ATR have stated to the Racing Post that the time delay in their pictures is a ‘non-issue.’ My first reaction to that statement is that ATR ceo Matthew Imi has at least been upfront about ATR's position on this.
Imi and ATR don't consider exchange punters to be important, obviously Imi feels they don't comprise a significant percentage of ATR viewers, what is an issue for them is hence a ''non-issue'' for ATR.
And Imi gives his reasons why - ATR would derive no direct commercial beneift from investing in reducing the time delay, and they derive no commercial benefit from Betfair's commission revenue for In-Running from ATR tracks.
In short, unless Betfair pay ATR to do the work and make it worth their while, it ain't happening.
You may not like that, but at least it's honest.
More honest, possibly, than Josh Apiafi's IMO disappointing remarks that the issue is ''not a big problem.''
Clearly, Apiafi hasn't been reading this forum.
Actually, he probably has, but he has to make light of it because the fact is Betfair won't stump up the cash to pay ATR to do the work.
Everyone blames ATR for this, but the bottom line they are a business who see no profit for them in fixing the delay.
And Betfair is a business which doesn't think it's worth paying ATR to sort it out.
ATR has no duty, statutory or otherwise, to racing per se, it only has a duty to its shareholders, SKY and 28 of Britain's racecourses.
The other 31 tracks in the racing industry can go hang as far as ATR are concerned, as their lawyers will attempt to demonstrate in the High Court a week today.
Calamity Jane loses her white Stickels yet again
Not only has Jane Stickels made yet another mistake as a judge, she has declined to use the TV medium offered to her to go on ATR, explain her actions and issue a public apology to the betting industry and the betting public.
Clearly, Stickels has nothing but contempt for those whose Levy cash pays her wages.
Resign?
No - Stickels should be instantly dismissed.
If there is an industry more rife with nepotism than racing, I’d like to know what it is. I see posh equestrian types who know nothing about the kind of service punters need working on ATR and wonder how the fuck they ever got hired/keep their jobs, and I see judges making serial errors ands I wonder how the fuck they ever got hired/keep their jobs.
It’s all part of the same disease pervading the racing industry, and even the racing media, IMO.
A bunch of incompetent in-breds who take the Levy from the great unwashed off-course punters for granted and give them a piss-poor service in return.
The game's not only bent, they can't even bother to give the results of the straight races correctly.
Well, the Levy ends in 2009 and the ECJ have knackered a legal replacement - I honestly think racing deserves to go down the tubes when I see events like today's. To be frank, as a minor exchange operator, I love the racing industry about as much as a car manufacturer loves a particular company which is just one of many options for supplying him with tyres.
If, in 20 years' time, no one wants to bet on racing anymore because it's a corrupt shambles and they're all betting on football instead, so the sprot gets no more funding from betting and goes down the pan, I couldn't care less.
That's honesty, an honesty you won't get from all the big betting operators, the Big Three, Betfair etc, who, being businesses, will privately think exactly the same thing.
I've always loved racing, not the people in racing.
In fact, once I left uni and got a job in racing publishing, the more things I found out about the people in racing, the less I liked the game, I'm afraid.
To be honest, I don't feel as sentimental about the game as I did back in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
Sure, I'd miss it if it collapsed completely, but that's not going to happen.
But racing may very well find itself with about 25% of the prize-money (and only that if the non-bookmaking sponsors stick around) they have today in about 10 years' time and a hell of a lot of tracks will go to the wall and a hell of a lot of yards will close.
In the 21st century, putting on a bent, badly run, sport when there's so much else to bet on just doesn't cut it like it did 20 years ago, when racing was the only betting game in town, I'm afraid.
There are, what?, about 42 races from about six meetings in the UK on a Saturday.
I'd say the incidence of corruption among those is far higher in percentage terms than in the ten Premiership games, the 12 championship games, and the 24 games in Divisions One and Two the same week-end.
Yes, you get some bent end-of season mid-table footy in the Italian league and in Uefa Cup games involving east European sides with nothing to play but.
But, generally speaking, and because it generally doesn't need income from betting to sustain itself, football is straighter IMO.
That's got to be reflected in changing public betting patterns going forwards - no one wants to be ripped off or feel they're being made a mug of, not even recreational punters.
BBC
