Fast pictures for all punters could be an enormous boon to racing and help to get the attention of a technologically savvy younger generation
The recent “drones over racecourses” controversy has, in the view of a punters’ representative, called attention to a longstanding truth, that those who bet in-running are on anything but a level playing field. Martin Hughes, who serves on the Horserace Bettors Forum, believes racing is missing out on “a fantastic opportunity” by allowing that unfairness to persist and adds that 60% of respondents to an HBF survey, as yet unpublished, said they would be interested in betting during races if they could see the action at the same time as everyone else.
“I don’t think anything has really changed, with the drones,” Hughes told me this week. The reason for his interest in the HBF when it was set up in 2015 was that he had noticed a change in the in-running markets, and he has since gathered plenty of evidence of the cause of that change, people streaming pictures from the track to those who are prepared to pay.
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