Quote:
Originally Posted by mikesal57
Thanks Jeff...interesting...
Being a commercial developer yourself....how would you fair if it was free? if you dont mind...
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What if racing's collective decision makers underwent a form reversal and implemented initiatives such as the following?
- Free public access to basic data in a db friendly format.
- Make accuracy of the data an actual priority. (Do away with runups. Report the actual distance run by the horses. Time each horse separately from gate open to finish line AND for each segment of the actual distance run.)
- Penny breakage and/or other forms of takeout reduction.
- Fixed odds wagering.
- Elimination of raceday meds. (Adopt rules similar to those in Europe, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, etc.)
- Transparency of veterinary procedures (similar to the way it's done in Hong Kong.)
- Regularly scan horses for microfractures. (Full transparency of the results. Make health and safety of the horses themselves an actual priority as opposed to the lip service we give to that now.)
- Include the actual pre-race weight of each horse as part of the publicly available data (similar to the way it's done in Hong Kong.)
- Stewards who aren't afraid to suspend riders for failure to give less than a good faith effort to obtain the best possible placing for a mount.
- Stewards whose first inclination is to let the original order of finish stand. But who aren't afraid to call riders in afterward and deal with them privately. (Similar to to the way it's now done in Hong Kong and other parts of the world.)
- Penalties with teeth for trainers and owners caught cheating through the use of drugs.
- Install a modern secure tote system capable of rendering odds and payoffs in something approaching real time (or much closer to secure and real time than what we have now.)
What if, for the sake of argument, adoption of initiatives like the above resulted in a form reversal?
Instead of the sport continuing to shrink at 4% per year --
Imo, a high likelihood exists total customer spend on the product begins
growing at 8% to 12% per year.
After a few years of compounding, I think I'd fare just fine. (As would every other entity involved in racing.)
-jp
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