Finding the winning formula

Having closely studied the upcoming race to buy the Tote, I came upon a method whereby the new management could solve almost all their issues in one hit: namely the levy, the contribution of the exchanges and the funding for British horseracing.

While I don’t have access to any of the Tote’s figures, it strikes me there is a relatively simple solution to all the issues if the right visionary can get his or her hands on the Tote pools.

Firstly, if you cut the margin or ‘take out’ on Tote pools bets for both ‘win’ and ‘place’ markets to, say 2%, you would be able to pretty much guarantee you were best price on every single horse race. This would have the knock-on effect of essentially wiping out Betfair’s USP, ensuring that most of its racing punters would come over to the Tote.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that because of the nature of pool betting you have no problem limiting big players because the house cannot lose. As a result both player and Tote are happy and the Betfair position of how you tax them becomes a non-issue as the Tote is offering better value anyway.

Equally, the Tote would be winning back racing punters, and thus its contribution to racing’s finances, competitively rather than by the outdated levy handout. As a result the relentless whine from racing that everything’s simply ‘not fair’ would disappear, making politicians happy too.

It would, however, have to balance the books somewhere. To combat this, the Tote can up the margin on products where it has a controlling monopoly (Placepots, Scoop6, Exacta, etc). There would be negligible loss of value because there is nobody else offering these markets.

This is a win for UK racing (so the levy issue can finally fade away), the Tote, and punters both large and small (both get value and the former doesn’t get resticted on the amount they can win). Meanwhile, politicians will be delighted as they don’t need to get involved… and the whining can stop!