The massive Mark Six jackpot last week attracted huge public interest, and it's been an exceptionally busy past week for a lot of our staff, especially those in the betting team. I made a point of visiting yesterday afternoon at the Stanley Street Branch in Central – one of our busiest Off-Course Betting Branches (OCBBs) in the city. Over the past few years, many of the Mark Six first prize winning tickets were sold there. So you can expect many of our customers would choose to visit this very lucky branch and to purchase a Mark Six ticket to try their luck last Friday.
I’ve chatted with the branch staff and security guards to know more about the condition that day, with a few of them told me it was very crowded. While special patrolling arrangement with the Police was in place to maintain a proper order, some of our staff and security guards at the Stanley Street Branch even went to the streetside to ensure everything went smoothly, and to make sure the safety of our customers in queue along the high traffic area.
In expressing my appreciation, I’ve also brought them a present in thanking for their hard work and diligence last week, and I am glad that they all seemed happy to receive my kind gesture.
I learnt from my betting colleagues that our Off-Course Betting Branches sold more than 8.2 million Mark Six tickets between last Wednesday and Friday, which is nearly three-quarters of the total amount invested in the Super Jackpot Draw. Last Friday alone, we had more than 2,200 staff members on duty in our betting branches, which was 50 per cent higher than normal. There included hundreds of them who had kindly changed their personal plans to report for duty, or been redeployed from their normal racecourse duties to work at OCBBs that day, in order to deliver the best customer service to the general public.
To cope with such massive demand, all our OCBBs opened for service an hour earlier than normal, and we had 250 security guards – 18 per cent higher than usual – stationed on various OCBBs to manage the order of the crowd during Friday. In total, we served about 1.2 million customers at our OCBBs that day. With reference to all these staggering figures and the condition I have just mentioned, you can understand why our staff were busy!
Things were equally hectic for our Telebet team. We had 1,500 Telebet staff on duty in the run-up to the draw and they handled more than 480,000 calls, processing 1.22 million tickets in total, until right up to the draw time on Friday night.
I know that some of you have told us you had to queue up for longer than usual at our OCBBs, or tried several times to call up our betting hotline before getting through, so I hope these figures will help you understand the situation and our effort to deploy additional manpower to manage customer traffic flow and provide them with necessary assistance to meet the demand.
Anyway, I'd like to take this opportunity of complimenting our OCBB and Telebet staff on their hard work and dedication. I’m sure they will continue to provide you with top quality services this weekend - when we not only have a mouth-watering clash between Barcelona and Manchester United to look forward to this evening, in the final of the UEFA Champions League at Wembley, but also the final Group 1 event of our horse racing season at Sha Tin tomorrow, the Standard Chartered Champions & Chater Cup.
I'm sure some of you will remember that last renewal of the Champions & Chater Cup was held in torrential rain. It was a tough battle for all, but fortunately the race should be held in fine weather and under normal track conditions this time.
The race’s top three finishers last year, namely Mr Medici, Super Pistachio and Viva Pataca, are all returning this time for a rematch. Earning his maiden victory in Hong Kong, Super Pistachio won impressively in the HKG3 Queen Mother Memorial Cup over the same course and distance earlier this month. However, over the past decade, no Queen Mother Memorial Cup winner has yet prevailed in the Chater Cup the same year. So let’s see if he can change this unfavourable trend tomorrow.
Veteran Viva Pataca is now at the twilight of his career, but he still ran a creditable fifth when facing a strong field in the Audemars Piguet QEII Cup earlier this month, and you can never write off a horse of this quality. This will probably be the last time he starts in the Champions & Chater Cup – a race he has won three times and been placed in twice more – so it would be wonderful to see our all-time top earner produce another great run.
Although it has only attracted eight horses in the field, but I think it is a very interesting race in the way the younger generation of Let Me Handle It and Jacobee challenging the likes of Viva Pataca, Mr Medici as well as Mighty High.
The expected pace is on the good to slow side which will advantage the horses on the pace, but with the small field size this disadvantage is not impossible to overcome. Super Pistachio will be in the lead and will try to set a very slow tempo like what he did in the Queen Mother Memorial Cup to steal the race, but I expect Mr Bond will put some pressure on the leader if the pace becomes too soft. Mighty High is in an ideal position and with the race be run at set weights, he is for me the horse to beat in this event. He is working very well and with a 20-pound swing of the weights in his favour to Super Pistachio,19 pounds to Jacobee and 16 pounds to Let Me Handle It, I think he has the best chance to prove himself as a top class stayer. Viva Pataca is one of the top horses has ever raced in Hong Kong and it’s fantastic for a nine-year-old to remain so competitive. With no hoof problem troubling him, I would not be surprised if he runs for a place. I still have great fancy in Let Me Handle It who did not run to his best due to the very slow pace in the Queen Mother Memorial Cup and I expect a great run from him and see him as the major challenger. Jacobee ran a fantastic race in the Queen Mother and with a little luck could have been even closer and has a place chance, but I still prefer Let Me Handle It and the race will tell if my preference is correct.
Going back to tonight's Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United, it has the promise of being a fantastic battle, with both clubs bidding for their fourth European champions title, and both having just sealed their domestic league championship. Barca have an unmatched ability to retain possession of the ball, while United have one of the most reliable defences in Europe.
So will Barca again prove too difficult for United to break down, as they did in the 2009 final, or can Sir Alex Ferguson come up an effective plan to counter their dominance this time? Personally, I have to admit that I prefer Manchester United against the odds which are in favour of Barcelona. But with the match being in England, I think United will pressure Barcelona physically more than they like. A draw after normal time would not be a surprise for me. Like millions of other football fans all over the world, I'll be eagerly waiting to find that out tonight.
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