Very few people in Czech horseracing would deny that the betting at our racecourses is very unsatisfactory – and many would say that “very unsatisfactory” is an understatement. Betino, the only company that offers off-line odds at our racecourses, offers poor odds, has low turnover and high overheads, is heavily taxed, and has managed to contribute only a small amount to Czech racing. There has been talk of collaborating with PMU (pari-mutuel) for at least twenty years, and in 2017 it finally came about. This is a translation of the official report, written by Martina Krejčí, general secretary of the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic, on the collaboration between PMU, the Jockey Club, and Prague Velká Chuchle and Most racecourses, which held PMU race days on Friday June 9^th and on Friday, July 21st, respectively, with the first race at 11.10 a.m. on each day.  

Last year, as everyone [in the Czech horseracing community] knows, we managed to reach an agreement on the first-ever collaboration (which we can now with certainty describe as very successful) with French betting association PMU, a leader on the horseracing betting market in Europe. On the days when last year’s prestigious meeting at Chantilly, featuring the Prix de lArc de Triomphe, was taking place, two racing days and the Velka Pardubicka were accorded to the Czech Republic. The first race day, with five races on which PMU bets were accepted, was held on Friday, June 9^th, at Prague Velká Chuchle racecourse, and the second race day, also with five PMU races, was held on Friday, July 21^st, at Most Racecourse. The third date for direct transmission in France, on which the French association will be accepting bets, will be the 127^th running of the Velka Pardubicka with Česká pojišťovna, on Sunday, October 8th.

We would like to inform you how the collaboration with the French side went, and to present some numbers illustrating the betting turnover. Decisions and negotiations on technical and administrative matters, including writing the contract, were prepared with France Galop, the French horseracing authority. One of the most demanding items was to prepare an IT programme for this collaboration. A brand new program was created by Mr Hora [Tomáš Hora has been in charge of IT and the well-equipped video studio at Velká Chuchle for several years, and the excellent Jockey Club of the Czech Republic website is just one example of his very high-quality work]. It converts our lists of runners and riders into the French system. Active preparations, running into several dozen of e-mails a week, ran from last December right up until June 9^th. In the winter months, there were mainly training sessions, in which the representative of the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic learned how to work with the new system at PMU race meetings in Germany.

PMU races in any foreign country are required to meet the following criteria:

Guarantee to the French racing authority, France Galop, the organization and the integrity of the races: keeping to the rules of racing, the race track, members of the stewards commission, supervisors, and doping control.

Send the race conditions in English language 60 days or 45 days before the race.

Send the official list of runners and riders in the newly-created IT format, which also uses a code to generate the colours of the silks and caps. The final form can be seen on the pmu.fr web pages.

On the day of the races:

Provide an official contact person duly empowered by the racing authority, who is present in the same location as the stewards and who has access to all information.

This person ensures that all the racing information/data/changes are confirmed into the system by telephone in the course of a conference call.

On the day of the races, France Galop must be informed about the following:

The state of the going, non-runners/scratched horses, weight changes, changes of jockey, starts delayed by 3 minutes, instructions to start the race, the start of the race, nullification of a race.

Results: certified unofficial results (first five horses), official results (first five horses)

The Jockey Club of the Czech Republic must provide an uninterrupted video transmission of the races at its own expense, via a satellite link. France Galop has the right to use data and the video transmission supplied by the foreign authority to enable online betting for offices authorized by the French government, in order to mediate betting in France, by PMU and in countries that have a betting agreement with PMU. The television transmissions to France on both of the race days were provided by Galopp TV.

On the race day on June 9^th, 2017, Mme Ariane Jaulin from France Galop and a colleague from the French Trotting Association Le Trot came to make checks and to provide help. After the end of the racing day, there was a debriefing session, in which we were officially thanked for our very good collaboration, and also some small administrative matters to improve on for the next race day were pointed out to us. On the second race day, on Friday, July 21^st, at Most racecourse, we worked autonomously, with just some supervision from France by telephone.

A special feature of the French betting market is that it is divided into off-line betting (bricks-and-mortar branches, bars, etc.) and online betting. For this reason, two figures are given to indicate the betting turnover on each race day.

On Friday, June 9th, EUR 786 676 was staked in off-line betting, and EUR 123 241 was staked on-line. From the betting turnover, three percent goes to the Czech Republic, i.e.EUR 23 600 from the off-line turnover and EUR 3 697 from on-line. After deducting expenses from the profit from the French betting, the surplus is to be shared on a 1:1 basis between the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic and the racecourse.

On Friday, July 21st, theoff-line turnover was EUR 671 245, and the on-line turnover was EUR 91 475. For this race day, the Czech side receives EUR 20 137 from the off-line turnover, and  EUR 2 744 from the on-line betting.

Negotiations are currently under way with the French side about including the Czech Republic in the offer of French betting opportunities for 2018. The negotiations are not straightforward, as pressure is being exerted in France by the trotting authority, Le Trot, for the offer to include more trotting races, at the expense of gallop racing. The first priority is to put domestic races into the offer. Then come the countries in which PMU daughter companies operate, for example Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. In third place, there are countries where betting on French racing is regularly available, such as the Netherlands and Austria. These are followed by a number of countries such as the Czech Republic. For these reasons, our situation is not exactly straightforward, and in addition we do not offer an opportunity for winter racing, as other countries do. Nevertheless, we believe that there will be races in the Czech Republic in 2018 on which it will be possible to bet in France.

Finally, I would like above all to thank the racecourses for being willing to organise race days on dates that are non-traditional in the Czech Republic, and also everyone else who participated in the faultless race days that were transmitted to France. Thanks are also due to the owners and trainers for the large fields of runners in the races, which were appreciated by our partners.

Martina Krejčí 
General Secretary, Jockey Club of the Czech Republic

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Translation, introductory comments and comments in square brackets by Robin Healey. The original Czech language version can be found on http://www.dostihy.cz/zpravy/domaci/pmu-dostihy-v-ceske-republice-v-roce-2017/