The attendance at Tuesday's Melbourne Cup was the smallest in 15 years and the fourth year in a row that crowds have dropped.
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There's some indication a similar fading of passion for the Cup is spreading throughout regional NSW. It was certainly the topic of discussion among fellow editors this week.
It's hardly surprising.
The annual "festival" of racing is regularly in the limelight - for all the wrong reasons. Drunken debauchery by punters, copious littering and most significantly, death and mistreatment of horses.
The dark shadow cast over the racing industry by recent investigative journalism won't easily fade. And people's memories are long when it comes to competitors in such a major sporting event dying.
All of which is leading to a growing voice saying "Nup to the Cup".
As for the day's - and the racing industry as a whole's - focus on gambling, there wouldn't be a TV ad break that goes by without a bright and shiny promo for gambling services. We're bombarded with it at every turn - and down the straight.
As we reported last fortnight, South Coast club and pub poker machines raked in $80million in profit over just six months. The Bega Valley laid claim to $12.7m of that, amounting to a $450,000 increase on the previous recorded six month period.
The NSW government just this week released the NSW Gambling Survey 2019 - a major new study into gambling commissioned by the Responsible Gambling Fund.
The survey found the level of gambling has fallen in the past eight years with just over half (53%) of 10,000 people surveyed gambling in the past 12 months compared to 65% in 2011.
Lotteries were the most common form of gambling followed by gaming machines, instant scratchies and race betting.
The rate of problem gambling in the NSW community has remained relatively stable since the last survey in 2011.
However, there are particular risks around online sports betting - the fastest-growing type of gambling. The survey found that just under one in 10 adults (8%) had gambled online in the past year with race betting being the most common form of online gambling.
As a social media meme put it so succinctly this week, why do kids in Victoria get a day off to celebrate gambling, drunkenness and animal cruelty, but get condemned for taking a day off to protest climate inaction?