GRV CEO confirms 25 positions culled during restructure
Greyhound Racing Victoria (GRV) have made plenty of noise about the necessary steps required to reduce overheads due to decreasing revenue from wagering turnover.
Most recently GRV announced the dramatic devaluing of the Victorian Greyhound Of The Year awards night, and also announced a raft of cuts to feature race prizemoney in the state including major races like the Group 1 Melbourne Cup and Group 1 Sandown Cup.
In December 2023, GRV signalled to the Victorian greyhound industry that significant changes would be necessary to ensure the sustainability of greyhound racing in the state.
While prizemoney cuts and other measures were quickly adopted and tabled, GRV were slow to make the necessary cuts to ensure that administration and marketing overheads under their direct control were addressed at a commensurate level to cuts participants were expected to withstand.
As of April 2024, GRV had yet to confirm any cuts had been made to the organisation or its staffing levels.
Only in April 2024 did GRV present to its employees as proposal to restructure staffing levels and departments, and confirmed they were awaiting feedback from employees.
Fast forward two months to where we are now, and GRV CEO Stuart Laing has confirmed that the organisation has chopped 25 staff positions and restructured seven departments down to three.
Additionally the leadership team has been slashed to just three direct executives.
The 2023 GRV Annual Report listed 161 employees, so a reduction of 25 staff would suggest a decrease of 16% assuming no additional staff were added.
It should be noted that between the 2022 Annual Report, and the ’23 version, GRV added to their employee headcount by a total of 14 staff.
The ’23 Annual Report confirms that there were seven GRV executive level positions plus Laing himself.
Laing did not say which of the seven executives had been let go, nor how the seven departments were “munged” in to just three.
Laing did not say how much money the staff cuts and restructuring had cost, nor how much it was projected to save going forward.
In announcing the cuts, Laing said that “the primary goal is (was) to reduce costs and set GRV up for a more sustainable and efficient future, addressing the revenue downturn we’ve experienced over the last eight months.”
Laing implored participants to be kind to GRV staff during the transition period saying “I urge everyone in the industry to respect the impacted people, understanding this has been difficult for all involved.”
Unfortunately Laing offered no such empathy for participant’s suffering under the cost of living crisis and the current wagering downturn.
In an 11-minute interview style Youtube video, Laing never made mention of Victorian greyhound owners or trainers once, other than in general reference to the “stars of the show” with regard to the awards night downgrade.
The GRV CEO also offered little or no reason to expect a turnaround to the wagering downturn in the immediate future.
Laing said that Victorian greyhound racing “turnover has been down about 9% compared to last year, an improvement from the 14-15% declines we saw earlier in the year”.
“However, we’re still looking at an estimated $17 million reduction in wagering revenue year on year, which impacts GRV significantly.
“Economically, household disposable income is still under pressure, so while there are some encouraging signs, we are cautious about expecting sudden improvements,” said Laing.