It is the greatest game Grits, but we have to remember new markets and what they want, not what we want - we are satisfied.
If Ebay asked existing flea market or garage sale people if they want to do it on the web the answer is "no, I like to touch what I am buying"
If Amazon asked what existing book buyers want, they would hear "I love to browse and have fun at the bookstore"
These businesses would have never been started if they listened only to existing customers.
The new market does not want to travel to a track, study a racing form for six hours, sit for 5 hours and then go home. You and I do that and we should always be looked after and respected (something that the business has done a poor job at), but to get new markets we must think new, and fresh. We can not make people be horse fans and bettors, they need to be targeted and the game needs to change to fit their needs, not the other way around (imo).
I used two slides at a presentation recently on changing demo's
This was the first one:
http://www.murraytuckerwriter.com/da...andicapper.jpg
The second one was this:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/127/3...e47aff.jpg?v=0
He is a 20 year old kid that grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons, is extremely smart and now plays poker. He is tailor-made for games, and gambling. He has $1.3M in earnings. He would be perfect for the mind game of horse racing, with stats, probabilities and so on (he says that is what interested him to poker). However, we have not brought that to him. He bought a poker book and started playing. In racing he would have to buy data, study with a pencil and paper, test, and if he lived in a state without ADW coverage like so many, he could not even play online - and even if he survived all that, then we would proceed to kick his ass with 22% takeouts. This is a huge problem, and a completely underserved market that we are losing. We have to start building plans to get at them and serve them if we want a shot to grow the game (imo).
