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Originally Posted by Dark Horse
If horse racing is going to survive in the long run, let alone catch up with the big sports, it needs to take a drastically different approach than what is in place today. It wouldn't hurt to take a page from Apple under Steve Jobs, starting with: Think Different.
As mentioned in the past, horse racing, like any sport, would benefit from standings. Team standings (you would have to create teams first) and individual horse standings. Assign points to be earned for each race. Without standings there is no story, just individual events. With standings, people have a context and a reason to start to follow horses and their stories. Greater public interest, more television, more television moneys, and so forth. It all starts with grabbing the public by the throat and not letting go. But the public needs a continuing story that they can return to each weekend. Not isolated events that allow them to forget the sport.
Put the same ten type of races on each card, and have teams compete at each distance. At the end of the day, you would not only have individual horse winners, but a team winner. By season's end you could have playoffs, and a championship event. NY would have its team, LA would have its team, etc.
Steal whatever ideas work from other sports. Improve the rules, so that travesties like the last Classic happened for a reason. Get this sport into the 21st century. Other sports succeeded. Horse racing is the odd one out. Still, if it was once among the most popular three sports, it can get back there.
The NFL is a great example to follow. The rest of the world barely gives a sh*t, but it's the most popular sport here. Not because it really is the greatest sport, but because it was marketed to perfection.
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"Racings" problem and maybe its our problem too is that because dozens of individual tracks all use "horse racing" as their gambling vehicle of choice, we just say "hey, there are dozens of tracks all letting horses run in circles and accepting wagers, so they must be part of an "industry""
The problem is that nobody is part of any industry, everyone is operating on their own, in their own state by their own state's rules. Each track is its own "industry" and could really care less about what other tracks are doing that are offering similar products.
You could see this by how tracks run on top of each other. There was one day a couple years ago where CT and Mountaineer were the only 2 tracks running on one particular day in the entire eastern region, and yet, they both ran exactly on top of each other as if they didn't know the other track even existed. I put in a phone call to the judges at Charlestown to question a certain DQ and had a long conversation with one of the stewards there and i said to him "why do you run at the exact same time as Mountaineer even though you are the only 2 tracks running on the entire east coast and you're in the same state" and he acted almost as if he didn't realize he was a "Competitor" to Mountaineer. I explained to him that when there are only 2 tracks running, and they're both in the same state, that there might be plenty of bettors who are betting both places.....and that was news to him.
So, its not likely we're going to get "Racing" to work together in any meaningful way, its not likely much will change in tracks running on top of each other and nothing is likely to change in the "old boys club" as far as slaps on the wrist for "name" trainers who break the rules over and over again.
I wouldn't hold my breath that racing will "get with the times" and into the 21st century, staying stuck in 1970 is just fine by them.
