Yes, it's a new season with some new jockeys and there will be plenty of new horses but what else is new for racing fans and punters in 2015-16 at Sha Tin and Happy Valley?

Well, the Master Plan continues to play out, with five new refurbished raceday areas on offer, two in the Sha Tin Members area and the other three in Public sections at both courses.

There will be new bets, too, although chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges has been coy on what they will be as an announcement is scheduled for Tuesday.

"I can't reveal much but we will announce new developments, using the Longitude technology with event-based composite wagers," he said. "For example, punters could play something like a Hong Kong versus Rest Of the World bet on international day, where the Longitude engine would combine the underlying prices from other existing pools. Change is happening and I think that, this season and even more so into the future, Longitude technology is going to make it easier for our customers to create their own bets in situations where they see value."

Everyone is certainly hoping the changes to the Sha Tin straight races will do the trick after even the Jockey Club had had enough of a shameful outside rail bias.

"I think we have to be open to legitimate criticism and there was a clear message that the straight course had become a problem," said Engelbrecht-Bresges. "And you can talk about bias impacting on the race results, that's one thing, but the bias was also creating a safety issue with riders and horses becoming too concentrated towards that outside rail section. Safety is even more important and we felt we had to make some change and see if we can help the situation."

Straight races will now be run with a false rail erected four metres inside the outside running rail for the full length of the course, but only when the inside rail is in the A, A+3, B or B+2 position. The sting in the tail here lies in programming, however - in the past two seasons, 61 of the 92 straight events were run on the narrower C and C+3 courses and the false rail will not be used in conjunction with them.

The English language commentary team is going to have a very new look to it, but the final "look" still isn't known.

With Clint Hutchison leaving by the start of October to join a new racing channel in Australia, the crew from September 2014 will be in tatters, with only caller Brett Davis and "Jenny From The Paddock" Chapman remaining. Englishman John Blance joins the roll call and is expected to be joined by Edward Sadler, an Australian via Dubai, but the rest of the cast remains a work in progress.

Yet Engelbrecht-Bresges said the personnel changes won't be all that's different with the telecasts.

"The facilities in the new Sha Tin Technology Centre, which opened in July, will upgrade our capabilities and allow a more modern telecast presentation, with more innovation in our content, especially as we export our live pictures to an international commingling audience," Engelbrecht-Bresges said.

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