Rick Violette Players Enemy

[miff]

Not the first time an idiotic statement from the out of touch mouth of Rick Violette.

Pull The Pocket:

\"New York horseman dude Rick Violette:

Where would you want to see that money [money for drug testing to catch cheaters] come from?

“I’d like to take some of it off the top of handle. We certainly need the investment. Handicappers, or handicapping groups, are the first ones to rail about catching cheaters.\"

Ya, that\'s it. Those handicappers and fans would benefit so they should be paying for it. The horses - that many claim to love - won\'t benefit. They might be injected with frog venom, or given blood builders, ruining them for life but they certainly won\'t be helped by catching the people doing it to them.

Or the fact that the game gets sullied with \"cheaters\" where PETA comes out against it, governments rail against it, and owners leave, stop investing in horseflesh,. because they don\'t want to play a mugs game against a juicer down the street. That costs trainers like Rick Violette, and breeders and hay men and feed men, and vets and Bob Evans and  everyone else who draws a paycheck from the industry money. But they won\'t benefit.

No, it\'s the gamblers who would be the big beneficiaries, because they \"rail against it\".

The big picture vision in racing\'s alphabets and those who speak for them is incorrigibly blind.  

In a sport that has recieved billions and billions in slot revenue - money that this sport should be using to make the game better, by oh, I don\'t know, maybe paying for drug testing - it is maddening that this industry\'s participants constantly come back to customers to pay for everything that benefits them.

Leaving the fact that if takeout was raised to pay for it, less money will be bet, and they might have less money than they do now aside: It doesn\'t make logical sense and it has never made logical sense.

If a company wanted to create a stock purchase plan they don\'t ask shareholders to send in one of their shares to keep the employees happy. General Motors would not ask Ralph Nader to raise money for airbags because \"he is always railing against consumer safety\"

In horse racing the mantra is, and always has been \"great idea, as long as I don\'t have to pay for it.\"

The person paying for it is usually the customer, which is a big reason why racing doesn\'t have very many of them.

[richiebee]

Surcharge the profits pinhookers make at auction. There are millions of dollars made on the
sale of young horseflesh,  some of which will get ground up in the auction process and never race.

[TGJB]

EXACTLY friggin right. And another thing that should be a letter to the editor.

Can anyone think of any other business where customer needs matter so little to those running the business? Another example is the reaction you got when you brought up nasal strip info.

[mbeychok]

This is so backwards it defies a coherent response but it is akin to asking Subway customers to pay for a drug free bread if they want to eat the sandwich.

I don\'t really think racing will ever quite get that we/bettors/handicappers are customers and that they/industry/racetracks/Nyra supply a product that we purchase by betting on it. Until they do the phrase Clueless Clowns will continue to be an frequent and appropriate description.
michael

[TGJB]

About 10-15 years ago some racing organization had a similar idea-- increase takeout and use the money to fund marketing of the game. I wrote a letter to the editor of DRF slamming it, and got into a running letter battle over several weeks with the group\'s lobbyist. Eventually George White and Zito also wrote letters attacking the paid idiot, and the idea died a quiet death.

The idea of taxing players extra so they can have a level playing field ain\'t gonna happen-- people who run this game a) are at least smart enough to know how bad that would look, and b) would be admitting the field ain\'t level now. But Miff is right, the fact it would even be put forward tells you what you need to know about how f----d this industry is.

[Topcat]

miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not the first time an idiotic statement from the
> out of touch mouth of Rick Violette.
>
> Pull The Pocket:
>
> \"New York horseman dude Rick Violette:
>
> Where would you want to see that money  come
> from?
>
> “I’d like to take some of it off the top of
> handle. We certainly need the investment.
> Handicappers, or handicapping groups, are the
> first ones to rail about catching cheaters.\"
>
> Ya, that\'s it. Those handicappers and fans would
> benefit so they should be paying for it. The
> horses - that many claim to love - won\'t benefit.
> They might be injected with frog venom, or given
> blood builders, ruining them for life but they
> certainly won\'t be helped by catching the people
> doing it to them.
>
> Or the fact that the game gets sullied with
> \"cheaters\" where PETA comes out against it,
> governments rail against it, and owners leave,
> stop investing in horseflesh,. because they don\'t
> want to play a mugs game against a juicer down the
> street. That costs trainers like Rick Violette,
> and breeders and hay men and feed men, and vets
> and Bob Evans and  everyone else who draws a
> paycheck from the industry money. But they won\'t
> benefit.
>
> No, it\'s the gamblers who would be the big
> beneficiaries, because they \"rail against it\".
>
> The big picture vision in racing\'s alphabets and
> those who speak for them is incorrigibly blind.  
>
> In a sport that has recieved billions and billions
> in slot revenue - money that this sport should be
> using to make the game better, by oh, I don\'t
> know, maybe paying for drug testing - it is
> maddening that this industry\'s participants
> constantly come back to customers to pay for
> everything that benefits them.
>
> Leaving the fact that if takeout was raised to pay
> for it, less money will be bet, and they might
> have less money than they do now aside: It doesn\'t
> make logical sense and it has never made logical
> sense.
>
> If a company wanted to create a stock purchase
> plan they don\'t ask shareholders to send in one of
> their shares to keep the employees happy. General
> Motors would not ask Ralph Nader to raise money
> for airbags because \"he is always railing against
> consumer safety\"
>
> In horse racing the mantra is, and always has been
> \"great idea, as long as I don\'t have to pay for
> it.\"
>
> The person paying for it is usually the customer,
> which is a big reason why racing doesn\'t have very
> many of them.


This isn\'t a miff writeup . . . it\'s a PullThePocket piece, is it not?

Either way, stellar, cutting stuff.

[miff]

Its Pull The Pocket but I am familiar with other idiotic utterings from Violette, who, without question, believes the gambler to be a necessary evil in the game, nothing more.

[TMW]

miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Its Pull The Pocket but I am familiar with other
> idiotic utterings from Violette, who, without
> question, believes the gambler to be a necessary
> evil in the game, nothing more.



Remember this? --

\"The problem,\" Mullins said, \"are all the addicts and idiots crying because they lost a $2 bet, and then demanding a level playing field.  It will never be a level playing field. There are a lot of things people don\'t know, and won\'t know.\"  \"If you bet on horses, I would call you an idiot,\" Mullins also told The Times.


(Trainers are not all like this but impossible to respect these guys. Have you ever met Mullins? I am surprised he can spell the word idiot).

[Boscar Obarra]

This is an ancient problem. I blame the bettors.

  Stop betting for a week, and watch them come begging on hand and knee, asking you \'what would you like sir, a 10% takeout, 50c coffee, a manicure?\'.

  \'We\' put up with the abuse.

[plasticman]

I wouldn\'t necessarily say that RV is a players enemy, he\'s just about him and his own pocket. The ironic thing is that he pretends he cares about the game, but he really cares about Rick or else he would suggest that some of those billions of dollars of slot money go to cleaning up the sport.

Trainers probably have the best inside knowledge on which other trainers are cheating and yet, nobody turns anyone in, they all sit back and watch and keep quiet about it.

[Topcat]

TMW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> miff Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Its Pull The Pocket but I am familiar with
> other
> > idiotic utterings from Violette, who, without
> > question, believes the gambler to be a
> necessary
> > evil in the game, nothing more.
>
>
>
> Remember this? --
>
> \"The problem,\" Mullins said, \"are all the addicts
> and idiots crying because they lost a $2 bet, and
> then demanding a level playing field.  It will
> never be a level playing field. There are a lot of
> things people don\'t know, and won\'t know.\"  \"If
> you bet on horses, I would call you an idiot,\"
> Mullins also told The Times.
>
>
> (Trainers are not all like this but impossible to
> respect these guys. Have you ever met Mullins? I
> am surprised he can spell the word idiot).


 From one of T. J. Simers\' most riveting racing columns . . .

[P-Dub]

plasticman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wouldn\'t necessarily say that RV is a players
> enemy, he\'s just about him and his own pocket. The
> ironic thing is that he pretends he cares about
> the game, but he really cares about Rick or else
> he would suggest that some of those billions of
> dollars of slot money go to cleaning up the
> sport.
>
> Trainers probably have the best inside knowledge
> on which other trainers are cheating and yet,
> nobody turns anyone in, they all sit back and
> watch and keep quiet about it.

If this dude wants to take money out of the pools, then how is he not an enemy?? It doesn\'t matter if he cares about his pockets, clearly he doesn\'t care about the people that pump millions into the pools to sustain the game.

For anybody that wagers, he is absolutely an enemy.

[miff]

Plastic,

It\'s not just Violette.

NY horsemen and NYRA \"quietly\" signed off on a NYSRWB recommendation to legislate that NYS residents with out of state ADW a/c\'s have a 5% fee attached to wagers.\"They\" tried to hurt the big rebate houses, ADW\'s in general to divert handle back to NYRA via NYRA 1 ADW or the track itself.

To my knowledge, it was NEVER a consideration, in this instance or any other one, that the gambler/player would be adversely affected by a lesser rebate,higher take, whatever.

Broadly speaking, if you do not know that the gambler/player is under seige by the Clueless Clowns, you are not following too closely.


Mike

[plasticman]

My point was that the horsemen are looking out for themselves rather than trying specifically to hurt the gambler. Now, their actions directly hurt the gambler, but they really only care about themselves, the health of the game is certainly not one of their top priorities.

[rhagood]

Racing is always upside down and one of the most archaic enterprises around, a total bizarro world of some of the worst management and cronyism to exist.
Churchill Downs runs a racetrack (Calder) as a casino and not well at that.
Why not have a real casino operator run a racetrack, yes it is about a profit but they know how to take care of their customer. Obviously the longer the bettor stays in the game the more churn and profit for all stakeholders.  Also, widespread use of cutting edge analytics (see Google, etc.) has improved many other old school business models (see Major League Baseball, etc.). When is racing moving into the 21st Century, a full 2 decades into it?