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Wuhan bids to revive betting at the racetrack

By Chen Xiaorong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-27 08:03

It's already the political, economic, financial, cultural, educational and transportation center of Central China, but many people are placing metaphorical bets that Wuhan will become the gambling center of the region.

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Regular horse racing at the Orient Lucky City racecourse has been taking place in the capital of Hubei province since 2003 and many feel gambling on the sport is the next logical step.

The city was a horse racing hub in the early 1900s but racing - as well as any form of gambling - was banned after the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The general public supported the ban by the government as it was considered immoral and a throwback to colonial days.

It reappeared as a race-only spectacle in the early 1990s.

Wuhan's breeding facility rears 2,000 racehorses each year. [Zhou Chao]

An initial capital investment of $200 million was ploughed into the track, which covers more than 1 million sq m. The city is the biggest horse breeding base in the country with 2,000 of the animals reared annually. As many as 30,000 spectators can fill the stadium's seats.

Now Wuhan Service Commercial College is offering a course in horse racing and its management. It is being helped in the enterprise by the racecourse, which is the most comprehensive entertainment and commercial complex with an international standard horseracing track in Central China.

A second phase involving the construction of stables and laboratories has been finished and work is under way building entertainment facilities, hotels, shopping malls and restaurants.

The racecourse is home to more than 400 racehorses. It has held the country's biggest annual equestrian festival since 2003.

On the first floor in the office building of the race track there are rooms for a special team from the local sports administration and the college.

Since the college course opened, nearly 100 racing clubs from countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the United States have been invited.

Students are also being invited to Case The Race, a horse racing club in Kentucky, a state famous for breeding race horses. There they will be taught advanced equestrian skills.

Last year the Wuhan government paid for designers and engineers to visit race tracks in South Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Macao for six months to learn about the business.

Sports and welfare lotteries are currently the only legal form of gambling in China outside the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.

Players must guess the winners of several events to win one big prize.

The use of the word "lottery" combined with the perceived application of intelligence distances the game from gambling.

Probe the possibility of a return to gambling and the responses are mixed.

"Speed horse racing comes first and then the horse lottery," said Xia Yunjian, director of the sports department at Orient Lucky City.

"This is nothing to do with a horse racing lottery," countered Wang Yixiao, a media manager at the same establishment. "We only want to help train professionals who are in high demand by China's speed horse race industry."

One of the 80 students on the new course, Li Jin, a 20-year-old female student with ambitions to be a winning jockey, said: "I hope my relatives and classmates can bet on me and I can fulfill their expectations should the horse lottery business start here."

What cannot be denied is that several local Wuhan government consultants have submitted several reports on the feasibility of re-introducing betting on horse races to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top advisory to the central government. No decisions have apparently been made so far.

A report last year quoted Wang Shenshun, deputy head of the Wuhan sports administration, as saying the Wuhan festival was "China's first experiment with commercial horse racing".

People were allowed to place two bets free of charge on any of the four races. The successful "lottery players" were rewarded with 20 instant scratch card lottery tickets. Local Changjiang Daily reported the total cash prizes from the four races amounted to about $17,500.

And therein lies the rub. Big business is at stake and with that comes employment and profit.

Qin Zunwen, an expert on horse race betting from Hubei Academy of Social Sciences, said a nationwide betting network could sustain 3 million jobs and annual lottery sales could bring in 100 billion yuan, netting 40 billion in tax revenue annually.

Five-star hotels in the vicinity have reacted positively to the expansion of the race track, expecting it to draw in customers for them. Sabrina Ou, public relations manager for the Ramada, said she was invited to sign a contract to provide banquet food for the race track. Tellingly, she commented: "I saw those luxury ballrooms - and windows for selling lottery tickets inside are just the same as those in Hong Kong."

A survey conducted by the Hubei Academy of Social Sciences showed that 83.3 percent of Wuhan residents interviewed believed the introduction of betting would have a positive social impact, reducing black market operations and cutting back on the many numbers of people who traveled abroad to indulge the habit.

A total of 51 percent of respondents said they were "interested" or "very interested" in gambling on the races.

But not everyone is keen. Wuhan worker Huang Yan said the local economy was so dynamic that, as in Guangdong, people might sell or rent their land to enterprises and idle away their hours by gambling.

Then there are the fears of corruption, loan-sharking and money laundering.

However, Liu Shongshan, marketing director of Wuhan Sports Lottery, made the point: "Wuhan has now set up all the necessary equipment and supporting facilities. All we need now is a piece of paper - the official approval."