Deep south the ‘poor cousins’: NZTR criticised
NZ Thoroughbred Racing is setting lower South Island clubs up to fail by giving them “s... race days and s... opportunities” compared to North Island clubs, an industry leader in Invercargill says.
Southland Racing Club president Sean Bellew has spoken out in the wake of a report outlining the racing industry’s economic contribution to the country.
The report said the industry [thoroughbred, harness and greyhound racing] was responsible for generating close to $1.9 billion in value-added contribution to the New Zealand economy in 2022-23 – nearly 73% of which directly benefited the North Island.
When broken down to regions, Otago and Southland’s three racing codes were responsible for generating $110m in value-added contribution to gross domestic product, which represented 5.9% of the industry total.
New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing chief executive Bruce Sharrock said he was happy to talk about how the thoroughbred industry contributed to the economy across the country.
But he declined to comment on Bellew’s concerns. “If Sean wants to have a crack about micro-industry issues, that’s separate.”
Bellew said he liked the current leadership at NZ Thoroughbred Racing, which was finally looking at how the industry ticked; and stake money had improved in the last 24 months.
But he said the good race dates on Saturdays and public holidays were invariably assigned to North Island clubs as opposed to lower South Island clubs, and complementing that were good crowds and higher stakes.
“They [North Island clubs] get the key weekend dates, the key public holiday dates where people are available for the discretionary spend. We get all the rubbish Wednesdays or a Thursday.” Smaller stakes and midweek meetings didn’t attract people into the industry, it didn’t attract northern trainers to race their horses in the deep south, and it resulted in poor crowds, he said. The racing industry report said the 33 thoroughbred race meetings in Otago and Southland in 2022-23 attracted 36,850 people.
“Allocate us weekend racing and [more] people will come,” Bellew said. “Give us a better day and we will give you a better result. If you give us nothing to work with, we will give you nothing in return.”
He wanted an “equal spread across the board”.
“In Otago and Southland, we feel like poor cousins.”
Bellew cited his club’s popular Christmas at the Races event in Invercargill each December, which was on a Saturday and attracted 6000 people annually.
“They give us that one opportunity a year to be viable and prosper, and are we good at it? We are.
“We have proven we can be good at what we do if afforded the opportunity. But if you are going to continue to give us bad days, we will give [NZ Thoroughbred Racing] bad results.”
The New Zealand racing industry report, prepared by consultancy firm IER, said there were 27 racing clubs in Otago and Southland, of which 12 were thoroughbred racing clubs.
The Otago and Southland thoroughbred racing industry’s total direct expenditure in 2022-23 was $42.7 million, the report said.