Before American Pharoah‘s Belmont, I asked Bob Baffert how he was feeling. His answer was, “I just want the chance to root for my horse.” That is exactly what we are selling. The birth of a dream when the hammer falls in your favor. The anticipation in the weeks before your horse starts. The 11 a.m. phone call from your trainer after that last work to tell you “we’re ready.” The pounding heart as your horse loads in the gate, the percussive sound of hooves around the turn, the unbridled thrill of the stretch run and the chance to root for your horse.
That is the product. There is no better way to understand it than watching Cherie DeVaux root for Golden Tempo as he comes down the stretch in the Kentucky Derby.
This is not a sentimental observation. It is the most important economic insight in this analysis. The people funding this industry are not doing it for the purse checks. They are doing it for the experience. The purse checks just keep the dream alive.
And we are making that experience harder and harder to have.
Owners have to navigate a patchwork of apps and paywalls just to watch their horses run. If the horse wins, finding a replay takes more friction still, and unless it’s a stakes race on YouTube, sharing it is near impossible. FanDuel TV, formerly TVG, the one network that reliably brought live racing into homes for 25 years, going dark is not an alarm bell. It’s a fog horn. We are taking the experience away from the very people who keep this sport alive. We spent decades building platforms for the CAW player and rebate structures for the high-volume account, and we neglected the person at the rail who writes the biggest check of all.
TDN – Sonny Sonbol – State of the Industry: The Owner
TDN – Racing’s Biggest Problem, and the Solution: Conrad Bandoroff
Bloodhorse – Frank Angst – Dollars & Sense: Backing Bet on Separate On-Track Pools
Phil has a question:
Do you think a couple of % points are going to lure a bettor away from his computer, laptop or phone screen to take a 30 minute drive down to the track when the beer and burgers are cheaper at home and they’re chatting with their betting buddies online.
How do you compete with pro or college sports when they have 2 components: the game and betting on the game when horse racing only has one component: betting on the race.
Imagine instead a centralized system that synchronizes post times across the country, so a race goes off every couple of minutes and a first-time player can bet the next one from a single screen, with a single tap. One race resolves, then another, then another, the same rhythm that hooks a sportsbook customer, except every result is live horses coming down the lane. That is a stream no sportsbook can replicate. The unpredictable part has always been ours. All we have to build is the rhythm.
TDN – Sonny Sonbol – State of the Industry: The Handle
TDN – Sonny Sonbol – State Of The Industry: The Habitat
Phil has a question:
Isn’t the real problem that horse racing cannot survive without a subsidy from slots.
Subsidies and mandates are just two of the privileges that government can bestow on politically connected friends. Others include grants, loans, tax credits, favorable regulations, bailouts, loan guarantees, targeted tax breaks and no-bid contracts.
Charles Koch
Phil M. Stockmen