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Carry on winning from afar
Wilfred Yan: “I started following Hong Kong horse racing some 20 years ago. I am glad I can continue my hobby in Canada.”
“I enjoy the thrill of picking the winner, whether on trackside or from afar,” says Wilfred Yan, a Hong Kong native who moved to Toronto in 2015. “I started following Hong Kong horse racing some 20 years ago. I am glad I can continue my hobby in Canada.”
Wilfred is able to bet on races at Happy Valley and Sha Tin from the other side of the world thanks to a commingling partnership that The Hong Kong Jockey Club formed with the Woodbine Entertainment Group in 2016.
Hong Kong racing was popular for many years in Canada due to obvious cultural ties, and punters placed bets into small, domestically generated pools. Under the commingling model, bets placed in Canada are now funnelled to the Club’s much larger ‘home’ pools.
Wilfred said the commingling innovation meets the demands of overseas racing fans and brings quality Hong Kong horse racing to a much wider audience, including the large Cantonese-speaking population worldwide.
“When I first moved to Canada, there wasn’t really a way to follow Hong Kong racing,” recalls Wilfred. Before there was commingling, punters in Canada would have to go to a betting shop if they wanted to watch Hong Kong racing live and place bets. But the time difference meant only the most avid racing fan would visit an operator in the small hours of the morning to follow an afternoon race card in Sha Tin.