July betting feast a banquet
Steps being taken to ensure no further TABonline logjams occur.
JULY JOY. There were fireworks at Greyville on Saturday where thousands of racing fans attended the Vodacom Durban July meeting. As a result turnovers were up on last year.
The Durban July meeting at Greyville on the first Saturday in July every year is dubbed a “betting feast” and the turnovers last Saturday showed satisfying growth, according to TAB and Betting World boss Vee Moodley.
He added: “The turnovers were a great representation of the vibe on the day.
“Taking into account the current economic conditions we could never ask for any more and are grateful that the response for our sport continues to grow.”
Total TAB turnover at all local venues was approximately R138 million and growth from a South African perspective was from R106 million in 2016 to R109 million this year.
Gold Circle showed the highest growth of just less than 5.5% from R61 million in 2016 to just under R65 million. On-course attendance and ticket sales represented a similar trend. Kenilworth Racing showed a 4.5% growth while Phumelela Gaming & Leisure Ltd recorded a decline of some 2%*.
Moodley continued: “From an individual exotic pools perspective I am excited to announce that the ‘new’ initiative to guarantee minimum pools for the Pick 6 and the July Quartet worked wonders. The response from the betting public was overwhelming and we achieved historic turnovers on the two bets.”
The Pick 6 achieved a net pool of just under R12.1 million and the dividend returned to the 47.73 winning combinations was R253,134. The July Quartet reached a gigantic R19,022,956 and the dividends, due to the dead heat for fourth between Krambambuli and Nightingale, were R9,406 and R7,004 respectively.
The Win pool topped R11.6 million. Winner Marinaresco returned R23.90 for a TAB Win and R2.80 a Place. TAB paid Places to sixth in the main race and those who took the winner’s stablemate Horizon for a Place were paid R4.
The favourable results on the day assisted in generating “churn” for the tote.
Overall indications, based on the performance of Betting World, are that there was double-digit growth on fixed-odds turnovers as well.
* The drop in PGL turnover was possibly due to many punters not being able to take their bets on the company’s tote betting website TABonline.
According to Phumelela’s Group Chief Information Officer Mervyn Govender: “The website was overwhelmed. There were more than 1,000 requests per second, which clogged up the system. We’d tested the system the day before and it worked fine. We’ve never experienced anything like this before.
“We are planning to upgrade in order to prevent the same thing happening again.”
