While personal choice and partisan opinion may suggest that Saturday’s SA Champions Season opener at Hollywoodbets Greyville, despite the absence of a Gr1 contest, ranks amongst the most fascinating racemeetings of the year so far, it is disappointing that we couldn’t have even a R100 000 carryover kicker to boost the Pick 6.
Despite communications emanating from the halls of power, few quite understand who, how and why the carryover balances are allocated.
Hollywoodbets Greyville – venue for today’s big racemeeting (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
The TAB policy document states that:
Pick 6 Carryovers on all South African race meetings and BLITZ race meetings are accumulated in a Pick 6 Stockpile and added to selected Pick 6 pools at the sole discretion of the operators, regardless of the meeting/s from which such Carryovers originated. The operators reserve the right to vary this policy and to utilise monies in the Pick 6 Stockpile to create Carryovers to other bet-type pools from time to time.
The Sporting Post asked Gold Circle Commercial Executive Patrick Loker why Saturday’s top racemeeting had no Pick 6 carryover boost.
He said that the host tote in South Africa is that of 4Racing and Gold Circle / Tabgold are one of a number of guest totes that commingle bets into that tote.
“All host totes set policy and it is no different in South Africa. The general policy for carryovers is that they are placed onto meetings where the host tote operator believes it will give the greatest incentive to drive additional turnover on those pools. A Commingling Agreement does exist between Gold Circle and Phumelela that was ceded to 4Racing, but the carryover policies are not part of that Agreement. We did suggest changes to the Agreement, which would have addressed this matter and a number of others, but 4Racing is still considering these amendments,” said Loker.
The carryover balances were to be published by TAB – they have been at times but that table is frankly often not easy to find.
Please note that the Pick 6 today starts in the third race at 12h55.
The tenth race – the World Sports Betting 400m dash – will be run between the third and fourth race.
