SD's Racing Ramble: Time for racing to realise the power of the punter

Written by: SD Racing Services

Having amassed a loyal following on our Races Now YouTube channel thanks to a combination of outstanding tipping and forthright opinions, the inimitable 'SD' is also offering up his opinions on his exclusive OddsNow.com column! 

This week's edition focuses on the recent Kieran Shoemark saga and some strong thoughts on the treatment of punters from the racing media.

I’m afraid the game is now afoot.

It’s been palpably obvious for sometime, but what last weekend showed is that punters are at the bottom of the pile. Treated with contempt, unfairly at the hands of those who think they’re up the hierarchy.

Bookmakers will cry of the tightening noose of legislation stifling their every move. But they are conduits to the sorry point we have reached.

How many people who are good score or pony  punters were restricted before this? There are droves of them, I counter rhetorically. What we now have is bookmakers using legislation as a masquerade to chop them more.

Dylan Phelan not paid for sometime, copious requests for bank statements for thousands, liability of a tenner in the Grand National but have what you like on slot games.

I laid Field Of Gold on Saturday. I got lucky. The ride, particularly the positioning and waiting cost him the race. It was a ride punters were entitled to feel aggrieved over. They are entitled to voice opinions. They could even say the ride was shit. It was. But what then followed was a diatribe of bilge.

It’s necessary to look at other sports. Millions watch Match of the Day, forensically looking at counter attacks, how players are in the wrong place and why the goal didn’t go in. Instead, we are now treated to Camilla from Chalfont St Peter and her lovely floral arrangement on her hat on a terrestrial basis to fit in with “inclusive content”.  We lack proper previews, race replays on terrestrial tv or meaningful analysis.

We are supposed to bow at Shoemark’s feet for exposing where it all went wrong. Poppycock. If the working man drops a bollock doing their job, they explain it. To their boss the neigh-sayers say from the cheap seats.

But here’s the deal. Punters contribute to the levy, which contributes to prize money. Just the £79 million in 2022/23. So they are partly the boss. It’s just nobody is prepared to accept it.

Punters like honesty. They like a spade being called a spade. They like a bad ride being called out as one, without fear or favour, not a toffee-nosed so called pundit missing the elephant in the room in case a jockey does not do an interview with them in the future. Tough. That’s life.

Of course, there is a minority who take it too far. Threats of violence or worse should never be tolerated.

But constructive criticism, dismissed by one self-proclaimed high flyer as “armchair jockeys” is a punter's entitlement. How dare someone insult punters intelligence by such a term?

It’s ok to criticise the Prime Minister without being an MP and the same goes for racing. Doing the form and coming to a conclusion by putting your money on something entitles you to an opinion, one more valid than the entitled.

“Pocket talk” is important. Be prepared to only lose what you can afford, but be afforded the luxury of why it went wrong after. How nice would that be?

You could try and avoid this misalignment of racings architecture by going racing. At least there, punters can largely punt without monstrous impositions on their private life with a human being.

But certain racecourses don’t want to help there either, as one racecourse manager put it earlier this year:

"We're a racecourse that is now primarily designed for TV – a model not dissimilar to the all-weather tracks - and one of our main focus points is giving owners the best experience we possibly can.

"We have a handful of big meetings a year for the public - including the Molson Coors raceday in April, family days in May and August, student day in May and ladies' day in July when we have 8,000 - but other than that we see average ticket crowds of 600-700 people on each raceday.

"We have no plans to invest in future facilities for the general public because we simply don't need any additional facilities for that number of people”

What sort of message does that send, apart from two fingers at the general public? Racing is the second-most watched spectator sport in Britain, and it is high time those in power started treating the general public with the respect they deserve.

Racing is not a mutually exclusive product. There are many of other things folk can spend their money on. Stretched budgets in the highest tax regime since the 1970’s, racing can ill-afford to treat its fans with such delirious contempt.

At racing’s highest court, the BHA, there is nobody who represents the racegoer or the punter. They lack a voice at the top table.

It is high time they were treated to a la carte luxury with gastronomic delights with the volume amplified to all and sundry, before it’s too late. As it very nearly is.

For more SD racing insight, be sure to subscribe to the Odds Now and Races Now YouTube channels, and follow Races Now on X (Twitter).

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