The Quartet was the star bet perfomer on a Vodacom Durban July day that saw turnovers go through the roof – but with online and some on-course punters suffering the same frustrating slow service and system capacity issues that have become the norm on big racedays in South Africa.
A press release issued on Sunday by TAB fails to make any mention of the problems encountered on Saturday, but is quick to suggest plans for further growth.
This is putting the cart before the horse and with online betting capacity (or lack of it) a glaring repeat issue, customers are owed answers.
On Saturday volumes were blamed.
While the figures make for impressive reading, if TAB is promoting growth, but not catering technically for it, then they are on a hiding to nothing and need to take a long hard look at their IT management skills.
Overall turnovers at Greyville’s Vodacom Durban July meeting on Saturday were up 10.62% but as far as the Durban July itself was concerned, the increase from last year was an outstanding 27.68%.
While the Pick 6 was marginally down and did not exceed the expected R12 million it appears the reason for that was the overwhelming support for the Quartet, which was the big winner on Durban July day. There was a R1-million added to kick start the pool but even taking that amount off, the pool was up almost 35% from last year’s figure of R10,655,842 to some 16.2 million.
The Quartet of Power King, Punta Arena, Tellina and Futura paid R82,066 to 197.40 winners.
Also receiving a major boost was the Place pool, which increased by almost 34%.
However, that was more expected as Vee Moodley, Executive Director: Sports betting for TAB points out. “This year we were back to 18 horses in the July whereas last year we had only 16. We also paid out six places this time against the five places last time.
“This year was quite an eye opener and I have some exciting new ideas for next year’s race.”
The Win pool also showed a decent increase of 22.8% but again that can be put down to the increased number of runners.
