Quote:
Originally Posted by Track Phantom
This is spot on. This whole discussion involving takeout is ridiculous. The only people that care about takeout are hard core players who play every day. I'll tell you this, 90% of the crowd at Churchill Downs on Derby Day couldn't even tell you what takeout means if you asked them.
Takeout is an important thing to keep in check but is only visible to those who are waist deep in this game.
There are three things keeping the masses away from this game. If you fix these three things, you have a chance:
1. Too complicated (betting and understanding the information)
2. Too much down time between races
3. Lack of High Def
Find a way to engage people in the betting and information aspect of the game and they may stick around to learn more about. Not sure how you do that but that is a major deterrent.
A 5 to 6 hour window of time for what amounts to roughly 15 minutes of actual excitement is a huge turnoff. Huge! We may be ok with it because we enjoy handicapping and structuring bets. Have you ever been to the track with someone that doesn't like that part of the game? They are bored into oblivion for 85% of their time at the track. That is what they remember when they leave (unless they hit something big).
The viewing experience is awful, for the most part. No HD, trees and structures in the way, same colored saddlecloths.
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I wouldn't underestimate the fact that millennials understand that at most tracks the bets are bad value and that does have a major impact on their decision to play. If you look at the current generation of millennial gamblers, they like games where there are in control, of which horseracing should be on the list. Instead, they are gravitating to things like Daily Fantasy Sports and poker. DFS is just as involved as racing in terms of poring through information and making decisions and bets. And it is hard to argue that DFS is an action game. In football, you bet and wait three hours for a result. Yeah, it gives you a reason to watch multiple games, which is good for the sport. But your first two points are equally problems for DFS but they haven't affected the popularity of the play.
In regular sports betting, on a single game bet you have a payoff less than the natural odds, and it doesn't vary. At least in horse racing you can get payoffs well beyond natural odds, and that is one of the things horseracing should emphasize.
I'm not disagreeing with you about the need to address issues beyond the take, but I would still put take at the top of the list of things to correct. If horseracing became a fair betting game, it has a good chance to revitalize. Along with the other suggestions it has the potential to become the go to gambling game of skill.
