April 13, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 6, 1429

LAHORE, April 12: The Lahore Race Club (LRC) is facing a sizeable revenue loss with a decrease in the betting turnout on the computerised tote totalisator.

This may be due to tote betting’s losing its attractiveness as compared to the odds offered by bookmakers.

But overall there seems to be no less amount of money in circulation being spent on horse betting in general despite the fact that a big chunk is not flowing through the totalisator.

Men, who place bets in millions can be counted on the fingertips and are familiar faces at the race club premises. But they never bet on the totalisator. It is only the ones placing smaller bets, in hundreds, who use the tote system.

This is despite the tote formula of win, place, dual forecast and trio pool remaining unchanged for over a couple of years. In comparison, it has been noticed that some bookmakers even offer 20 to 100 odds when a horse is installed as the 80 to 100 favourite. The margin is meagre or nil at the tote betting.

Many punters, who solely bet on the totalisator, when contacted by Dawn, said that the LRC should offer a wider range of bets on tote by including double tote, treble tote and a jack pot beside the straight forecast in order to increase the turnover. All these were available at the old race club premises on Gulberg Road in spite of its manually operated totalisator.

The punters are of the view that the range of betting has been reduced with the introduction of the computerised tote totalisator facility.—AG