Tasmania had a rare Friday meeting at Spreyton last week after officials were advised that there would be no Sky 1 coverage available in the regular Sunday timeslot.

Sky Channel offered three alternatives – stay on Sunday with Sky 2 coverage, moved to Saturday with Sky 2 or go to Friday with Sky 1.

Racing purists would probably have preferred one of the first two options.

But, an industry short of funding can’t afford to be too traditional when it comes to race dates – at every opportunity, it has to put on its product when it can make the most money.

And, like it or not, that means when it can get Sky 1 coverage.

It might come as a surprise to some that betting turnover on Tasmanian thoroughbred racing drops by 40 per cent when a meeting is relegated to Sky 2.

As one Tasracing official observed: Sky 2 just kills us.

So racing on a Friday afternoon, with Sky 1 coverage, albeit inconvenient for some and impossible for others, was financially the only option.

The crowd was small – but it’s not much bigger on most Sundays.

With one interstate meeting washed out, turnover should have been good, although don’t be fooled into thinking you can judge turnover from the pool sizes shown on the Sky Channel monitors.

Here is another statistic that might surprise some – parimutuel betting, those figures you see on the TV, now accounts for only 40 per cent of the turnover on Tasmanian racing.

That’s right. Fixed-odds betting with the TABs and corporates has now reached a staggering 60 per cent of the market.

It’s a rapidly changing world – and Friday racing is just part of it.

HARNESS RACING is also about to break new ground. Or, at least, ground that is rarely trodden on these days.

This Friday’s Devonport meeting will be run in an afternoon timeslot.

So too will the Launceston meeting on Sunday week.

Both will have Sky 1 coverage.

Crowd figures will be interesting.

While Devonport can’t expect too many to turn up on a working day afternoon, the Launceston Pacing Club will be hoping for a good turnout on a Sunday afternoon, given decent weather.

It takes away that real negative of Sunday night racing – people with families getting home too late.

It’s important that harness racing is prepared to experiment as it seeks to increase, or at the very least maintain, its share of the betting market.

But, as is the case with thoroughbreds, Sky 1 coverage overrides all other considerations.

Harness racing turnover also drops by about 40 percent when the races are on Sky 2.