Wanna bet? That may be difficult

The return of crowds to New Zealand horse racing has left the industry with a shock problem: how do many of them get a bet on?

Horse and dog racing can return to normal from today, with the first real crowd expected at the Cambridge harness meeting on Thursday night.

But club boss David Branch is in the dark as to how many of them will be able to place a bet.

The TAB, presently known as the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA), has decided to phase out the human betting operators for almost all race meetings apart from elite carnival days due to cost cutting.

They will eventually all be replaced by self-service electronic betting machines, which work much like cashflow machines at a bank, while many punters will choose to bet via the TAB app on their phones.

But when that was announced, a TAB spokesman told the Herald: “We don’t expect crowds on track to be a factor until August, so we have time to implement all this.”

That has now become a problem for Thursday, with Branch expecting at least 700 customers on track as owners and punters alike return to take their first opportunity to enjoy live racing and he couldn’t get clarity yesterday on whether he will have tote operators.

“We have one tote in the Clubhouse Cafe and Bar on track and two pods [self-service machines] on track but nobody seemed to know [yesterday] whether we could get tote staff on track,” said Branch. “We pay them ourselves and the machines are already here, so I can’t see a reason we can’t do it, but nobody has told me yet. I rang and they didn’t know.”

The Herald understands the quicker-than-expected return of crowds to tracks will see RITA discuss a slower phasing out of tote operators to allow upcoming meetings to provide the traditional betting methods.

“I sure hope so because we will have a lot of punters here who have never used a betting machine before. So hopefully it gets sorted,” said Branch.