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Originally Posted by AlsoEligible
So just to recap, we're talking about leasing farm land in a rural area, and paying for that farmer to maintain the track with his own tractor. There will be no grandstand, no starting gate, no crowds, and presumably little to no amenities.
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I think you've got that just about correct.
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Are you budgeting money for a totalizator company?
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Not yet. Needs to be studied more to see what all the options are. This is a big job for one person. If someone is crazy enough to offer to jump in and help then maybe things will move along as fast as the negative posters in this thread would like to see them move.
I wonder if the negative posters are racetrack shills or just sourpusses.
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You can sell the signal to ADWs, but you still need a conduit for ADW money to get into your pools. You also need a totalizator to be able to calculate odds leading up to the race, lock betting on time, and calculate prices after each race finishes.
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Right. The pool will be needed to be aggregated somewhere.
I used to bet an OTB that took the NYRA signal but the OTB pools and NYRA pools were not co-mingled. There were a lot of mispricings to exploit. I had some nice scores back then.
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For the people who do show up, how will they bet?
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By cell phone I presume. We will not have on-track betting.
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Plus you'll need electricity and internet access.
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Not much problem there. Electricity infrastructure is just about everywhere a track would be built. Cell phone service is available most places.
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If you are going to have betting machines on-track, will you have tellers as well, or only self service?
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No on-track betting. Moot.
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If you're going to export your signal to ADWs, people need to be able to watch the race online. How are you broadcasting a video signal? Again you're talking about a decent amount of equipment, electricity, networking, etc. Or will someone with a GoPro just stream the races for free online?
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It might only be audio at first. I used to bet English racing and could only hear the call over the internet. At the OTB I used to go to there was no video -- only the live call.
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After a day of racing with $2.5k in handle from TVG, and $4k from XpressBet, $3k from TwinSpires, etc...you need to be able to settle up with all of these entities. Are you hiring accountants for this, or paying for a third party service that specializes in pari-mutuel accounting? Neither option is cheap.
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I doubt those entities would be interested. All I know is that it's a big world out there.
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Even if you were able to address all of the items we're talking about, and even if this bastardized track met all of the requirements to be granted a racing license from a state commission...which are both long shots....you still need people to bet on it.
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Definitely a long shot. It might be too daunting of a task. That's ok. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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I can't speak for everyone here, but my bankroll is only so big, and even if the takeout was 0%, I can't see myself spending any of it on flag-drop heat races between $500 horses on a shoddy track in the middle of a farm. You're cutting way too many corners for this to be an appealing product to players - which is the entire point.
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I can see why you wouldn't bet on races over a shoddy track, but this track would not be shoddy. Making a good quality turf track is probably the easiest part of the process.
If the races are competitive, with large fields who cares how cheap the horses are.
I'll paraphrase Steve Roman -- cheap speed is a valid expression of a horse's genetics. A slower horse is just as worthy of an animal as an expensive horse.
People need to expand their awareness of what is a "horse race" and realize that just because a race is not held at a multi-million dollar racing palace does not mean it has to be less interesting or that slower animals are less worthy.
