TAB crash gives punters early scare

A Christmas computer glitch hit New Zealand's betting industry yesterday on one of its most important days of the year.

The TAB's system for taking racing and sports bets was shut down for about three hours in the morning, leaving punters unable to place bets at retail outlets, via the phone or on the internet.

The problem was identified and resolved and the system was back on line shortly after 11am.

One race, at Westport Trotting Club, was delayed until the system was running again, but the rest of the popular Boxing Day race programme went ahead unscathed.

New Zealand Racing Board chief executive and TAB boss Graeme Hansen, speaking to the Herald from Canada, admitted there were some "clammy palms" at the agency.

"There were a few nervous moments to make sure we did get it through in time to have the system live again, especially for the big races at Ellerslie today with the change in dates through to the [Auckland] Cup being run now in March.

"It was always going to be an important day for us because we weren't sure how that would impact on today's betting," he said.

"Now we have got a wrinkle we don't know whether [betting] variances will be due to the change in the race pattern or the change as a result of the glitch we had."

Mr Hansen said the trouble was the result of a public holiday falling on a Sunday.

"For some reason that created a hiccup in the system. We just had to go through the process of fast-forwarding the whole system through into the next day and that's what took the time. The problem was identified quickly by the boys and the team did a good job in doing that."

Mr Hansen said it was impossible to predict the financial impact. "We will look at the turnover and how it fell through the course of the day and the analysts will be able to make some sense out of that."