On the previously mentioned
visit to Hong Kong I also checked out the
Shatin Racecourse. More than anything else, I remember how my late father would always say that on race day, Hong Kong people turned absolutely "crazy", so I thought I'd see for myself. I had wanted to do so in the past but never really found the opportunity as on short trips it seemed like such a waste of an afternoon. Even though I suspected that the fervor my dad witnessed was borne out of an era where Hong Kong had precious few alternative sources of entertainment, and that this fervor had most likely waned; one look at the MTR system map still provided ample proof that horse racing in Hong Kong is still huge:
On race days, every third train on the light blue East Rail Line veers around the Fo Tan Station and instead stops at a non-regular station called "Racecourse". This tells me that on race days, the traffic on the East Rail line increases by around 50% with people headed to the horse races.
The East Rail line, I believe, was an outdoor train line that was eventually integrated into the Hong Kong MTR system. It was previously called the KCR I think, as I vaguely remember taking it decades ago to Shatin to eat squabs/pigeons. So once you're on the East Rail line, there's a decidedly different vibe - whether it's the red doors or the presence of sunlight I'm not sure -
Inside the train on race day, it feels almost exactly like your run-of-the-mill MTR train, except that at first glance it feels like an inordinate amount of its riders like to keep well-informed of current events -
Of course, a closer look reveals that those aren't regular newspapers, but racing forms.. 😁
The
Shatin Racecourse is one of two tracks in Hong Kong, the other one being at Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island. Night racing is held mostly at the Happy Valley Track. The
Shatin Course, located as it is in the New Territories on the Kowloon Peninsula, where land is more abundant, is supposedly more scenic, better provisioned, and just more modern all-in-all. I found a
reasonable package on viator.com that included access to a slightly more exclusive viewing deck (away from the cigarette smoke I assumed would envelope the grandstand), a guide to answer any questions you might have, a bottled juice drink, and most importantly, a hotdog.
It was my first time to be at a racetrack anywhere in the world. And I was immediately struck by the fact that unlike other sporting events I've been to, you actually see
less in person than you do on television. On TV the cameras follow the race around the track, from the starting gates to the finish line. At the track you more or less have to pick which part of the race you want to see, the beginning, the middle, or the end. In fact, I suspect racing aficionados go to the track more for the social experience than anything else. To be one with the crowd, to hear the roars, and of course, to discuss bets and exchange betting information:
Horse-racing is such an integral part of Hong Kong society because it is driven not only by the commercial aspects of it. There is tremendous prestige attached to owning a horse because not anyone with money can do so. The Hong Kong Jockey Club gives out a limited number of permits to own horses (numbering only in the low hundreds) and so having one says a lot about a horse owner's place in Hong Kong Society. This explains the desire to own horses and race them. But what drives the demand to witness the races? Well, that is probably driven by the gambling side of it. From a purely academic point of view, the barriers to success are prohibitive. Betting is done on a
pari-mutuel system, which basically means that every dollar bet goes into a prize pool, the Hong Kong Jockey Club then takes it's share, a fixed percentage of around 15%, right off the top, and what remains is then shared by the winners. This necessarily means that only 85% of the total money bet can be won, so a bettor has to be incredibly good to make money in the long run. i.e. imagine that you and I each put up an amount of money and bet on the results of a coin toss. As the chances of correctly predicting the results of a coin toss are 50/50, in the long run, the two of us would encounter the same level of success and we would be passing the pot of money back and forth and we would both break even. The situation in Hong Kong racing is such that for every round the coin is tossed, the pot of money we are passing back and forth is being depleted by 15%. So just imagine how much better one of us has to be compared to the other to make money off of this exercise.
Furthermore, the way the HKJC runs its
pari-mutuel betting pool also means that one has to wait until all bets are in before knowing how much his bet will pay out. (Remember that the winners divvy up 85% of the total money bet, so one has to wait until all betting has been completed to even know what the total pool is). I remember the guide calling out to me, "Hey, Philippines, no interest in trying a bet or two?" I shook my head and told him that it takes a lot of faith to make a bet where you don't even know how much you will win until the race is over. He smiled knowingly but sagely pointed towards a whole room of punters seriously at work: "Well, it's the only game in town..."
Race Number 4 of the "only game in town"
