The racing television whodunnit continues. For racing, or not for racing?
Tony Mincione writes in the Sporting Post Mailbag that he was there when trainer and owner interviews started on TV.
After that “racing” had to negotiate whether jockeys could get interviewed.
Would jockeys stand there with saddles in hand making sure no one touched them, or what if they weighed in first and then came back?
To give James Goodman his due, his British confidence (shall we call it that?) made him a natural interviewer. He gave the nervous South Africans a Dutch courage to overcome the dreaded “mic fright”. He would lean in close, and with a big grin whisper, “Just look at me … smile!”, seeming to hypnotise the new generation of interviewees into speaking up for the very first time.
Way before all that, I also remember trying to justify paying for the initial IGN setup and subscription to get the broadcast at home. To me it was as big a deal as getting our first TV and watching the test pattern, or microwave oven and Motorola mobile phone.
It was made possible by the operators and the bookmakers pulling together, and changing the game forever.
So it was ironic when these parties wound up in the Supreme Court in the great Phumelela struggle to lay waste and consume more and more of everything. How it looked like an effort to justify salaries in millions for themselves while the rest battled on with the ever diminishing pot.
But we were in the “take-over era” where trying to steal a race course or training centre was the new stewardship. Payoffs made in terms of jobs to the loyal and picking people with integrity had just become old fashioned.
Fast forward: we know that the Tellytrack partnership, the same partners in the tote and the ones holding the nation’s racing assets, is about to dissolve.
4Racing opted out of the partnership which has till now been the face of South African racing. We can only wonder as to why.
Old Phumelela denies that GC owns a share in PGE, and should they win, Phumelela will claim a further R150 Million from GC against payments already made. Perhaps in the light of such massive claims, 4Racing is severing co-ownerships where it can. Who knows?
The KZN season is the gathering of the breed. The annual migration from the Highveld and the Western Cape is eagerly awaited by South African fans. They grew up waiting to see the next “Model Man” meet the next “Bush Telegraph”. The Daily News sorts out the 3yo contenders for each July, it doesn’t get better.
No matter the mistakes we make, we have a great and exciting product, close to a first world product you can argue. And from such a small base. I hope we never experience “You only miss the water when the well runs dry!”
Feature action at Hollywoodbets Greyville (Pic – Gold Circle)
Last month Gold Circle announced a deal to sell the KZN picture to Tabcorp’s Sky Racing International. It is 120 meetings of our total 400, so an independent deal. But were they left with no choice but to flog the heart of “our” intellectual property piecemeal? And make no mistake, this will be the main income that “racing” has.
Reading between the lines, the new guys are not into pro-rata sharing much.
Normally we would watch as owners shoot themselves in the foot with either apathy or greed. But this time it’s Gold Circle who is accountable to owners and members while 4Racing is not accountable in any public way.
So far 4Racing has said “transparency” a lot, but we are left guessing as to where this severing of co-operation is meant to lead.
It’s hard to see anything other than using its majority power as a lever to some sort of take over, and maybe “by hook or by crook” is an apt expression. And hypocritically, in complete darkness.
4Racing, in a rare burst of transparency(?), issued a press release on Saturday afternoon, 15 January.
It reads like promotional news, an “advertorial” if you like.
Unfortunately it got mainlined with no ifs or buts, because there is no one to push back. So this is what we used to call “propaganda” a while ago, unchecked and unquestioned to make it work.
Perhaps in their excitement, they didn’t realize they would be confusing 70% of their readers with headlines saying “NEW CHANNELS” and only the small print saying “digital”.
These CHANNELS are streaming channels, like Youtube or TV Online, and not the channels people are used to via Dstv 249 broadcasts. So if you are mobile, you consume data. Is this a material issue? We shall see.
For me 4Racing is a big disappointment.
The initial love for the rescue leached away by silence and by strange and aggressive anti-unity moves.
Worryingly, it feels similar to the dictatorship that was Phumelela, with the same taint of authoritarianism.
I like irony. When the clubs were reformed into a listed company, the ideas of corporatisation, accountability to shareholders and fiduciary duty seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. I thought. That would combat capture, nepotism, waste and clean up that pervasive odour of “entitlement” from the big badges and parking near the ring.
So how ironic is it that the bastion against all the “fiduciary duty” we have experienced sans vaseline previously, and now the “hostile take-over” strut of the new guys; is an old boy’s club with members in a gold circle, single handedly keeping us from being swept into the sea!.
Part 2 – coming soon!
