‘A general love for the game’ – Why on-course bookmakers keep showing up and the carnivals that draw them back

Flamboyant bookie Warren Woodcock had stands at three race meetings last Saturday – Flemington, Randwick and Deniliquin.

And it was the non-TAB meeting on the banks of the Murray River, on the Victorian-NSW border in the southern Riverina, where Woodcock’s American drawl rang out, calling the odds and spitting out the tickets to the country punters betting on the six-race card.

This week he will field at Wagga’s two-day cup carnival, again in the state’s south with 26 other on-course bookies, before returning to Sydney for Hawkesbury’s standalone race meeting on Saturday.

Then, he will turn around again and make the long trek down the Hume and Princes Freeway/Highways to Victoria for the Warrnambool May Racing Carnival.

Woodcock wouldn’t have it any other way as it’s the racecourse atmosphere, and its people, rather than the money, that keeps him coming back.

“Look, I’ll be honest with you, I turned over $12,000 (at Deniliquin) and Ladbrokes would have turned that over in pre-post betting on the maiden at Seymour on a Thursday,” Woodcock tells The Straight as he prepares for a busy week of criss-crossing state borders and racetracks. 

“But it’s just you have to want to go to these meetings because you have to have a love for it to still be a really hard working on-course bookie.

“I stopped going to Harold Park trots 30 or 40 years ago on a Tuesday night because I was holding less than $20,000 and today I’m going to meetings and holding $5,000 and driving three hours to get there. Harold Park was 20 minutes from my house.

“The environment has changed and I can understand where some get frustrated with it but deep down inside you just have to have a general love for the game to be going there day after day in the country.”

Once every seven years, Wagga and Warrnambool avoid a clash, with the first Thursday and first Friday in May falling in different weeks, enabling bookies (and punters) to do the  double.

Woodcock, his long-time friend and fellow bookmaker Robbie Waterhouse, Frank Hudson and Michael Byrne will be among the oddsmakers fielding at both carnivals.

Byrne suggests corporate bookmaking had become “a very stale and boring product” with the markets largely devoid of opinion and almost all bookmakers betting the same prices.

“If you want a good country carnival, you need to have a strong, vibrant betting ring and both Warrnambool and Wagga have it,” Byrne says.

That atmosphere punters experience at the likes of Wagga, Warrnambool, Darwin, Swan Hill and Grafton carnivals has become something unique given the proliferation of online bookmakers and punters’ gravitation towards corporate bookies and away from cash.

“It’s not a matter of whether it makes it worthwhile for you (the on-course bookmaker), but it’s a matter that it gives you the opportunity,” Byrne says.

“It’s just like a punter, right? There’s better prices (than off-course), so it gives the punter the opportunity as well.”

Byrne believes Wagga and Warrnambool running in separate weeks “couldn’t have happened at a better time” due to the “cost of living”.

“Everyone’s doing it a lot harder, so Wagga being this week, it’s not competing against Warrnambool,” he says. 

“So, there could be a few more people from Victoria coming and I also think it’ll enhance their turnover. In what’s a tough year, it’s great that they’re on separate weeks. 

“The professionals, they go to Warrnambool, they don’t go to Wagga. Well, this year, they’ve got the opportunity of going to Wagga. It’ll be interesting to look at the (betting) figures.”

The reality is, though, outside the aforementioned carnivals, as well as the standalone meetings such as Kembla Grange and Scone in NSW, some of the Central and North Queensland carnivals or Victoria’s popular picnic racing circuit, life is tough for the on-course bookmaker. 

Woodcock briefly embraced the online bookmaking sphere, a move forced upon him during the Covid lockdowns and punters’ pent-up urge to bet that saw turnover skyrocket.

He admits the personalised service he was used to providing on the racecourse didn’t quite pan out the same way betting “numbers” rather than people, leading to Woodcock closing down his corporate bookmaking site.

But that’s not to say he’s abandoned corporate bookmaking completely, revealing he’s relaunching online in the coming weeks in partnership with Vin Moriarty.

For Woodcock at least, this time it will be different, with a hands-off role in the new entity allowing him to continue to bookmake on course.

“So many of my colleagues have gone online in recent years because they realise they’re not making as much money on course as they used to and they’re trying to build their businesses, which I totally respect, but I still would prefer my first choice to always be to go on course,” he said.

“I have an absolute love of country racing in these small beautiful towns that welcome us and that’s where I’m going to go first and foremost. 

“I also love Flemington, but that doesn’t change the fact that if I had my druthers I’d go to Towong or Wagga because they’re just special people there.”

Woodcock will be happy to take punters’ bets this week and next – and he may even give you a free cap when you hand over your cash.

Byrne offered his own advice for even the most hardened of carnival punters. 

“I’ve found over time that when you go to these carnivals, the first rule is that you’ve got to stay healthy,” he says. 

“You can have a meal and a few drinks, that’s OK. But if you go into a carnival and you have a big night out, you’re on dangerous ground … that’s the punter, bookmaker, anyone.”