Phumelela Bans Sporting Post From TABs

ROB Scott, Tellytrack & Media CEO at Phumelela Gaming & Leisure Limited, said on Wednesday evening that the Sporting Post is sensationalising his decision not to sell their publication, as well as the Soccer Betting News newspaper and Winning Form in outlets of TAB.

Sporting Post, under the headline “Phumelela bans Sporting Post from TABs”, announced on Tuesday that its distribution company, Racing Distribution, had been advised by Phumelela that its publications will no longer be sold in TAB outlets.

The article pointed out that “the reason given is that it is a conflict of interest for TAB to have publications on site which promote Hollywoodbets”.

Scott told Turf Talk that this was indeed a business decision, but that the Sporting Post had not been banned from TAB premises at all. He explained: “We’ve stocked Sporting Post and other publications like Top Turf for many years in certain TAB outlets, not all of them. But this is like going into a Woolworths store and buying an Edgars voucher. It’s not a question of trying to ‘shut down’ all competition, it’s a business decision anybody in my position would be making as a course of business principle.

“Clients of TAB who use Sporting Post, Winning Form and other racing guides published by Hollywood won’t be prevented from using them in our outlets. They can do as they please, buy them at CNA or other stockists and bring them into TAB’s. We have no objection to that.”

Scott added: “Hollywood Bets are involved in a costly law suit against Phumelela concerning the right to flight live racing. They use pirate feeds in their outlets while the suit is going on. They refuse to pay the required royalties. At the same time they want us to stock their product. In a way then, we’ve been funding their lawsuit against us which makes no sense.”

Scott said that questions had been raised about the independent World Sports Betting’s involvement with Tellytrack and their own rights to promote their business on Phumelela’s advertising vehicles.

“World Sports Betting pay their industry royalties and in addition they pay top advertising rates with us,” he said.

Asked about the future of Computaform, Phumelela’s flagship racing publication, Scott commented: “We will be keeping the print edition of Computaform going as most of our older clients prefer to race the traditional way, but we have our eye on the future. We are developing Computaform as a state-of-the-art digital form guide with a variety of features I haven’t seen anywhere else in the world, like choosing and extracting certain form parameters for personal suitability and ease of use.”

www.turftalk.co.za

Pretty disgusting if you ask me, and now it looks like they own the media( Charl P site)

From Corrie Lensley

Hey Bob i see a big thing bout sporting post i have been buying it for years from the same outlet when suddenly i was told sporting post decided that its not viable for them to sell it so if you stay in glass houses dont throw stones

Imagine going to a Standard Bank ATM and when you put your ABSA card in it refuses to work because you are the competition - Someone else said here the business is selling bets not form guides and the SP gives you many days racing per issue so that can only be good for Racing(and their info on Breeding etc can only encourage new owners - Does the Citizen do a Stallion special before major sales ? Never!!
- How crazy are they worrying about such a small amount of turnover - I would say that if every bookmaker in SA stopped showing Racing there would be no game left - I have for a week not really watched Racing or bet because of an incident outside a Tote - Maybe instead of trying to stop HW with this nonsense the Tote should rather try to copy them and get their poor service and non existent security at outlets on par with bookmakers

Jurgs why not just stay away from making comments about people you don't know that way I will continue to assume your not stupid.

Jurgs wrote: Hollywood and others are involved in a legal battle with Phumelela over contributions for the signal they receive. Why anyone should feel that bookmakers owe you operators a single cent is beyond me. The owners bleat about stakes but yet they do nothing to change the status quo. This new association in KZN looks like its another jabroer set up just like the RA up north. What odds the Buffalo or some swimming tiger on GC board in the very short term?

Boet, now Im bleating, if Hollywood or any other bookmaker makes money out of our horses (owners) and they don't put something back into the 'pool' why should I or anyone involved in our sport support them ? They are using our animals to generate a profit for their business, maybe we should charge them royalties ?! They contribute the bare minimum to horse racing compared to their opposition.

neigh do you know who own 100 percent of bettingworld?

Yes boet, the big difference is I'm a small punter and my priority is being an owner.

your beloved operators have zero racing brains they have zero idea how the punters minds work hence the only opposition they have they cannot handle and tolerate hence the most pathetic decision i have ever seen in all my years of racing ..by forcing the punter to purchase a racing or sporting publication elsewhere that punter will spend his money elsewhere and not with the operator run betting places ..so they telling those who purchase books that they wont carry in essence to fcuk off ..im not shocked as they dont need punters and been chasing them away for years ..the opposition to these operators do nothing out the ordinary just treat customers the way they would like to be treated so its a no brainer ..competiton is healthy in any industry but this lot cant handle it and they are fortunate they dont have it in other areas of the business such as tellytrack etc as they wouldnt last 5 minutes ..

As for the comment by mr scott regarding the computaform before you start this new improvement story of yours get all the current cock ups sorted out which have been shown to your upper management but who either dont understand the cock ups or cannot fix them ...

Tigershark wrote: Jurgs why not just stay away from making comments about people you don't know that way I will continue to assume your not stupid.

Talk is cheap money buys the whisky pal

Fancy walking into your local hollywood outlet and you are a user of a publication that they dont publish and tell you they wont sell them anymore in their outlets because they have bettingworld advertisements all over them ...Said it for years what owen heffer and his hollywood team know about how to run horseracing companies the operators will never learn