks rebelled and soon after revealed SIS’s biggest commercial rival, ARC, as their new partner of choice.
All of that is history and time moves on.
The crux of this article is to suggest that in my ‘reasonably’ informed opinion, the seven year media rights war is drawing to a conclusion.
Anyone listening to military analysts and historians discussing the future of Ukraine will have been told that major conflicts tend to end in one of two ways.
Either, one side completely destroys the enemy to a point of surrender.
Or – much more likely – one side establishes domination, and the two sides reach agreement to accept the inevitable without wasting further resources.
As was demonstrated in the recent article on racing schedules, PGR are now the clear dominant force in supplying greyhound ‘product’ to the betting industry.
They know it. SIS know it.
SIS have reduced overall payments to their tracks, albeit with a slightly different mechanism based on all meetings being worth the same amount.
They have also recently reduced their schedule to a point that they only schedule one UK meeting on three evenings out of seven, and none on Sunday when they rely on Clonmel.
It seems to me that they are doing their level best, but may soon have to accept the inevitable.
As I have written in recent months, the obvious end game is a single service to the betting industry. Both PGR and SIS would benefit and so would the people who pay for it all – the bookies.
Rather than pay each service £5 per race (a random figure!), why not pay £8 for a better single service?
Less empty traps. A reduction in meetings would mean less threadbare grading leading to more competitive racing. Every meeting a minimum of 12 races.
Fewer meetings would mean less earning opportunities for trainers. But providing the tracks pay more per runner and their net income didn’t fall, who wouldn’t welcome a bit less racing?
We would need less dogs in light of reduced breeding. Welfare and re-homing becomes more manageable.
But inevitably, there is a massive downside.
The bookies – are ultimately suggesting what SIS first proposed back on day one _ that there is a surplus of racing.
Some tracks will not make the cut for a single service.
So what does a single service look like? Who gains and who misses out?
What is the optimal service?
Looking at the current schedule, PGR seem to think it is around 60 fixtures per week. They currently stage 59, roughly eight or nine per day, with ten on Saturdays and seven on Sundays. SIS recently reduced their schedule to 36.
Now there is clearly some slack in the system.
Tracks on both sides would clearly benefit by a reduction in meetings.
But whichever way I do my sums, I can’t cram roughly 35 surplus fixtures into the system.
15 tracks with four meetings each equals 60 meetings. . . but there are currently 20 UK tracks.
The SIS total also includes nine Irish meetings.
Could they go? Or does that lead to Irish tracks closing and simply escalate the long term breeding issue?
Wherever they come, track closures are inevitable.
Which ones and where?
I haven’t got a clue – truly – though I would suggest that some tracks are far safer than others.
Any single service plan would inevitably need to consider welfare and possibly allow for additional races at surviving tracks until the racing strengths naturally wind down.
While there is no sugar coating the devastating effect on anyone who finds themselves at a doomed track, we were probably living on borrowed time anyway.
When I began working on the Star in 1987, there were 35 NGRC tracks with two promised. A new Perry Barr (which opened) and a new track at Enfield (which didn’t). We also had 58 independent tracks on our books.
But we were just in a different stage of devastation. We lost Harringay, Gosforth and Slough within my first year. In the previous ten years we had lost 16 NGRC tracks and God knows how many independents.
We were down to 25 venues when Greyhound Media Group lit the blue touch paper. But for the subsequent input of additional resources, I doubt we would have 15 tracks now.
The media rights scuffle has created a wholly unsustainable and false representation of the state of greyhound racing in 2024. Race meetings without a single paying customer are the norm. Something needs to change.
Do I think a 12-15 track industry is inevitable? Yes
Do I think it will happen imminently – within weeks and months? Yes
Do I think that what remains will be stronger and better funded with a decent long term future? Yes
Alternatively – I might just be the crap at predictions!
Editors Chair is an opinion article written by Floyd Amphlett who has been with the Greyhound Star since 1987. Floyd has experienced all of the major developments in greyhound racing for the past 40 years and maintains an enthusiastic interest in the progress and future development of the industry.
