Quote:
Originally Posted by Zman179
Personally, I don’t think horse racing has a myriad of problems because:
1. The game is very difficult for a newbie to figure out. Past performances might as well be a book on learning Japanese Kanji to many folks and people who do not have an analytical-thinking mind won’t have any desire to pick it up.
2. Many people I have spoken to who have never been to a racetrack in their lives think that all racing is fixed. Racing has done nothing to clean their image, in fact they are happy with the status quo as long as the cheating is quiet and the casino money keeps coming in.
3. People are turned off at having to outlay money just for the privilege of betting…and many times when something is offered for free, one has to jump through hoops to get it. Casino games are free and you get nice comps, lotteries are free and insanely easy to place action at, horse racing requires effort, many places you’ll have to pay for admission and parking and you’ll also pay for just about everything else. Free food? Free drinks? Yeah ok, you’ll get them on February 30th. Show me ONE thoroughbred track that readily has free pp’s available and easy to access, I’ll wait. And don’t tell me about the ADW’s that offer free pp’s, because that involves effort to want to delve deeper into the game. You’re trying to entice the TikTok generation here, not people approaching retirement.
Lower takeout means NOTHING to the new player or the $2 bettor, whom a lot of larger type bettors love to chastise, it only matters to players who create churn and bet larger amounts. Make the game easier to access, eliminate the perception of cheating and you will create new players. Or continue on the current path, have your current bettors die out and eventually you will have sharp players playing in pools with zero square money. Then the slots companies will kill racing as soon as they can legally decouple from it.
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Horse Racing is meant to be a thinking persons game who likes puzzles, not a button pushers game like a slot in a casino. If people believed they could win they wouldn't mind learning.
Lower takeout means a lot. First of all there are more gamblers than ever, most of whom bet sports. They are the first people racing needs to convert and they won't try it at the current rates.
It all comes down to the best marketing ever created and it's free, and called word of mouth. If more people came to the track and won they would be telling other people. That almost never happens anymore.
