Racing Salvation

[HP]

With all due respect...there are plenty of ways to market racing...but the primary difference between horse racing and all other sports...is that horse racing does not forge a connection with an audience early in life...unless your dad takes you to the track.  

What baseball, football, basketball and all the rest have in common is...you are able to initiate a relationship with KIDS...and once you establish that connection...it continues through life.  Simple but true.  

Horse racing has no present means of doing this.  Here\'s an idea...have a day where you open the backstretch to families.  Let them see the nuts and bolts of taking care of horses.  One part of my connection to horse racing was riding horses and taking care of a few of them.  Kids need contact.  \"Tour days\" at tracks would be a really good idea.  Others can figure out how to structure this kind of thing more specifically...but it is a glaring omission from the menu...  I am not suggesting that we turn the track into Disney World...but this needs to get done...and it\'s not as capital-intensive as a lot of other things I\'ve heard and it makes sense.  

You can pitch quads all you want...you are preaching to the converted.  You need novel new connections to young people.  YOUNG.  Otherwise your base audience will continue to age and dwindle.  

HP

[TGJB]

HP-- in general I think the idea of creating fans, as opposed to bettors (who can get involved at any age, as day traders do), is misguided. But as these ideas go, yours is a good one, and cheap, too.

[HP]

Thank you.  I\'m just thinking of it as a \"sport\" in relation to other sports.  

Don\'t forget...kids don\'t show up by themselves...they come with...PARENTS.  Parents bet.  

It\'s an efficient marketing idea, really a no brainer...  They have Family Fairs at Belmont, which are good, but they don\'t really connect with the track...  I think they need to get people \"backstage\" so to speak.  

HP

[TGJB]

As I said, I\'m fine with the idea.

But let\'s do some math. The parent might bet what, 100 bucks once a week? There a lot-- A LOT-- of guys betting over 20k a week, and several betting at least a million bucks a week. You need to create 200 \"fans\" to equal just one guy betting just 20k, let alone the bigger bettors.

The trick is to create more serious bettors. To do that you have to give them a better chance to win-- that\'s what big bettors are trying to do. And the way to do that is for the tracks to give rebates themselves, rather than letting an entire industry grow up that takes money out that could be going to tracks and horsemen.

[HP]

Your math points are obviously right, but they are doing NOTHING to compete for new fans.  Where are the NEW big players coming from?  Once this old crowd dies off?  There\'s just no VISION in the business at all!  

Given your example...If you create 200 new fans, there\'s a solid chance a few of them will turn into Whales.  Courting today\'s Whale is one thing...but racing is doing such a horrible job of creating new fans that Racing Whales may become extinct.    

Every successful business model/industry takes this into account.  Especially sports and gambling.  Look at Vegas.  What do you think is really behind all that \"family\" marketing crap?  They can say whatever they want, on some level it\'s about getting to the parents through the kids...but it doesn\'t hurt to have the kids wandering around and asking dad what beats a full house...  We all have to start somewhere...  Ugly and sad...but true.  

If only they put a track in at Disney World.  Now THERE\'s a cross-marketing idea I could buy...  

HP

[Josephus]

I agree with Jerry.

 Here is my own experience: I\'m 67. When I was a kid my family would spend 2 weeks in the summer down at the Jersey shore.  I had 2 uncles who were horse players who took me and my cousins to Mth. I HATED it. The interminable wait between races (remember, kids aren\'t reading the DRF or going over \"sheets\").

 30 years later, I went to the Med. one night on a lark.  I spent the night on the rail at the finish line and got caught up in the excitement and color of the evening.  Taught myself to read the form...made fake dime bets for a couple of weeks and finally went back to the track to bet real money ($2 a race).  My first 7 bets were winners, HOOKED.  as I became a regular I would notice there were a lot of \"old\" guys at the track...Ha,Ha look who\'s talking now....not wanting to make the same mistake my uncles made... I took my own kids to Breakfast at Belmont etc.  Now that they\'re grown, if they go to the track once a year that\'s alot. Kids look to heroes...who are the heroes at the track...most of the big 3yo\'s are retired early ...Jockeys and trainers are not written about...or appear on TV or radio...so what is there to sustain a kid\'s interest?  They can\'t play the sport like they do with baseball, football ,basketball etc.

As much as I like live QUALITY racing, I\'m basically a simulcast player now.  Why should I go to NYRA tracks( Saratoga meet excluded) and pay tolls, traffic etc. and bet on a card filled with statebred rats...or go to Mth or the Med and bet on the same 6 horses fields?  The great thing about simulcasting is: you can pick the track and races you want to play and in a place like Raceworld at the Med, walk 10 ft. one way to make a bet and 10 ft. another way to watch a pp replay.  What a country.

[Boscar Obarra]

I\'d say out of 50,000 new fans you might get one new whale worth talking about.

 Out of 200 new ones you might sell a few extra overpriced hot dogs.

 The games been ripping off its fans for decades.  Plain and simple. Have a few supertracks with a 10% or less takeout and the big bettors and small alike will come.

 Money talks, the rest is nonsense.

[HP]

Sounds great.  I can\'t wait until it\'s down to just the big players going heads up against each other.