This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
TS Eliot
For eons the annual December horse racing symposium at Tucson, Arizona presented by the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program (RTIP) was a snowbird convention holiday. Great for the local tourism industry especially the hookers, cab drivers and bars and a paid winter vacation for the useless bureaucrats, both government and corporate, (the sound of the Undertaker scurrying down the hall to Clark Kent’s office to rat on Phil) that populate far too many paid positions in North American horse racing. And if Tucson / Phoenix didn’t provide sufficient diversions a Ben Franklin would have taken you to Las Vegas and back.
And after filling their guts and satiating their yearnings all the useless toadies like Captain and Tennille, Clark Kent and the Undertaker would merrily trundle back to their own little fiefdoms packed with platitudes but devoid of action plans.
I think talk is cheap – when I hear people say what they’d like to happen, I think it’s empty.
Diego Simeone
For the last few years as the myriad problems facing horse racing in North America reared their daunting heads and the pressure on horse racing’s ability to compete in the current marketplace reached boiling point the participants started to pay more attention to the problems and the symposiums started to become more like a work place than a playpen. However, as Phil alluded to in his Can North American and Alberta Thoroughbred Racing Survive This Prosperity post it’s a cruel mean old world when somebody’s hustling you right off the stage.
Even as HISA takes over regulation of racing in the US horse racing will still be a mish mash of organizations and operators with their own agendas that don’t always coincide with the betterment of the horse racing industry. And far too many of those agendas are created by fucking useless bureaucrats, both government and corporate, (the sound of the Undertaker scurrying down the hall to Clark Kent’s office to rat on Phil), treading water to keep their paycheques coming in.
It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.
Frank Zappa
The 2023 RTIP symposium Agenda covered many of the daunting problems facing the horse racing industry, but what actions will arise from all of the talk.
From their agenda Phil sees these as most pressing.
Land For Sale. How Will Race Track Closures Impact the Industry’s Long-Term Sustainability?
Strengthening Your Simulcast Content – Maximizing Handle in Diverse International Betting Markets
Computer-Assisted Wagering – The Good, The Bad, and The Future
From Data to Dollars – Understanding Horse Racing’s Economic Impact As Racing’s Future is Questioned
Paulick Report – Ray Paulick – Paulick: What I Learned At The Global Symposium On Racing – Day Two
Paulick Report – Ray Paulick – What I Learned At The Global Symposium On Racing
Bloodhorse – Byron King – Symposium: Track Closures Expected to Continue
TDN – TD Thornton – U of A Symposium: Trying to Find a Way Forward Amid Track Closures
One of the more recent hoof nails in horse racing’s coffin was the November 12th 60 Minutes expose.
“Horse racing has reached its moment of reckoning and we wanted to know, can the sport really be reformed or is it too late?” Vega said as she opened the story. There was nothing hyperbolic about this statement. It is the question that hovers ominously over our sport and should have everyone worried about its future.
…
These things happened and by exposing them to the some 9 million people that watch 60 Minutes each week the sport looked terrible and likely inched closer to losing its social license to operate.…
The problems are real. Though fewer horses are breaking down, the numbers remain unacceptably high. And every time a trainer winning at 30% moves up a horse by four or five lengths in the first race after a claim, you’d have to have your head buried in the sand to think there isn’t something nefarious going on here and that it involves performance-enhancing drugs.Yes, 60 Minutes could have tried harder to have a more balanced report, and maybe that just didn’t fit its agenda. Yes, we are doing better. But let’s not pretend that our problems aren’t serious one that desperately need to be addressed. That was the gist of the 60 Minutes piece, and they didn’t get that part wrong.
TDN – Bill Finley – What 60 Minutes Got Wrong, and What It Got Right
Jay Hovdey in his piece on the 2022 Superbowl at SoFi Stadium aptly described the problem thoroughbred racing faces.
However, to behold the scope of the new Hollywood Park development is to understand why Thoroughbred racing is armed only with a dull knife in a high calibre gunfight for even a small share of the sports economy. SoFi Stadium, ugly as it is, will be crammed to the gills on Feb. 13 for the Super Bowl, monopolizing both social and traditional media, while the name of Hollywood Park, when summoned, will mean something altogether different from its origin story.
Bloodhorse – Jay Hovdey – Hollywood Park History Buried Under Super Site
We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers.
Andy Rooney
Crows have been flocking to the roof of the local parish every day for two weeks now. The congregation has been told not to worry about it, there’s apparently no caws for concern.
Did you know that crows get hit by trucks a lot more often than they get hit by cars? Scientists have found that it’s because crows can yell “CAW! CAW!”, but not “TRUCK! TRUCK!” to warn their friends of incoming traffic.
What troubles Phil most about all the talk and little action is that notwithstanding the symposiums and numerous efforts at improving the thoroughbred industry and its prospects far too much is being said and little is being done about tackling the biggest problem facing the industry – money.
People call me a raider, preying on a vulnerable company. But why is it vulnerable? Because of weak management.
INC – T. Boone Pickens: Corporate Raider or Management Gadfly?
Horse Racing in North America isn’t going to implode or explode, it’s suffering a much crueler fate – death by a thousand cuts.
Over the past few months if you’ve paid attention to HolyBull.ca you could have read:
World Soccer Talk – Kyle Fansler – Soccer surpasses NHL as 4th most popular sport in United States
Sports Business Journal – Winning the Next Wave of Sport Fans
TDN – TD THornton – AZHBPA: ‘No Earthly Idea When And If A Meet Will Be Performed At Turf Paradise’
CHRB Sets ’24 NorCal Schedule, but GGF’s Closure Remains ‘Elephant in the Room’
Bloodhorse – Byron King – HISA Assessments for 2024 Total $77.5 Million
Bloodhorse – Frank Angst – Flutter Report Notes Decline in Pari-Mutuel Wagering
Bloodhorse – Frank Angst – Getting a Handle on 2023 Breeders’ Cup Wagering Decline
Most telling about horse racing’s uncertain future is that there is no menu button for horse racing on Covers.
Phil has a question:
Would any of the minions at Horse Racing Alberta have the slightest clue about Zochodne is saying.
Do the minions at Horse Racing Alberta think that gazing out a window and cashing their paycheques is a solution to the problems that Zochodne is outlining.
Can you hear the scurrying.
There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother’s milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won’t be any winners.
Hunter S. Thompson
Officials believe they must cater to whales to protect betting handle that’s been virtually flat for decades, never mind keeping pace with inflation. What they fail to grasp is that if rank and file players continue walking away, today’s precious purses will be unsustainable.
The following Letter to the Editor dated NOV 7 was published in the most recent edition of Paulick Report and is reprinted verbatim in its entirety. The conclusion of its author is obvious: The racing deck is stacked against the rank and file horseplayer. As much sense as it makes to eliminate CAW wagering, it won’t happen as long as racing organizations own, in part, anyway, the companies that make this process possible. But as bad as CAW is, the real enemy of the loyal horseplayer are rebates made possible by existing high takeout rates. In the end, rebates will put an end to horse racing as we know it. The only fix is to lower takeout significantly which would result in a universal rebate for all horseplayers.
The Ringer – Matthew Belloni – The End of the Actors Strike With Duncan Crabtree-Ireland
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
What Needs To Be Done if Thoroughbred Racing wants to remain a relevant
Phil’s adding the new and reprising the old articles:
Bloodhorse – Byron King – Gonzales Voices Concerns Over Golden Gate Purse Cut
Michele Fischer, vice president of the United States division of SIS Content Services, which is the largest distributor of horse racing content to global wagering operators, said fixed-odds wagering on U.S. horse racing would be an attractive addition to sports betting platforms. She said there’s still time for the industry to make the move but the clock is ticking.
“We have to look at the industry five years from now, 10 years from now,” Fischer said. “We are getting left behind—and I’d say this for other equestrian sports—we’re becoming niche—very niche—very quickly,” Fischer said. She predicted that the day is soon coming when sports without a direct presence on sports betting sites will lose traction with the mainstream audience.
“There’s always going to be people that want to come to the racetrack and they’re going to want to bet on horse racing. That’s a small group,” Fischer said. “But (fixed-odds sports betting) is a huge opportunity for this entire industry to get out with all these other sports.”
Bloodhorse – Angst – Opportunity for Racing as Sports Betting Eyes Content
Phil has a question:
How can anyone in Alberta expect the fucking jokers over at Horse Racing Alberta to be able to meet the challenges alluded to by Fischer and Pricci when all they can do is cash their paycheques and gaze out the windows while the one real performance metric they publish – handle declines year after year.
TDN – Ross – When Do CAWs Help And Hurt California Racing?
Phil has a question:
If you asked any of the minions at Horse Racing Alberta what they understand about CAWs would their response involve crows.
In all of the articles about CAWS why is there no mention of the actual dollar amounts of the rebates and how those amounts impact what the tracks receive and what ends up dwindling down to the horsemen.
… the number of people betting on sports and the volume of wagering across the United States quickly surpassed horse racing’s totals and continues to grow.
Paulick Report – The Friday Show Presented By Icon Global: Merging Sports Betting With Horse Racing
How will horse racing attract new customers when a new customer looks at sports betting and sees a fairly level wagering field with fixed odds with a small vig (takeout) and then looks at horse racing where the tracks themselves provide better information and easier ways to bet for a preferred class of customers, the CAWs, the takeout is usurious and the CAWS get a rebate that’s pretty close to the vig in sports betting.
To quote Craig Bernick – Good luck.
Phil has a question:
When will Alberta have sports betting terminals in every lounge that has VLTs.
When will the sports betting terminals in every lounge that has VLTs have horse racing available.
What does the Undertaker do besides gaze out his window.
Phil’s not archaic. Phil understands that most people in Alberta sports bars bet on their phone, tablet or laptop on a grey area site that pays nary a nickel of taxes to the province of Alberta.
According to Cummings’s research, in the past two decades, adjusting for inflation, total betting on US horseracing from the general public decreased 63 per cent. Betting from CAWs, meanwhile, increased 150 per cent. Cummings called Gulfstream Park, the track I went to with McKeever, “ground zero” for the computer groups. “Horseracing is not in a position to reject customers. Yet we have accepted and embraced these whales, with little to no consideration of the damage that they do if left unchecked,” Cummings told me. “It’s not a good thing to be losing Joe Q Horseplayer, and we’ve lost a lot of them.”
McKeever, for his part, sees himself on Joe Q Horseplayer’s side. His team of 13 full-time employees and contractors at EquinEdge wanted to do its own CAW wagering. But McKeever refused. “I am for the small guy, that’s what I’m pushing for,” he told me. “I give them every bit of information that I have, everything we develop, all of our technology. Everything I do is for the little guy. The big guy thinks he knows it already. It’s the little guy I want to take care of.”
Financial Times – Roeder – I used AI to bet on horse-racing. Here’s what happened
Phil has a question:
Are McKeever and the rest of the CAWs willing to give their rebates to the little guys.
How will horse racing attract new customers when a new customer looks at sports betting and sees a fairly level wagering field with fixed odds with a small vig (takeout) and then looks at horse racing where the tracks themselves provide better information and easier ways to bet for a preferred class of customers, the CAWs, the takeout is usurious and the CAWS get a rebate that’s pretty close to the vig in sports betting.
Paulick Report – The Friday Show Presented By Icon Global: Merging Sports Betting With Horse Racing
To quote Craig Bernick – Good luck.
There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother’s milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won’t be any winners.
Hunter S. Thompson
If the rise of Fox Sports was just about money, or if the product had turned into a haunted mansion like Fox News, we could leave it at that. But Murdoch’s lieutenants at Fox Sports had a creative side. They thought TV football had gotten stale — “boring as shit,” one of them said in an Aussie accent.
The Ringer – Curtis – The Great NFL Heist: How Fox Paid for and Changed Football Forever
The Sports Journal – Madden revolutionized sports broadcasting, bringing enthusiasm to booth
It’s all about the money.
Joe Jackson
Paulick Report – Paulick – Takeaways From Tucson: HISA Talk Dominates Global Symposium On Racing
Regarding how fixed odds would generate income for the racing industry, Baker said the winning cut for bookmakers is approximately 12%. Of this, he noted that in New Jersey the takeout on fixed odds is to be about 4%, with 1% going back toward purses and the remaining 3% to the track and other entities.
Bloodhorse – King – Fixed Odds, Sports Wagering Embraced at Symposium
Before jumping from the pari-mutuel frying pan into the fixed odds fire thoroughbred racing must identify what problem or problems it is trying to solve and must identify if the solution fixes or exacerbates the problem or problems and from the debate between Fraser and Baker it does not sound like the necessary groundwork has been performed.
From its adoption in the US as a fiction to circumvent the religious right’s anti-gambling sentiment the pari-mutuel system worked quite well for a number of decades. For many years the takeout ranged slightly higher than 10% with the tracks receiving 4 – 5% for operating, 4 – 5% going towards purses and the balance going towards government taxes and regulators.
As long as horse racing was the No. 1 gambling game in town with the only real competition being Las Vegas and the numbers runners the original model performed admirably. However time does not stand still and as the world becomes more secular other forms of gambling became accepted and more readily available and the computer age changed and is still changing the manner of gambling and the opportunities for gambling. Like waves pounding the sands on a beach horse racing has seen the influx of other forms of gambling erode horse racing’s revenues.
Most unfortunate for horse racing was that the initial knee jerk reaction of the tracks and horsemen to protect their share of the revenues was to increase the takeout. That bandaid solution to protect revenues worked for a very short term, but ultimately proved counterproductive as it reduced the churn resulting in lower handle and made the betting product less attractive to the betting public.
And it’s just one of the many mistakes that the horse racing industry made that have not been corrected.
I’m glad I don’t have to explain to a man from Mars why each day I set fire to dozens of little pieces of paper, and then put them in my mouth.
Mignon McLaughlin
Sports Business Journal – Pappas – Three states show how sports betting is just one piece of the pie
Moderator Doug Reed, the racetrack business consultant and former director of the RTIP, stressed the need to understand racing’s opponents, who will typically argue that so-called subsidies to racing have not realized the intended impact.
“The audience for these arguments isn’t the industry; it’s the politicians and the people,” Reed said.
Bloodhorse – Mulvihill – Symposium Speakers Discuss Combating Decoupling
Bloodhorse – Precious – Racing Industry’s Importance Emphasized in NY Hearing
Bloodhorse – Sports Betting Bill Passed by Ohio Legislature
Sports Business Journal – King – New Ohio betting legislation a boon for sports franchises
University of Arizona – Symposium Archives – Transcripts and PowerPoint Presentations
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
Henry Ford
Phil M Stockmen
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