Bold Webster leads the way again for Inglis
In the 17 years Mark Webster has led auction house Inglis, he can’t be accused of not being bold.
Webster, who has resigned more than once only to stay on with the company, first joined Inglis in 2007 and 12 months later he pitched to the board that the future of the business was at Warwick Farm and not at Newmarket.
Riverside Stables, and its associated hotel, have come to fruition as has his prediction that online bidding and the online auctioning of thoroughbreds would become an integral segment of the bloodstock market.
It has – and in a big way. It’s worth $100 million annually in Australia alone and Webster again led the charge with Inglis’ push into the North American market that was five years in the making.
This week, Inglis announced that it had purchased US online thoroughbred auction start-up Wanamakers and rebranded it as Inglis Digital USA.
“It’s just another strategic initiative for the company,” Webster told us this week. “I was keen on it [online auctions] when I first arrived. I remember doing the first interview for the job 17 years ago and I said, ‘Look, we’ll be producing online bidding at our sales in five years’ and I think we did it within one year.
“Then I said there’ll be eBay style auctions in the next five years as well. We’ve obviously been doing that for some time. I never predicted that we’d be relocating [from Newmarket], but at the end of my first year at Inglis I put that to the board and we’ve done that.
“It’s a great team effort, but this is the next thing, international expansion. It’s the next opportunity for the company. We’re doing well in the Australia-New Zealand market, so you’ve got to look for other avenues to grow and that’s what we’re doing.”
The appointment of Sebastian Hutch as Inglis Bloodstock general manager in 2018, and as chief executive in 2021, seemingly has allowed Webster the freedom to explore the bigger picture without the burden of the day-to-day running of the bloodstock side of the business.
How much market share Inglis Digital USA can obtain in the short and long-term will be fascinating to watch being up against the might of American bloodstock powerhouses Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton who are behind the eight ball compared to Inglis’ experience in the online auction field.
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Speaking of catching up, with Inglis’ entry into the American online marketplace, spark Australian rival Magic Millions to regroup and have a decent crack at the local online market?
Magic Millions has held numerous online sales but was plagued by the costs of running each auction and, at times, platform disruptions.
Last year, in the selling of high-end mares, Magic Millions resorted to live virtual auctions with bids being taken either online or over the phone as it will next week at its physical Gold Coast National Weanling and Broodmare Sale.
Even capturing ten per cent of the Australian market is not insignificant and you’d have to think that more and more mares, in particular, will be sold online rather than being taken to a live auction given the associated costs borne by vendors and owners unless the mares are above a certain price benchmark.
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Some people have a habit of calling at inopportune times.
For owner-breeder Michael Christian, we’re told, experienced one of those calls not once but twice last Saturday – just as he was trying to watch his grand mare Bella Nipotina racing in the $1.5 million Doomben 10,000 (Gr 1, 1200m).
I’m not exactly au fait with Apple products (no, I don’t have an iPhone), but the Longwood Thoroughbred Farm principal, who was not at the track for the 10,000, must have been streaming the race onto his TV when it cut out – because he received a phone call from the said gentleman.
Chrisso rejected the call so he could then watch the replay, still none the wiser about the result, when the man tried his luck again calling Chrisso.
This time a terse, “I’ll call you back” answer was delivered down the line at which time Chrisso began receiving a flurry of congratulatory text messages.
He was then able to watch the race in the knowledge that his remarkable six-year-old Bella Nipotina, who has raced in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane this preparation, had added a second Group 1 to her CV and her prize-money earnings close to $10 million.
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In Tuesday’s edition, we revealed that construction of a new racecourse in the Philippines was close to completion in the Batangas region 90 kilometres south of the capital Manila.
It’s good news for the local industry, but also for international participants whose opportunities to work overseas are more limited with the closure of Macau and the soon-to-be extinction of racing in Singapore.
We are told that Manny Viray, a director of the newly formed Philippine Jockey Club, will be meeting with some prospective employees while he is at next week’s Magic Millions sales on the Gold Coast.
Among those internationals who could make the Philippines home are racecallers, stewards and vets.
Do they need a fly in, fly out journo, by any chance?
One of the Philippines’ biggest owners Sandy Javier, meanwhile, experienced Kranji stakes success last Saturday when his three-year-old Ace Of Diamonds (Swiss Ace) won the Singapore Guineas (Listed, 1600m).
He was bought by Javier for $100,000 out of the 2022 Magic Millions National Yearling Sale out of breeder Gerry Harvey’s Westbury Stud draft.