Has Hong Kong gone and scored another own goal?
Royal Ascot recently brought the curtain down on some of the world’s best moments in horse racing, the World Cup matches are keeping many of us up and frazzled whereas in Hong Kong, it’s coming to the end of the season and there are some very tired horses and jockeys and trainers and those who have anything to do with horse racing in the city already singing “Leaving On A Jet Plane” or that old Mungo Jerry classic “In The Summertime”. I have already started listening to “Dreadlock Holiday”.
On a more serious note, I really don’t know what more the Hong Kong Jockey Club and its horse racing can do for Hong Kong without Hong Kong showing what it’s actually doing for itself and building or rebuilding its brand.
Though I have been critical about certain aspects of the horse racing product, especially its kinda tacky looking advertising and goofy promotions, even if these were to be improved, it’s people who make any city and gives it a unique brand personality.
With this in mind, someone in government needs the gonads to admit that Hong Kong is not exactly attracting la crème de la crème. I don’t even know if the once vibrant city is attracting condensed or Carnation milk.
It appears, that Hong Kong has hit a wall of mahjong tiles and with very few having the patience to hang around for another five years to see what MIGHT happen.
Hong Kong has been very good to me, and I have paid it back many times over, and now see far more exciting opportunities for myself elsewhere.
When, for example, I started the Garden of Hope project last year- and on my dime- it would have been nice to have even a carrier pigeon from the tourism sector ask how they might be able to help.
Of course this didn’t happen, because this is the type of apathy and “lack of community spirit” slow dancing through a Hong Kong asleep at the wheel.
As a longtime Hong Kong Belonger who’s been in the advertising, music and entertainment industries, I am seeing a mosh pit of “activities”, and most of these being for that captive and aging Canto Pop market already here.
Are these supposed “mega events” even working? Are the attempts to attract international investors and tourism really working- true international tourism and not tourism almost exclusively from mainland China?
When news of the 2026 World Cup was announced, some of those usual suspects always good for a quote probably inhaled some ganga weed and promised that this event was going to “rock Hong Kong like never before”.
Maybe these people meant very soft rock, because the showing of the World Cup matches in Hong Kong at some godforsaken times are practically invisible and with nothing to make the city look like being exactly a fun party town.
Perhaps a MANAGE EXPECTATIONS strategy was needed as opposed to promising that Hong Kong was gonna party like it was 1999? Hmmmmm?
As for that oddity and clunky sounding “Racing With Football”, and the HKJC positioning itself as “The Home Of Football”, how is this working now that these promises have been launched? Where is it? And more to the point, WHAT is it?
Is Mr CEO of the HKJC going to trot onto the racetrack with his loyal Oompah Loompahs and create a conga line of joy and excitement as it snakes its way through the streets of Hong Kong and ends up at Tai Kwun?
The problem with the government and organisations like the HKJC is that they create the initial bells and whistles hoopla through traditional corporate hype and then go into their shell and leave the heavy lifting of making things happen to those trying to make their small and medium sized businesses work in what is a down economy.
Knowing months in advance that because of the different time zones and starting times for the matches, those days and nights in cosmopolitan Hong Kong of hanging out at places like Feather Boa and then crossing the road at around 2am where a small bar would be packed with others like us watching television and supporting our favourite teams are well and truly over.
What some of us today might be doing is perhaps streaming World Cup matches at home and having the occasional bet at 4am or later.
Though there’ll no doubt be the usual chest pounding about betting turnover via an HKJC app being “the biggest in the history of World Cup betting history in the city”, this is pretty much like Hong Kong asking itself, “What if they held the World Cup and no one invited us to play?”
The beautiful game seems to have bypassed Hong Kong in 2026.
Guess there’s always 2030.
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