Arima Race Club signs historic agreement with Caribbean Pool

THE ARIMA Race Club (ARC) signed a historic agreement on Thursday, establishing themselves along with Jamaica’s SVREL/Caymanas Track as the first two Caribbean track and pool operators to participate in the Caribbean Pool.

The Caribbean Pool is a Caribbean inter-island commingling platform that allows for Caribbean tote operators to bet into each other’s pool, thereby creating bigger pools, bigger profits for its member partners and most importantly, bigger payouts to its punters. The Caribbean Pool will also facilitate greater cooperation and participation between the Caribbean Pool operators with the aim of growing local racing both regionally and internationally.

President of ARC, Robert Bernard said, “This is a positive way to end what has been a challenging year for Arima. We have been quietly working on this initiative along with a few others over the past few months. The Caribbean Pool promises to expand our market across the Caribbean significantly increasing our pool size, our payouts and our profits. The Caribbean Pool also gives us exclusive new races which we know will be appreciated by our punters.”

With the two largest regional race tracks on board and an expectation that the Barbados Turf Club will sign on as early as January 2022 and the Royal St Lucia Turf Club joining in as soon as they resume racing, the Caribbean Pool is set to delight Caribbean racing fans.

Founder of the Caribbean Pool, Kimani Robinson of the Kisero Group, said, “Our vision was to create a new and exciting regional simulcast portal that would generate greater returns for the Caribbean track and pool operators as well as their punters.”

Robinson credits ARC’s CEO Ken Ogeer who he said played a significant role in the actualisation of the platform. “Ken knows the inner workings of horse racing as well as anyone I’ve met across the Caribbean. Without Ken’s assistance as well as the chairman of SVL/Caymanas, Gary Peart, the Caribbean Pool would not have been a reality.

Robinson added, “Regional commingling is the future of Caribbean horse racing. A regionally commingled platform will create greater relevance and awareness for the sport which

means greater economic benefits for all. There is no reason the Caribbean Pool shouldn’t replicate for horse racing what West Indies cricket did for regional cricket.”

In terms of awareness, The Caribbean Pool has formed an alliance with the perfect regional media partners, the Caribbean's Home of Champions, SportsMax, who have agreed to become the home of all things Caribbean Pool and Caribbean horse racing.

SportsMax CEO Nicolas Matthews confirmed that “racing fans will be in for a treat as SportsMax beefs up its Caribbean horse racing coverage via the Caribbean Pool. Given our regional strength especially in the participating Caribbean Pool countries being contemplated and our ambition to providing our audiences with more of what they want, the Caribbean Pool is a perfect fit for us.”

Along with coverage on our linear channels SportsMax and SportsMax2, SportsMax will included a dedicated channel within the SportsMax App called "SportsMax Racing", from which most of the Caribbean Pool will reside.

Ogeer stated, “The regional expansion of our races as well as the expansion of our simulcast offering will be critical to the growth of racing at Santa Rosa Park in 2022. There are a number of new initiatives we have for a planned roll out in the first quarter of 2022 that we believe will renaissance the new growth of the local racing industry. The Caribbean Pool is the first of these strategies.”

Ogeer continued, “The Caribbean Pool has been on the drawing board for some time. During the last 18 months during which sports and economies have been seriously impacted by a worldwide pandemic, businesses have been creating and implementing new strategies or sustainability and growth. The racing industry in the Caribbean will welcome this initiative as a catalyst for both integration and growth.”