OLD race-tickets flutter along the floor, blown along by the wind from outside. An unlucky punter ambles in from the stands, kicking one into the air in frustration.
I can empathise; I have also just lost 10 euros after the odds-on favourite sauntered in in fourth place. The man glumly sits and resumes his study of the race card.
It is a Wednesday night much like any other at the Nicosia racecourse.
In the betting hall four bored-looking cashiers wait in their kiosks for the customers -mostly middle aged Cypriot men – to bet on the next race.
The remaining 20 or so kiosks are empty, since people can now place bets in the betting shops rather than at the racecourse.
Between races, customers line the drab room beneath rows of TV screens, which display the next race’s odds.
The scene was curiously at odds with glamorous descriptions in Sporting Life Magazine of “The most picturesque racecourse in the world” and Cyprus Airway’s Sunjet magazine, which described “the powdery brown turf and the lush green of the date palms which contrast strikingly with the dusty blues of the Kyrenia mountains” that I had read earlier.
Admittedly the main building does have a bright and modern-ish facade and the paddock near the entrance, where horses and colourfully clad jockeys talked tactics with their trainers before each race is tidily arranged.
But as a newby to the turf I would be clueless without a guide; I saw no signposts or indication of how to bet and when I parked in the car park I was ushered out onto the road; presumably because it was the members’ car park.
I had come to the racecourse to meet one racehorse owner whose horses are due to start racing soon.
Costas (not his real name) wanted me to see first hand how the economic crisis, rampant illegal gambling, allegations of race fixing and outdated management by the Nicosia Race Club (NRC) were threatening to run this once prestigious venue into the ground.
It is an anxious time for Costas and his racing industry colleagues, who are nervously watching a vicious cycle of decreasing revenue, dwindling prizes for punters and owners and the inevitable exodus towards more lucrative illegal gambling.
Illegal gambling refers to any betting on horses that is not sanctioned by the race course, and ranges from small scale informal bets to reports of highly organised multimillion euro syndicates, which do not pay any money back to the race course or race-prizes. These syndicates operate by taking the live information feeds that the racecourse provides to legal regional betting shops. Illegal betting rings, who have no overheads, then use this information to offer more attractive odds.
The changes are made worse by rising monthly training fees (from approximately 384 euros to 600 euros in 10 years) and the NRC has increased its cut on every bet from 17.5 per cent in 1994 to 25 per cent in recent races.
As with many struggling industries, the economic crisis is a major cause of their trouble. NRC head of marketing George Hadjiminas says the crisis has caused legal bets to fall by 30 per cent, so that the management are now eating into their savings.
This decrease has had two effects. Firstly it reduces prize money for the owners and secondly limits the amount that a punter can win back.
Both effects have fuelled illegal betting (away from the racecourse) which has reached such levels that illegal bets reportedly dwarf legal, and the venues where this takes place are open secrets within the racing community.
Costas estimates around three million euros are bet at each meeting, but only 800,000 euros are legal, from which all prizes are divided. Since no prizes or management fees are deducted from an illegal bet, the odds and winnings can be much better.
In fact, the level of illegal betting seems to have reached a tipping point, whereby the only way for some owners to stay afloat is by illegally betting. “If prize money were higher then trainers and owners would not need to bet,” Costas said.
As more people are drawn to the illegal side, the amount going into the legal pool drops further, creating a downward spiral until no-one can afford to breed or train the horses and the industry collapses.
The problems of illegal gambling are compounded by the long-standing rumours of race fixing, which prompted the NRC to introduce various counter measures. For example, they have installed six cameras and a British race official to monitor suspicious race results. In addition, all winners have routine doping tests.
Ultimately, however the NRC lacks the support of the legal system when it comes to tackling illegal gambling. “If an illegal betting shop owner is arrested, it could take five years before his trial, and he will only get a 50 euro fine,” Hadjiminas said.
The stark prospects for owners become clearer when you look at the numbers. To meet the 600 euro monthly training fees and make a profit, a horse has to win twice in a season to break even, but most win only once or not at all. In the last ten years the average prize money has decreased from almost 7,000 euros to around 5,000 euros per race.
However, as you might expect from a racehorse breeder, Costas is an optimist and he believes this cycle can be broken, but it requires a fundamental change in NRCs strategy, starting with the betting system.
With the current system (tote or parimutuel) the management add up all the bets, take their cut, of around 25 per cent, then calculate the prizes. The problem is that betting a large stake will reduce the win-price of your horse, which is already low enough to deter the more numerate punters.
Costas said “In a race of ten, eight horses will typically pay less than 10/1… and a gambler does not want to bet and reduce the winnings at the same time.”
The alternative, which is used in the UK, is fixed betting where the odds are agreed at the time the bet is placed, and the gambler does not have to cover the deficit produced by taxes and the management’s take.
Hadjiminas is firmly against fixed betting, as he believes the tote system means the racecourse – which is a non-profitmaking organisation – has no interest in the outcome of a race, and is therefore fairer.
In addition, fixed betting opens the possibility of betting on a horse to lose, which, if rumours of race fixing are correct, could lead to a farcical situation whereby horses jostle for last place in some races.
Another way to overcome the deficit, Costas suggests, is for the NRC to drop their cut to 10 or 15 per cent on the win tote, and by 10 per cent on all other bets. This will bring the gamblers back. It will only take five to 10 meetings to have results.
Finally he suggested advertising to tourists, increasing prize money for owners, upgrading the premises and introducing more imaginative management.
“They (the NRC) have no idea whatsoever how a gambler thinks and acts, and since the 90s nothing has been done to improve the facilities,” he said. “There have been no international races since the 1980s, no invitation to foreign TV channels to broadcast important races and no increase in the prize money in decades.”
Hadjiminas argues they do have initiatives to promote races, such as extra prizes for race-goers, and that two years ago they increased the annual prize money by 1.6 million euros.
Nevertheless, if the economic crisis does not abate and the NRC do not increase customers, the racecourse could have only outsiders odds of surviving.
