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Originally Posted by Fager Fan
You can't just buy some land and build a track, you know, unless you plan on racing Breyer horses that no one gambles on.
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People will gamble where they can find an edge. Arabian races are fairly popular. It's all a matter of how you structure the racing. If every race was a a true handicap that gave each horse a good chance of winning, handicapping would be important. Too many short fields with low priced winners in the U.S. make for an unpopular product, even though I have argued low priced winners are exciting if you bet enough money on them.
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How are you going to get the tens of millions needed to buy the land and build the complex and track surfaces?
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No way it would take tens of millions. In fact, the budget is going to be $1 million. This is going to be a country track with no grandstand. Look at those jump courses down south. I doubt they cost tens of millions to cut a track through a field and put up some timber jumps and railings.
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Own the horses and hire the trainers? Gosh, let's say it's 1500 horses at $10,000 each, so that's $15m.
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1500 horses would be unrealistic at first because there is no place to keep them. It doesn't make sense to build a 1500 horse stable. This ain't going to be the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
Remember this is Bush League Downs and it will be a short meet. If it looks promising then more dates can be added.
In order to be a going concern, BLD might have to return to the roots of racing -- heat racing rather than dash racing. In heat racing, the horses ran 4 miles heats. The first one to win two heats was declared the winner. Nowadays, heat races are far more popular and the winner of one heat (a dash) wins the race.
The breed has tilted toward speed and away from stamina. I would love to see stamina become more highly valued like in early colonial days of American racing. Back then heat races were popular. I'm sure they could still be exciting and popular
I have thought of some interesting twists on heat racing that do not require a large population of horses. The heats would be handicap races. So it would be more like betting on NFL football than a match race between Secretariat and Onion where Secretariat would be 1/20 and Onion would be 20/1. Sometimes Onion would win, but most of the time it would not be a great betting event. But what if Secretariat carried 168 points to Onion's 125? Which horse would be the first to win two four mile heats? Now it starts to get interesting.
Granted, the cheap claimers at BLD would not be anywhere in the same league with Big Red, but that's not the goal. The goal is to make interesting and novel betting events. Handicapped heat racing can accomplish that.
It might be possible for, say, a field of 14 horses to run six 6 furlong heats -- that's a total 4.5 miles. The winner of each heat would win a small purse. Knowing that they have to race 6 heats, I would expect the jockeys to rate their horses for the first 4 furlongs and then sprint to the wire. At the end of the day, the horses would have sprinted only 8 furlongs over about an 8 hour period. The winner of the most heats or perhaps the winner of the final heat would get the largest share of the purse.
With this method, only a small group of horses are needed to run a full day of races. Plus they would be handicap races which would help even out the odds.
This is the first iteration of the idea. Its a start. It might have some potential. If not, then maybe I will think of something else.
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You won't find any sane trainers who will train said horses, so let's assume you find about 30 insane trainers at $60/day, so you'll be paying them $90,000 a day to train those 1500 horses, or $2.7m a month (and $32,400,000 a year).
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I have seen healthy young thoroughbreds for sale for $500. I know this for a fact because my trainer bought one for the syndicate I started several years ago. He broke his maiden after about 5 races at Mountaineer Park. We made a little money and then sold him privately and he became a jumper in Georgia.
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You also have to pay for all the equipment and employees to tend to the surface, man the starting gates, outride, security, and all the track facility staff, so add a few more million.
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Good points. Very little equipment will be needed. This is Bush League Downs. A tractor to keep the track mowed will be needed, but if we lease land from a farmer, he probably has a tractor and would be happy to earn extra money to keep the course mowed.
No starting gates needed. We'll do a flag drop -- just like in the old, old days.
Many countries don't use outriders because their horses are well trained, but you'll probably need a few people on horseback in case a horse breaks loose.
Security -- local police can be hired or a security firm. There won't be any crowd. So crowd control won't be an issue.
Staff? You mean investors. BLD will be financed by Equity Crowd Funding. We can get a few investors to help out with growing their company. Afterall, the more successful the track becomes the more the investors make.
Other staff could be 4H volunteers. We'll be in farm country so there is bound to be a 4H club around. Internship opportunities will abound.
The goal is not to recreate Belmont Park. The goal is to create a horseplayer owned and operated track that is horseplayer friendly.
TERRIFIC! Keep 'em coming!
I fully expect a lot of criticism and perhaps some name calling. But what the heck. Just like a politician, you have to have a thick skin. Elon Musk actually managed to building electric cars and send rockets into space and he still gets criticized!
There are some locations/jurisdictions that have seen their revenue dwindle. You might be able to convince a racing commission that your plan would work (produce more revenue).
