In early February, the Club began announcing its gross margin figures and the amount of betting duty paid to Government after every race meeting, so as to give the public a clearer picture of the amount of revenue that goes to the Government's treasury.
Since then, nine race meetings have been held and we have already contributed a staggering HK$975 million of revenue to the public coffers. When figures as large as this are at stake, I'm sure you can see that every single one of our races really means a lot to the community.
Tonight we shall be hosting all our races on the all-weather track of Sha Tin Racecourse. Although the turnover at this kind of meeting cannot be comparable to those of our day races on turf at Sha Tin, the figures have shown an increasing trend in recent years as we've been arranging all-dirt meetings twice a season for the past couple of terms.
This practice has helped us establish and accumulate more dirt race data and records for racing fans' reference. This is a big improvement on the situation a few years ago when dirt track performance data was not always adequate. The availability of these additional statistics has brought our turnover at dirt meetings to a very similar level to those of our regular night meetings on turf, so I think this factor will not affect our contributions to the treasury tonight.
I think you would all agree that compared with years gone by, it is far more convenient nowadays to keep up-to-date with the latest news and information. Modern technological advancements have made it easy to access extensive racing information, news and data through the Internet.
Our new web portal myHKJC takes this a stage further by allowing racing fans to personalise the information in their own preferred way. For our races tonight, they can also use our functions like Super Race Card and Smart Chart to obtain comprehensive draw and jockey statistics, and information about the ability of each runner on the dirt track. Users can also make their own notes on different horses and courses for their reference in future.
I'm pleased to learn that the mass launch of myHKJC last month has been well-received by our betting account holders. I've also received a number of positive comments through this blog, all saying that this is a great move and praised its powerful functions and those memorable racing photos available in the gallery. This is a credit to the huge team effort put in by our web team. With so many of our account holders now using our web platform for information searching and wagering, I think it makes good sense to have detailed racing information readily available through the same convenient channel.
Anyway, I hope this service will prove useful when you are studying our dirt races tonight. And personally, I will be keeping an eye on the performances of Great Achievement and Golden Treasure. In his last appearance on the all weather track last month, Great Achievement got his first runner-up finish in his 5th start at the mile distance, just narrowly defeated to Watch What Happens. Tonight he will be partnered by Douglas Whyte to compete in the same distance, let's see if he can maintain his decent performance.
Being a prolific runner on dirt races, Golden Treasure has already notched up two winners and two runner-up finishes at this surface. It's been a month since his previous win on dirt and I hope this short break will provide him with extra freshness for his race tonight.
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