Long detailed article about the big teams. How does this grow the game? It doesn't
 

Been many articles on this. Worth a read

Fascinating article, thanks. When I discuss CAWs at the track with friends, I find most people are unaware of them. What I had always assumed is that every horse in a race is bet to some extent by the CAW's, because, at tracks like Saratoga, the odds seem to be compressed, that is, even a no-hoper is rarely more than 30-1, when it should be 90-1.

Met David Bernsen years ago, early 2000's when he ran a forum called Let It Ride. I posted that we were planning a trip to Del Mar, he gave me passes for his box, and showed up when Kona Gold won the Bing Crosby. A cordial, but business-like, no-nonsense kind of guy. Nice of him to maintain that forum.

That really was a great article.

Really freakin' depressing if you like betting on horse racing, but a great article.

great article
 

Thanks as always Andy

One way to combat this would be to bring back on course bookmakers as they have in the UK, but connect them to computer technology so that there is still take out

Letting people set odds and doing that in person would change this dynamic entirely AND give people another reason to attend in person with all the additional revenue that comes from that

Bookmaking was made illegal long ago, and it is way past time to bring it back

This might be the best graph in whole piece:

How do you even compete?

Those Elite teams are getting upwards of 10% rebates and have teams of geniuses and serious big time money.

Pretty damn sobering article.

... and yet the habitually clueless expect to solve such a concern by lowering takeout, chopping racing's revenue arm and simultaneously drawing more and more opportunists to further choke what presently remains of horse racing.


Now how about you people direct your efforts toward those important Hawthorne touts over at HANA? (The smattering of followers need those touts bright and early! Get the Hawthorne scratches on there bright and early as well!)

The solution is to go back to WPS only and 1 early and 1 late DD

so sayeth AH

So I guess we raise the takeout to about 30% and eliminate rebates. That way nobody who bets over $50 a day will ever play the sport and we can close the lid on the coffin now instead of soon.

Rather than attacking Hana every time one of these threads come up, maybe you can enlighten us with your ultimate wisdom and provide a solution. Hint there is only one, and racing isn't going that route, but I am all ears.

By the way didn't racing chop their own revenue arm when they decided to rebate a tiny percentage of bettors at the expense of everybody else. Meanwhile whales went from making up 5 % of the pool 20 years ago to perhaps as much as 30 to 40 % of the pools today and as mentioned in a recent thread, volume is down 50% adjusted for inflation. So lets just assume a constant of 10 billion to determine the effect of all of this. 10 billion, 9.5 billion public money 20 years ago. Will assume only 30% of the pools today, So 10 billion after inflation gets adjusted to 5 billion. 1.5 billion whale money and 3.5 billion public money. So 6 billion of the 9.5 billion of public money has gone poof. That is 63%. But let's blame HANA, it is all their fault.

Honestly at this point I have no idea how anybody in this industry can defend their position. There is obviously more to this story than I know (as far as their motivations), but I do know that the best interest of the racing industry is not in their hearts or minds (It is beyond obvious that they do not care one iota about the people that have supported this sport for many years and continue to support it). The demise is only going to be greatly accelerated with the rise of sports betting and a more sophisticated Caw. That 63% decline of public money will happen again in 10 years this time (maybe even faster). So my projection is that in 10 years the 30 year after inflation decline of public money will be 86.3%. Do you really think when that happens there will any sport left. Less public money means less Caw money. So when the Caw grew from zero to whatever it is today in handle it disguised how badly this industry was falling apart. That is no longer the case. As the public bets less, at this point, the CAW has to bet less.

But no worries there is a brand new market out there that is used to losing 5% on the dollar, they just can't wait to jump in and stay in the racing market where they will lose 20 to 30 cents on the dollar (most will lose closer to 30 %). Also we have slot revenues to save us. Life is sweet. My only question is at what point does it become blatantly obvious, that trying to save the racing industry is futile, so let's just stick with the slots?

What I learned from McKeever is that I should sweat blood creating a vehicle to beat a system and instead of sitting back and letting it create wealth, I should run around working even harder trying to sell it to others.
On the other hand, I'm confident there are people who have such a tool and you'll never hear from them or about them because why would you? One thing you never do is slaughter the golden goose and eat it. There may even be people who visit this site that have such a tool. They aren't going to tell us.
That's part of the beauty of the challenge. Knowing no one is going to hand it to you. You have to accomplish it on your own.

Nice promo article for EquinEdge.....Zippo for me.

When two CRW teams are all that’s left, do we even need to run the races? Run a simulation and save a few horses.

That is what you got from this? The guy said he went bust using it the second day.

Author - Story Teller Oliver Roeder
 

Soild credentials
https://oroeder.github.io/

And the Prairie Meadows is his origin story? It's pretty solid as well.

I felt this sentence,

At the track, I like to think, you are competing to tell the most compelling story.