Apparently we are not comparing apples with apples as the NSW wage bill does NOT include Menangle (paid by Club Menangle)Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
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Apparently we are not comparing apples with apples as the NSW wage bill does NOT include Menangle (paid by Club Menangle)Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
This was Shane Gloury from the Victorian Harness Racing Club on Giddy Up on Monday
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0v2hkcKkDdQIpHgs3SBnMp
This was HRV CEO Matthew Isaacs and HRV Chairman Adam Kilgour on Giddy Up on Tuesday
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2tlcAuI0LBrDw3uxiZCT89
Being the deaf coot that I am, although I heard everything in the Shane Gloury interview and also had no trouble with Gareth's voice in the CEO/Chairman interview, I did not catch everything that the Chair and CEO said.
I don't think that they told us very much - I would paraphrase the info that they did pass on as "we are facing massive cuts and DO NOT have any claim to the additional Melton land". They might think that harsh but I am trying to temper what I believe to be the case - "we are stuffed"
We needed to be jumping up and down in 2019 when the government legislated that the sale of assets by statutory bodies sees the proceeds go to the government
The Board have a massive amount to answer for and while the Chairman is new - he has been on the board since 2018
The kindred bodies are not without fault either, they have allowed themselves to be uninformed/hoodwinked for years. Their trust in past HRV administration has proved naive
There is nothing we can sell to get us out of this hole as the money would just go to the government (whom we all know is in just as bad a position as HRV)
It is a pity that Gina Rinehart does not love harness racing for a savior is Vics only hope
Michael Stanley appears to be the first to be making a move - well his property is on the market
Borrowing against the Melton land may not have been entirely stupid as we sort of got something for it but the big problem is that what we spent it on should not have been prizemoney and it definitely was not 'future money making infrastructure'
Paul Courts has an EXCELLENT Q&A with CEO Matt Isaacs in National Trot Guide
This is a must read
https://nationaltrotguide.com.au/qa-with-hrv-ceo/
This is the standout for me (along with the already discussed 2019 legislation which cut the legs out from under us)
HRV invested significantly to grow wagering, including through media and marketing channels. The reality is the amount of revenue generated from that hasn’t produced a return on investment.
Ultimately, harness racing as a code has to evolve to be able to stand on its feet. That’s the challenge for the industry, including HRV.
There will have to be massive cuts/closures/redundancies - there is no avoiding it
Victorian harness racing as we knew it IS OVER
There is also this Michael Howard (HRV) article (interview with the CEO) out, the format of which some may prefer
https://www.thetrots.com.au/news/art...ustainability/
[QUOTE=Messenger;77288]Michael Stanley appears to be the first to be making a move - well his property is on the market
OK , let's hope for his sake , it can be developed or used for thoroughbreds.
If we were still in harness racing & this happened in NSW , we would be rather stressed or looking to get out altogether.
The latest Pacesetter podcast has been about the crisis we find ourselves in, they would probably prefer another word
https://pacesetters.au/podcast/episo...ongue-tie-off/
It goes for a long time and rather than focus on specifics they toss around what needs to happen somewhat philosophically but I listened (and read captions :)) for the whole thing
Like myself, they are not really critical of the CEO, they understand why people are angry but are unsure how that can help if that is the underlying emotion at the rally on Sunday
They talk about the participants needing to hear a message of hope from HRV but the brutality of this situation would seem to be that such a message, in the short term, cannot be much better than "We hope we can survive"
They're fairly correct in saying that we have to look to the future rather than back although I would say that we need to remember where we went wrong in order to not make the same mistakes
I have said the kindred bodies are not without fault, after listening to Greg Sugars input and being reminded that most participants are 'time poor', it really has been the executive of these bodies that needed to be better informed/demanding to be better informed and therefore more active in steering the industry. I can think of individuals whom I will not name but I will say that they as well as HRV are major contributors to us being in this position.
The image of the sport was briefly included in the discussion and while such historic attitudes to the trots is hard to turn around, there have been some major stables that have had questionable roles in the public's poor opinion of us and of course the 3 codes in Vic are so separate as opposed to being an alliance and I still believe there are plenty in the gallops media that are happy to see our demise just like their predecessors were.
The Age is reporting on us again this afternoon. They are vultures but the Kindred Bodies would have been seeking promotion of the Sunday rally. Once again behind a paywall so I will copy and paste
I have included the start of the 'racing' story to show that we are not the only ones struggling
Victoria’s $610 million-a-year harness racing industry is facing such an “unprecedented crisis” that it is in danger of becoming a rural amateur sport, a group of key stakeholders fear.
The Victorian Harness Racing Kindred Bodies – which represents clubs, trainers and drivers in the state – is so concerned about the sport’s “precarious position” they have organised a save-our-sport rally at Lords Raceway in Bendigo on Sunday.
“We can’t carry on the way we have been going, losing millions of dollars a year,” leading trainer Anthony Butt said.
“Since 2019, the costs have escalated and the income has stayed the same, so there is a bigger and bigger gap each year between what we are earning and what we are spending.
“In any walk of life, sooner or later, that is going to come back and bite you. If we don’t do something now, it is going to be too late.”
The group says a projected $24 million loss for the 2024 financial year, a huge dip in wagering and expected cuts of more than $10 million in prize money could lead to an exodus of breeders, owners and professional trainers.
Since this masthead reported allegations on Sunday that Harness Racing Victoria had lost control of its $100 million Melton land asset, uncertainty over the sport’s professional future has spread.
It comes as HRV chairman Adam Kilgour conceded this week the board would soon sign over its 95-hectare Melton land parcel to the state government.
The board used the Melton land as collateral to borrow more than $40 million from the government in recent years to keep harness racing afloat.
In exchange for the land, the government also agreed to wipe a $41.9 million debt that HRV has carried since buying and building Melton Entertainment Park in 2009. The sport will keep the racecourse facility.
Butt said the fear now was that harness racing in Victoria, which used to be the leading precinct in Australasia, would lose its top-tier professionals, its best horses and its betting appeal, and be reduced to a rural sport for hobby trainers.
“Punters love the name drivers, the name trainers, the big guns,” Butt said.
“They like to back Chris Alford, Greg Sugars, Kate Gath and Kerryn Manning. It’s like we go to a pub on the weekend and we back James McDonald and Jamie Kah [in the gallops]. It’s only natural that the well-known names are going to generate more income.”
Butt, who is president of the Victorian Trainers & Drivers Association, said the government needed to back the sport. He said it made “a hell of a lot of money” from harness racing from taxes, such as the point of consumption wagering tax.
“The industry supports not only the participants but we support farmers who grow the feed, builders, fencers, blacksmiths, vets, horse transporters,” he said.
“We’ve got to buy cars and trucks. We’ve got to put diesel in them because we travel thousands of kilometres a year. There’s a lot of people who make money out of the industry, either directly or indirectly.”
In response to the criticism, Harness Racing Victoria chief executive Matt Isaacs released details of the industry’s revenue and cost challenges on Thursday.
“We simply spend more money to put on the show than we earn, and this has been the case since 2017,” Isaacs said.
“The surplus Melton land was set aside to help the sport in a rainy day, and it’s raining, with harness racing battling for relevancy in a crowded and declining wagering market, and without the crutch of grants from previous years.”
Isaacs said with recent government support that harness racing in Victoria was debt-free and had solvency funding for the next two financial years.
“The sport now needs to transition to standing on its own two feet,” he said.
Isaacs said the sport was cutting $12 million in operational costs, had cut $4.5 million in prize money and was changing the racing calendar – more regular races at bigger regional centres – to encourage more wagering.
Racing Minister Anthony Carbines declined to comment on what the government had planned for the Melton land. He will not be attending Sunday’s rally, which starts at 12.30pm.
RACING VICTORIA LOSS
Racing Victoria has announced it is expecting a $12 million operating loss for the 2024 financial year after a drop of more than 10 per cent in wagering across the past 12 months.
I have just started listening to this interview by Michael Felgate with the HRV Chairman and the CEO
Just listen to the start
Has there been a less impressive answer to an opening question than Adam Kilgour's answer "You Know"
https://omny.fm/shows/racin-pulse-wi...ilgour-join-rs