Rachel's popularity

[W2G]

So much for capturing the popular imagination. I was searching for any evidence that the Rachel Alexandra story was getting any traction outside of racing and ended up playing with the Google Trends gadget. The graph below says it all. (No, this is not meant to be about RA vs. Zen, I was just curious how Zen would stack up in comparison.)

Just goes to show that national exposure (TV) is everything... and then some.

[Irish Boy]

1) The graph is useless without the Y axis identified

2.) Isn't that exactly what you'd expect the graph to look like?

[W2G]

Originally Posted by Irish Boy

1) The graph is useless without the Y axis identified

2.) Isn't that exactly what you'd expect the graph to look like?

1) The Y axis is Search Volume Index as labeled. A metric that represents the frequency of a given search term.

2) It's what I feared it may look like. Ever the optimist, I thought more people were interested in her despite the media snub.

[Tom Barrister]

People tend to have the attention span of gnats, particularly the teens and young adults. "Out of sight, out of mind" sums it up. This is why many celebrities (*cough* Britney Spears *cough*) do something "wild" frequently---to keep in the public eye. Not staying in the public eye is also probably one of the reasons Rudy Giuliani bombed in his effort to secure the Republican nomination last year.

[Irish Boy]

Originally Posted by W2G

1) The Y axis is Search Volume Index as labeled. A metric that represents the frequency of a given search term.

2) It's what I feared it may look like. Ever the optimist, I thought more people were interested in her despite the media snub.

But there's no numbers on the Y axis. We have no numbers to look at.

Also, putting another athlete or other athletes on the graph might be helpful. What do those numbers look like compared to, say, Derek Jeter?

[CBedo]

I think that we here at PA are too close to the racing world's situation and sometimes don't see the forest for the trees. We unrealistically hope that a triple crown possibility or a Rachel will somehow "save" the sport, when on the margin, it doesn't do much.

My Derby party experience is the perfect example. I had more people than ever at my house for the Derby, but it wasn't a fan attractor, just a one day good time. How many of those (most aren't year long racing fans) had any comments to me directly, on FB, or on Twitter when I talked about Rachel in the Preakness? Maybe one or two, not many. How many have since commented about any horse racing comments I have made? ZERO, and it will be the same more than likely next year.

The reality is that the Rachel/Zenyatta story or any other story racing has hyped or will hype are fun for us who follow the sport, and might get a water cooler comment once in a while, but probably doesn't do much to incrementally grow the sport.

[CBedo]

Following up on W2G's comments about the fleeting nature of publicity, and my negativity towards what's going on with horse racing, here's a couple charts that are somewhat telling.

The first is the google search volume of "horse racing" and "breeders cup." As you can see, the BC searches spike each fall, and immediately fall off. The somewhat scarier part of the chart might be that the horse racing trend line continues to be down.



And just to give some semblance of scale to compare, Here's the chart of the term "horse racing" versus "NFL." Notice that although seasonal, the NFL search term level continues to trend up each year.



And if we didn't feel bad enough already, I compared "horse racing" to "rugby," "cricket," and a few other somewhat obscure passtimes, and they all had higher search term traffic than "horse racing."

[W2G]

Nicely done CBedo. This Google Trends stuff can be fun and enlightening.

I surprisingly found some "good news" relative to horse racing. The Kentucky Derby's popularity is actually increasing in the mainstream.

But this graph depicts just how disjointed the sport has become. The Derby, occurring relatively early in the year, attracts all the casual interest -- while the self-described "Breeders Cup World Thoroughbred Championships" are virtually ignored by the mainstream. Pretty much the opposite of the way others major sports play out with casual interest peaking in the Super Bowl, World Series, etc.