Recently Mr Du Plessis had a sudden light bulb moment and declared that he wanted racing to be treated and regarded as a 'sport'. Whilst maintaining a monopoly over it. All very fuzzy.
His endless wailing about costs conveniently overlooks, amongst other things, that it is the general public and NOT Phumelela which provides the horses. He only provides the environment. And fewer of them with each passing year.
Like a bookmaker he is very happy to piggy back on sports betting at comparatively low cost. He better pray that those ruling bodies don't wise up or those juicy grapes will very soon turn into raisins.
His real problem is this : People have migrated to alternative activities. For which racing only has itself to blame. Further - the naive belief that a sports activity can be almost fully funded by selling tickets to watch it or, in the case of racing, tickets to bet on it - is flawed. International sport flourishes because of SPONSORSHIP. Massive sponsorship. And here's the rub : As long as racing has an odour surrounding it the type of sponsorship needed to make it flourish will never be forthcoming. Whether the odour is real or not is immaterial. It's a perception and it sticks because it took centuries to create.
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