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Hey Highnote, you’ve criticized several here who do not like your suggestions for bringing HK-type racing to the U.S. and for not offering an alternative “solution” well, I do like your suggestions but I like mine better. Here is my brief outline. Comments welcomed.

The goal here is to bring the fans back into the stands. Make it attractive to sports fans like the other major sports If they come, there will be money to be made by the tracks selling beer, concessions, etc., as well as a huge handle. Remember, back in the day, it used to be the most popular spectator sport after baseball and boxing. It can be that again.

First, all tracks should turn into casinos, like PARX, if they already haven’t done so. People don’t want to bet on racing anymore. People want to gamble on slots ,cards, dice, slots, NFL, NBA, etc. $137.5 billion was bet in casinos in 2018, vs. $10 billion on horse racing, and that last figure is dwindling.

Getting rid of race-day medication would be the next step, which would help improve the image of the sport, including reducing the breakdowns.

Now that we did that, our model is going to be similar to the USGA professional golf tour, we’ll call it the thoroughbred horse tour(THT). We will select ten tracks, maybe , SAR, BEL, Parx, Laurel, Oaklawn, Santa Anita, Del Mar, Keenland, Gulfstream, Churchill and maybe Monmouth, the other “tracks” would be fulltime casinos, and not offer thoroughbred racing, maybe they could offer harness racing, but there would be no overlap between the horses running on the THT, The 10 tracks will be the only ones in the country to have a thoroughbred meet. Only one track will be operating at a time. Each meet will be five weeks(the other 47 weeks the track will be a casino). The meet will run seven days per week with eight races per day with a field of 14 horses per race. Only one track will be running at a time. Each day in the country there would be racing at one of these tracks, and no other. A horse can only run once at each meet, so after it runs it can be shipped to the next track in the cycle, to get ready for the next meet. There will be 14 horse fields for every race since only one track will be running each day there will be many lining up. The purse for each race will be a minimum of $250,000, with the first 10 finishers winning money. Doing the math, we will need 7x5x14 (490) horses for each meet. An owner can only enter two horses per meet, so we will need 245 owners for the THT.

The tracks would have to put up the purse money, but since they would be the only race in the country happening at that time, their handle will be huge. And they wouldn’t have to supplement purses the rest of the year — I’m sure casinos, like Parx, would rather supplement five weeks per year rather than 52.

For the horseplayer this would be like Christmas morning every day. It would be like betting a breeders cup each week! We’d get seven days per week of eight races with 14 horse fields. It would be very lucrative to be on the THT so owners would be lining up for it. As I mentioned, the purse for each race will be a minimum of $250,000 , and the THT would be responsible for setting the purses for the other seven races that day. Just like the USGA demands a certain level of prize money for their tournaments.

If a breakdown happens, that owner and trainer would be suspended for six months. If the THT decides it’s the jockeys fault, then he gets suspended.
Now I know that some of you would think these ideas are silly, unreasonable and impossible to implement, but tell me this, would you bet on these races?