Hi! I hope those of you who came along to our Chinese New Year race meeting at Sha Tin on Wednesday got a lot of fun and enjoyment from the exciting races and on-course entertainment programmes. I was delighted with how everything went, as the atmosphere at the racecourse was absolutely terrific and we were even lucky enough to see some sunshine after a week of wintry and cloudy days.
Although both the turnover and attendance slipped slightly from last year, to my mind both results can be seen as very successful given the current circumstances and economic sentiment. It's nice to see that despite the financial turmoil, some of our race meetings are still achieving a total turnover in excess of HK$1 billion. But having said that, we are still remaining cautious about the full-season figures, as we expect the economic downturn to have a delayed effect on turnover as the season goes on.
I should mention here that it can be a bit misleading if we simply refer to turnover while assessing the Club's racing operations, as in fact we return about 83 percent of betting money to our customers in the form of dividends and rebates, and the Government then takes a further 72.5 percent of the remaining 17 percent of betting money as betting duty. In view of this, we've decided that in addition to announcing turnover at the end of each meeting, as we do at present, we will also announce the betting gross margin, our tax contributions and our gross margin after tax. I believe this practice can better represent the whole picture and give the public a clearer picture of the contributions we make to the local community.
Taking the figures at our Chinese New Year meeting as an example, based on the total turnover of HK$1,052 million, we achieved a betting gross margin of HK$182 million, of which HK$132 million is going to the Government treasury as betting duty. The remaining sum of HK$50 million is used to finance the operation of the race meeting and racing operation including our investment in the racecourse, operations of all off-course betting branches and IT services, and generate a surplus for our charitable support.
The staggering amount of betting duty generated from every race meeting illustrates clearly why the Club is the largest single contributor to the public funds - more prominent than even institutions like the Stock Exchange, where the amount of stamp duty it generated through the share trading transactions, taking last December as an example, came to approximately HK$86 million on each trading day. However, the economic contribution of the Club's racing business is not only limited to tax revenue, as it also creates many job opportunities for the local workforce, with some 3,000 full-time and more than 10,000 part-time staff required for each raceday operation. That's why I hope different parties in society can take a more macro perspective in gauging the contributions of every single raceday to the local community.
We always try our best to help everyone coming to the racecourse have fun. Tomorrow is the seventh day of Chinese New Year and I know that in Chinese tradition, this means it's "everybody's birthday", so we will give a free Chinese birthday bun to all racing fans who purchase food above a certain value at the racecourse. I hope you will appreciate this little gesture.
You should also not miss the Centenary Sprint Cup, as champion sprinter Sacred Kingdom will be making his first appearance of the season in this first leg of our Hong Kong Speed Series. The world’s leading Turf Sprinter trialled well in the 1000m turf trial on 20 January. With at least 7lbs advantage on official rating, the five-year-old son of Encosta de Lago should still be the one to beat in this feature race.
Among other races on the card, I will also be watching the performance of Blaze King. The promising three-year-old son of Elusive City won impressively in his first two starts in Hong Kong on the straight course. I think it will not be too suprising if he can win his third race in a row.
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