Racing: Fixed odds no deductions rule stays for summer, may be permanent

Racing fans at Ellerslie. Photo / Dean Purcell.

The TAB’s no deductions rule for fixed odds betting will stay in place for summer racing and could become permanent.

The policy means punters are guaranteed the final field win or place price for any bet placed on either New Zealand or overseas racing, regardless of how many scratchings there are in that race after the bet is placed.

That differs enormously from the usual TAB policy, which is also standard practice for bookmakers worldwide, that final field dividends reduce for each scratching, with the amount the dividend is reduced decided by the scratched runner’s price.

That can be enormously frustrating for punters who think they have found a fair price only for their horse to win but their dividend to be halved or worse because of scratchings.

Faced with competition from overseas bookmakers the NZ TAB started their no deductions promotion in August, initially to run for spring and end at the completion of New Zealand Cup week mid-November. But it was extended and will be again, this time until the end of March.

When it was first introduced the no deductions promotion was welcomed by Kiwi punters lucky enough to cash in on guaranteed dividends but overseas punters questioned how it could possibly work.

Concerns were raised over integrity issues, hugely increased market percentages (horses all paying less) and the new policy costing the industry millions of dollars, but none of those have become reality.

“We know some people had initial concerns but we have seen none of those come to fruition and the promotion has worked pretty much as we thought it would,” says TAB head of betting Nick Conway.

“It is not greatly different from sport, where there are no deductions.

“This year we saw Novak Djokovic disqualified from the Australian Open tennis tournament as the $2 favourite and we just took him out of the market and anybody who had backed another player to win kept their original price.

“Under that same principal, now for our racing customers, the price is the price.”

The promotion, which Conway and others in the TAB hope will become permanent, gives them a point of difference in their war to retain New Zealand punters betting here, and he says the way bookies set markets hasn’t had to change greatly because their winning margins haven’t been too badly hit.

“The percentages we open markets at are affected by an array of things from field size to how hot the favourite is and if we have a double acceptor in a race and a reasonable expectation it might be scratched, we will factor that in.

“But even with no deductions going we roughly try to open markets at 130 per cent and close around 120 per cent or less. And we are open about what helps us, and that is the punters still have to back the winner.”