There seems to be an increasing trend for very low matched bet volume on Betfair on a Saturday.<\/p>\n
Some of the early races today had much less money matched on them than their significantly inferior midweek counterparts, it’s a curious but persistent trend. In general, I would guess there is less money being matched on horse racing than in previous years, but I’ll have to do some more work on this before I can confirm one way or the other. One thing seems certain and that is that there doesn’t seem to be that much core growth going on in the horse racing markets.<\/p>\n
It would be nice to see some more money spent to encourage growth here. At least money spent here funds an industry and real people and things. I think its a negative trend to see gambling based businesses focusing on ‘games’ where there is little substance behind the product and where the punter definitely can not find any edge or doesn’t get much entertainment for their losses. I can see why companies do this as they are easy to run and high, stable margin but other than being a margin generating source for those companies it contributes little else.<\/p>\n
One thing I have learnt over time is how pervasive the racing industry is, it’s got a lot of depth. It would be a shame to see it’s funding source get completely detached from reality but racing itself also needs to do more to get participation at a grass roots level.<\/p>\n