Straight Up – The Melbourne Cup still rules, but which other races attract the most wagering dollars?

In this edition:

• Core markets – What Bet365’s China exit tells us about its future ambitions
• Wagering companies make submissions to Queensland Racing Review
• BoomBet fined over licence breach, but punter fails to recover $40,000 in losses

The importance of the Melbourne Cup to the racing industry can be underlined by the fact it attracted $214 million in turnover in 2024, a number around four times more than the second biggest race of the year.

Politics and commercial confidences mean that Australia’s big bookmakers are reluctant to publicly release precise figures of which races generate what wagering dollars, but we have been able to tease out of a few of them their Top 10 rankings, which we will post in an article in the next week.

To give you a sneak peek, the top four are universal and clearly dominant. The Melbourne Cup leads the Cox Plate, the Caulfield Cup and The Everest. The relative positions of the Caulfield Cup and The Everest depends on which bookie you ask, and it is likely the Sydney feature will sit in a clear third place in the next year or two.

Wagering should not be the only benchmark for the performance of a race, but in times where margins are thin, clubs are struggling to make racing pay, and PRAs are having to cut their cloth, it’s easy to argue that public wagering benchmarking would be of value to the industry.

While history and the structure of the pattern play a role, the most crucial engagement metric we have in an industry that is more than 90 per cent reliant on the wagering dollar, is betting on races.

What has stood out in the data we have pulled together to date is the absolute dominance of the spring. While a couple of autumn features, namely the Golden Slipper and the Doncaster, featured in the Top 10 of one bookmaker, others were entirely spring focused.

It’s timely as we contemplate the best structure of autumn racing, the programming of the All-Star Mile, the Australian Cup, and the Championships, that racing bodies also consider the likely return on investment.

Given racing represents around 70 per cent of their annual turnover, it shouldn’t surprise that Australia’s major wagering companies want to have input in how racing is structured moving forward.

Several of the big bookmakers are putting in submissions to the Queensland’s government’s review of racing. Public submissions for that close on Sunday.

Wagering companies make submissions

Bookies seek input in Queensland Racing Review

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Betting is a global game and Bet365 have been one of the major global players over the past decade or so.

This week it confirmed it was stepping away from its business in China, with regulated markets like the US and Brazil, offering more appeal. It’s a trend that others, such as Australian-owned Stake.com are also moving towards.

The Bet365 news gave us time to consider its global presence and where it sits in Australia, where it has operated under an NT licence since 2012.

Core markets

What Bet365’s China exit tells us about its future ambitions

Read

Regulation continues to provide its fair share of headaches for major wagering companies. Like Entain, Sportsbet and Tabcorp over the years, Bet365 in Australia has found itself in the crosshairs of financial crimes regulator AUSTRAC.

Even the smaller operators have their challenges in regulatory areas, as our recent article on BoomBet indicated.

Check out this week’s Straight Talk podcast. Watch below or subscribe or listen on You Tube, Apple, Spotify or Podbean.

 What you may have missed this week:

• What are the likely outcomes from the Rosehill vote?
• The anointed son – Justify’s City Of Troy to shuttle to Coolmore Australia
• ‘We can’t operate at a loss year in, year out’ – closure looms for struggling Penang Turf Club
• Straight Shorts – Wednesday March 26 – Quokka berth for NZ sprinter, more success for Farnan, Griff to stand at Larneuk, Surround Stakes winner retired
• Straight Shorts – Tuesday March 25 – Pinatubo colt tops MM sale, $3m filly to debut, Arrowfield’s shuttle acquisition, NZ star retired, Brisbane tracks left out of Olympics venue plans

You would have noticed that this edition of Straight Up is centred on wagering. Our Tuesday edition deals with breeding and bloodstock and Friday’s focus is on racing. We also have a daily newsletter – The Straight Daily News. You can change which newsletter you receive in your membership preferences. 

Thanks for supporting independent media,

Bren O’Brien

Managing Editor and Founder

The Straight