ARE WE GOING TO SEE GREEK HORSE RACE AGAIN?

cosmicsports

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30 IOL 2010
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Everything that happens at the Greek Hippodrome, is done as it is known in secret and in vain.
Even the ... Poiros of journalism when it comes to the Greek hippodrome, with a magic wand cease to be ... Poiros, whether we are talking about the ODIE era or the OPAP era.

Therefore, I have to convey to you my own assessments of the surrounding atmosphere as well as my personal thoughts - possible scenarios for overcoming the crisis.

First of all, horse racing is now out of the question due to the pandemic, because the agencies are not going to open and because there is no internet platform.

On the front of the pandemic it is valid, today, December 23, that:

a) We have lockdown due to 1000+ daily cases.
b) Even if the health protection measures work and the cases decrease in the coming weeks, a heavy winter comes in January-February and the government will not take the risk of removing the lockdown.
c) Even if the cases decrease in Greece, in the rest of Europe we have a very large increase.
d) The vaccine is not coming. Only 300,000 doses in January out of 1,500,000 we were told due to the EU mistake.

Of course, horse races could be held behind closed doors and bets could be made if there was an online betting platform. Horse racing is held in all countries of Europe and the world, as are football competitions, contrary to what was the case in the first Lockdown of Sin-June. Football matches are also held in Greece, but not horse racing, since horse racing is done for betting and betting cannot be done.

With all this, we have a horse racing company that ... buys igron.
We are hearing about a conference between OPAP and the OPAP-friendly racers in which the issue of the Tsakalotos law dominated. Nothing else was discussed except that and everyone agreed that the government should bring it back to power.
This law provided for the rent of Markopoulos to be granted to OPAP, but under the government of New Democracy, the Court of Auditors canceled it.
As a result, OPAP is blowing the whistle and has certainly declared an informal lockout (reduce the prizes - it does not build internet).

This rent is indeed very burdensome, 2,500,000 euros per year.
We knew this from the first day that the privatization took place -August 2014- only then OPAP said ... "oh how nice, it does not matter!
It would be a heavy tax even if we are in 2007, when there were three races a week with a turnover of 2-3 million each. Now with 300-400 thousand once a week it is a "crime behind the scenes" - it is not described otherwise.

OPAP in 2018 fought with the Filippo Union and finally with the outrageous sports bill of Syriza managed to make a kind of controlled Filippos Union. However, during the intense counter-appeals during the 4-5 months that this bill was discussed, the opponents of OPAP who united in a group entitled "committee for the salvation of horse racing" also fully agreed that the "rent" should be abolished.

OPAP nevertheless managed to increase the racing turnover to 400,000 euros.
Both were in the time between lockdowns, while before he was shorter.
This is subject to the condition that the statistical data provided by OPAP are accurate (s.s. based on that it is accurate, I publish these turnovers in https://cosmicway.net/greekraces.html).
But that does not mean that the horse racing betting market is in a good position.
We do not know where this money comes from. Probably from a game played by the owners and the coaches themselves, because the situation in the agencies is tragic:

1st) Many people have stopped racing betting, in fact very centrally.
2nd) In the province, if you tell the OPAP agents to bring you a racetrack, they will cut you off in the morning.
3rd) In foreign races there is no living soul in the agencies.
4th) In foreign races, if you ask the agents to turn on the TV, they are very annoyed (it spoils the ... atmosphere of the cinema).

I have pointed out the mistakes of OPAP from the beginning.
From January 2016 that started to be exact.
Of course I wrote to write, because I knew that with the rent tax imposed by the HRDH nothing was done, however I pointed it out.

I will repeat these standard mistakes of OPAP later, but now OPAP has added one more:
He is going to get the rent out of him, but he has managed to fight with anyone who speaks Greek!
Why did he dissolve the legal Filippo Union, which, after all, advocated the demand for the abolition of the rent? What story was that? If Syriza was behind this case of the Filippos Union and not OPAP, at the beginning of 2019 when this happened, did OPAP believe that Syriza had ... a future? Okay, it is true that no one was absolutely sure then about the intentions of the electorate but not to wait ... Syriza.

Why did he frame the horse racing shows with very powerful former executives of the "Golden Dawn" formation? Is this thing so popular? Even Trump had recently expressed his disgust with these phenomena at a Republican convention.

But here are the other destructive policies of OPAP, from 2016 until today:

a) Rags - have gone to the heights including the "bet tax" we have. It may be that the famous "rent" is to blame for this, or rather it is certainly to blame but no racecourse can be played that way. He will lose his money whatever he does, he will be forced willingly and not to limit it or cut it.
Will they tell me -again- "do not say that, since the players do not understand the mathematics of Betting and we have confident customers and you should not say it". Okay, everyone will become burglars.

b) Foreign horse racing betting model. Here the catastrophe came in one day!
OPAP started with the stupid "common piggy bank", abolished the duo and the trio.
Result zero turnovers in foreign races.
Once some people who wanted to sell a sale to ODIE, for days Seftelis, had called me and told me "write on your website a million turnovers French - it became a record!". I told them "I am not writing anything, I will write the night that ODIE will announce". No such record was set, but the French race reached the respectable number of 420,000 euros. The financial crisis had broken out then, but we are still in the first beauforts.
Today, foreign horse races do not catch even a tenth. Although they are quite interesting, despite the fact that in our time there are websites with live correspondents, no one plays - because it has done what OPAP has done. Friends of foreign horse racing betting and major international rallies reminisce about the ODIE era.

c) Online betting platform. We must be the only country in the world without a horse racing betting platform! The reasons are unclear.
Not only would we save the lockdown but OPAP knows very well that the internet can double the turnover of Greek horse racing, even after the appropriate advertising. Without internet it can not aim for great growth from where it is today, even if it improves in all areas. It aims to double with the internet.
But absolutely nothing is done as you can see, not even a schedule is announced!

So why is all this happening?
From a puppy?
We do not believe it, it is difficult to believe it.
Other reasons to be weird to sly?
What to say ;
I am neither Nikolouli nor Hardavelas.

But to see what is happening on the opposite bank.
The opposite bank is the state.
When was the state friendly to the hippodrome?
He was taking the money but when was he friendly?
From 2000 onwards, we only remember hostile comments, starting with Simitis' deputy minister who had said "what are these? Why don't they all play scratch?". Since then we have heard many other similar hostile comments.
Then there was the exile in Markopoulo and in fact all the costs were charged by ODIE and we reached the privatization-orgy of 2014. Now, after the "abortion bill", as New Democracy had christened it as opposition, there is a cemetery silence.
They neither support OPAP nor abolish it in order to build a new racecourse.

So the races are located between Scylla and Charybdis and the final padlock seems closer than ever.

As I told you from the beginning, a lot of things happen behind closed corridors and so my story is not complete. It is complete in terms of what appears on the surface but it is not true that my update is complete.
I made another attempt, because I like to look at every problem from all angles.
What is happening in the rest of Europe?
I took out the three big racing countries, the United Kingdom, France and Ireland because there the racing traffic always remains high.
Four countries responded. Spain-Austria-Czech Republic-Romania.
The Spaniards said "our races are going well", the Austrians and the Czechs said it is not going well while in Romania something strange is happening, as the correspondent told me. There they had a racecourse under Ceausescu but the revolution of 1989 closed it! Now in 2015 a new provincial racecourse has opened and it is going well - said the Romanian friend.
No one from neighboring Serbia wrote to me, but I saw that some horse racing websites and youtube channels that had existed a decade ago were closed. So the problem is not only Greek and definitely everyone understands that it can not be.
Once upon a time, the racetrack was the only popular game in Greece (1926-1959).
Then, in the PROPO era from 1959 to 2000, it was the only popular game with a chance of immediate victory.
From 2000 onwards, however, it is not. It has very strong competitors.
Put Markopoulos in the equation, which we do not get rid of.

But while the situation is sufficiently problematic, horse racing is faced with both the inadequate race company and the state. The padlock is difficult to avoid.

Can the racetrack be closed and the Philippian world turn to foreign horse racing, so that they do not cut our bet completely?
Few can have an opinion.
The foreign races offer a very good spectacle - depending on what TV receiver one has to watch them.
But foreign betting markets are not good and yet the data and data we have to deal with them are inevitably lacking.
The racetrack is never like football. In 2005 the old OPAP put the Scandinavian championships on the coupon for the first time. Immediately, in ten days, the ... Scandinavians appeared in the pre-publications who gave forecasts. Didn't they say it well? If you think you can go to ... Oslo to find someone who says it best.
Non so at the racetrack. Since ODIE started the foreign races in 2010, the magazines have been a complete failure - and it could not be otherwise because each racetrack has its own statistics, times, etc. They are not easily collected by us.
This is a history of ten years now and we know that foreign horse races can not replace the Greek ones (plus what OPAP did with the "common mumbara").
And from this point of view, the news is not at all optimistic.
 

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