Quote:
Originally Posted by o_crunk
The primary customer of horse racing these days is state governments. Racing has to prove they are a viable and popular business worth supporting with tax dollars. This is why places like Saratoga and Monmouth make up their attendance numbers ("We had more people come to our facilities than the New York Knicks did!"). It's also why handle is important ("We took billions of dollars of bets on our races last year. The public must like it").
The bottom line is that racing as a betting proposition is simply a non-starter for the majority of the public sans 4 or 5 days a year. There are more people on the 42nd street subway platforms at this very moment than who are going to place a bet on a race in Tuesday in December. You can market a nice a day out at the track (and they have!) but that's about it. When it comes down to the bet, any Joe Blow betting serious money on something has a ton of options now compared to 20 years ago. It's going to be very hard to just say "if we lower rake, people will come". No they will not come with just that alone so all you people in this thread better sharpen your pencils with something more than that.
I'm against the mega rebates. It eventually puts the industry in a place where they can't return from. I'm for radical transparency on rebates. Publish them. If some group wants to bet hundreds of millions a year, they should get a discount like any other business. But I'm under no illusion that if you do this, it does anything for racing's business. A lot of what's discussed as a solution here is fantasy. At the end of the day, "racing" is subject to the whims of state governments. Close to half of the purses distributed this year in T-bred races in this country come from sources other than handle. The sad truth is, the customer is the government, not Joe Blow playing $200 at Parx. To switch that scenario around, you'd need hundreds of thousands of people engaged at the Joe Blow level to turn the tide. Simply lowering rake isn't going to do it, though it must be part of it. So you're going to need more solutions than that.
CRW is a symptom of a failing business, it's not a cause of the failing business. If you turn it off, handle goes way, way down. And that's one less selling point to the real customer - the government.
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I will take your points at face value. I don't agree with everything but my points have been made plenty of times. Seems strange to me that racing can get charity sans audit of books, but given the intelligence of the typical politician, doesn't surprise me.
So your point is that the Caw has to be in the game like they are. A 20% reduction in handle initially is off the table because it will jeopardize future charity and what is life without charity. So if the top caw are currently getting around 16 % rebates on a 22% pool (that is my estimate) than if Racing cut takeout across the board to 10%, they would be in the same place with a 5% rebate to the caw. So with a takeout of 10% and a rebate of 5 % the Caw still bet 35% of the pool, this time around they are working at about break even and working on the 5% rebate. $100,000 pool, 10 percent takeout, or $10,000 takeout on $65,000 of public money bet or the public will lose at a 15.4% clip rather than a 26 to 28% clip. Caw would be betting just as much, some of the public would stay in the game and the game while still very difficult, will become beatable to some. Non caw will start to stay in the game and drive up handle rather than leave the game at an accelerating rate and caw can bet more as the public bets more. So while it would not work as good as no rebates it would still give the public a fighting chance and make the game a lot more sustainable. Effective marketing would give the game some kind of hope. Please explain to me why this idea is fantasy.
From a personal level I can't beat the game long term now, but I do think I might be able to beat it if there was a 10% takeout and rebates were limited to 5%. I certainly would bet a lot more money than I currently do.
