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Old 07-09-2010, 04:24 PM   #16
SMOO
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thespaah
Actually sports beting works that way precisely.
For example today ....The Nationals are $153 to win $100. Rays are $200 to win $100....All favorites are odds on.
Sports betting handle is far more than handle on horse racing.
I am not stating here that sports betting is "better" than parimutuel racing.
It is that the comparison used here is ineffective.
His point is in sports betting you get the equal of a $3.80 payoff with their 5% total rake while in horse racing two equally bet horses would pay around $3.40 with their 15% takeout.

These things are not lost on sports bettors.
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Old 07-09-2010, 04:48 PM   #17
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I think the problem first of all, is the way that the whole point is being viewed. what i mean is, we are looking at horse racing as one big product and it's not.

horse racing is alot more like baseball. you have A, AA, AAA and the big leagues. horse racing is basically the same way.

you should not be comparing attendance with river downs and belmont park, or merging belmont park and river downs to get any type of concrete revelant information.

when people say "get ride of some of the tracks" people automatically assume the bad racing, the A class racing. not necessarily. we need some of those for reasons that people have already stated. hey every horse bred is not man o war and they gotta run somewhere. nothing wrong with a hard knocking claimer.

the problem we have now however, is that the amount of races that we run in direct proportion to over breeding and not in correlation with consumer demand.




First you need to separate the major league tracks from the minor league tracks.

I will name 6 random minor league tracks:

Mountineer
charles town
penn national
sunland park
louisiana downs
hawthorne


and six major league tracks

hollywood park
santa anita
del mar
aqueduct
gulfstream
churchill


I think racing needs to basically do two things

1. cut in half.
2. coordinate to get the maxmium revenue form each customer. stop having grade 1's that you spend weeks prompting going off within 3 mintues of other grade 1's that someone else has spent weeks prompting. Churchill and calder the entire freaking meet had their post times go off at the same time (about), and they are owned by the same damn company. it does you no good if you cut in half, and everyone wants to race in Friday saturday and sunday. hey i wager on tuesdays too. i would freaking LOVE to bet on oaklawn or fairgrounds on a tuesday. they only big show in town.

how many more wagers would i make if monmouth, belmont and Arlington were staggered within 10 minutes of each other. i'd seriously, probably double my wagers.

the NBA doesn 't just play on friday Saturdays and sundays. people get off owrk and need something to do.


racing would be better as a whole if the big a, and hollywood park were shut down.

it would also be better if Louisiana downs and hawthorne were shut down.


what gets me about the whole turfway issue and this is to me the epitome fo the entire problem. no one told turfway to install that shit surface. no one put a gun to their head. hey i know you wanted to be like big brother, but keeneland is keeneland. they can install glass at keneeland and horses would still show up. you are not keeeneland you have to attract horses. so they install the crappy surface, no one wants to show up, they go to where there is dirt, and then they have to cut races and the first thing they want to cry about is slots.

what pisses me off, actually pisses me off, is when these owners try to use slots as some excuse to cover up piss poor decision making skills. it pisses me off because people DO love horse racing, there are alot of casual fans out there, more than people give credit for.i get tired of some of these people draging the games' name in the mud because of their horrid decision making.


also, you can't be a major league track, that has a minor league production. like churchill downs this meet.

when i tune into charles town i know what i'm getting. i am there to try to make money.

but churchill is supposed to be the big leagues. when like 7 of your 10 races on a Friday night are maiden claiming races, seriously?

Last edited by toussaud; 07-09-2010 at 04:51 PM.
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Old 07-09-2010, 05:05 PM   #18
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don't make me chose between watching the lakers play spurs, and the heat playing the magic. make it so that i can watch both.

like horse racing, baseball has seen a decline in popularity when\ customers are given a choice with what product they want to watch. the royals went to being half ass decent to a high school team over night. even people in Kansas city don't want to watch Kansas city play and now they don't have to.

the answer is to put a better product out then the people you are competing with, a novel concept in horse racing. I am in Arkansas and i grew up an die hard Atlanta braves fan. still am. they play hard every year, they are going to give you some solid pitching and some solid defense and have IMHO the best farm system in the league from an overall standpoint. if not for cable TV i could never follow the braves every game growing up. i would have been a cardinal fan just like everyone else. but i freaking hate the cardinals because i was given an option to hate them.
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Old 07-09-2010, 06:02 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by andymays
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/hor...emy&id=5365143

Excerpt:

No matter which definition first comes to mind for you when you hear the word "contraction," chances are there will be some pain involved. But when the pain subsides, you've given birth to something that you can embrace for years to come.
Of all of racing's self-inflicted problems to be tackled (drug policies, safety, public perception, viability as a gambling game, etc.) which ones are best addressed by the extinctions of owners, breeders and industry workers?

If a "contraction" was the answer then so be it. But from my point of view this sport is in desperate need of righting its ship with the public and with gamblers. Not just getting a smaller boat to drive into the rocks.



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Old 07-09-2010, 07:07 PM   #20
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it's one in the same. id on't see why the avg handicapper doesn 't understand this.

look for example. what happens when you run 2 times as many races.

well for one, you have two times as many jockies out there. you gotta have someone ride these horses.

you have jockies now, giving craptastic ride after crasptastic ride, that would not have sniffed a major track 30 years ago, becuase someone has to ride these horses that we have.

horse racing players need more than anything constistantcy. over the hill jockes need to be booted, pups need to earn their stripe.

earlier today i saw a jockey, you could see the wheels spinning in his head... slow pace.. do i want to be on the lead.. nah i want to be off.. wait i want to be on.. nah i want to be off. then when he asked for run the horse was like you gotta be kidding me.. um no.


IT IS NOT IN A GAMBLERS BEST INTEREST TO HAVE THIS MANY RACES.

that's just one of the unthought of reasons that we need to make the game smaller.


make no mistake, there are other issues. but let's not act like this isn't an issue.
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Old 07-09-2010, 07:29 PM   #21
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rastajenk
Let's see here...the Plonk article points out that contraction has been happening since 1989, with one third fewer races being contested now compared to 20 years ago.

Contraction is supposed to be good, but racing has spiralled with a downward vector during those 20 years.

So we are to believe more contraction is needed? That the contraction that has been occurring hasn't been managed properly, but that future contraction will? Is that what we're being asked to believe?

What other sport hates its fellow fans and participants more than racing? Could golf say, "You public course dirtbags, you're outta here. We need to strengthen the tournament game, so we're sacrificing the publinx gang." How long would major league baseball last if the minor leagues dried up and blew away?

But more to the point, when are the benefits of the contraction of the last 20 years supposed to kick in? Where are the successes of contraction that can be held up as examples of a new business model, harbingers of things to come, glimpses of a rosier future? Not seeing anything other than hazy dreams of superstarstudded weekends one right after another; hopeandchange, equine style.

Horseplayerbets mentioned something that I have said here before on these types of threads. The connections of these cheap horses that everybody loves to hate on are the ones that bring new money to the track. You can't tell 35, 40 percent or more of your fan base to get lost, and expect growth. The premise is not only flawed, it's illogical.
Forced contraction compared to strategic consolidation. There is a difference. Arguably the 80's were the high point of excessive expansion. All the northern track closed in the winter in the 60's up until the 70's. There used to be a season in New York. No winter racing. So it all depends on where you want to start measuring.

The game needs fewer racetracks, fewer races and larger fields, but, year round seasonal racing. In England they have a racing circuit. Works quite well.
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Old 07-14-2010, 09:51 AM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by toussaud
I think racing needs to basically do two things

1. cut in half.
2. coordinate to get the maxmium revenue from each customer. stop having grade 1's that you spend weeks prompting going off within 3 mintues of other grade 1's that someone else has spent weeks prompting. Churchill and calder the entire freaking meet had their post times go off at the same time (about), and they are owned by the same damn company. it does you no good if you cut in half, and everyone wants to race in Friday saturday and sunday. hey i wager on tuesdays too. i would freaking LOVE to bet on oaklawn or fairgrounds on a tuesday. they only big show in town.

how many more wagers would i make if monmouth, belmont and Arlington were staggered within 10 minutes of each other. i'd seriously, probably double my wagers.


Other sports have figured out how to stagger their big games, i don't see why horse racing can't also do this.
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Old 07-14-2010, 10:36 AM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BillW
You're describing the flaw in the horsemen's "business plan" to grab for all the casino money they can. They are voluntarily destroying their own business. If you want to keep a failing business alive, you fight to make it profitable, not dependant on a handout.

I agree. The "business plan" has been,and as proposed,a typical "me first" thing that discounts the most important element, the customers.

The cooks need to learn to prepare the meal for the customers, not themselves...and success will follow.
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Old 07-14-2010, 03:06 PM   #24
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Comparing major spectator sports with horse racing is not really fair.

With the exception of a few major racing days, almost nobody would pay $50-up to attend a day at the daces. However seats at NBA and NFL games cost this much and a lot more, and MLB games are not far from this range.

Strictly from a pro sports bettor's perspective, the 20% effective hold on mutuel pools is tough to beat. Pinnacle offers 4% overround on their NFL sides, and most derivative bets which are easier to beat are in the 6-10% range. Of course situations occur in racing which lure pro bettors: large rebates, big carryovers and forced payouts, and large dead-money pools. But these are isolated events, and are not going to bring in bettors who are attracted to other sports wagering.

From the recreational bettor's perspective, horse racing does not offer the same kind of attraction that sports betting (or other gambling) offers:

-relevance in non-gaming world (nobody cares who wins a $8k claimer);
-frequency (slots are king here);
-stigma of horse racing clientele and backside (cheating, degenerate gamblers, etc.);
-convenience (most forms of gambling are far more convenient to the average gambler);
-overhead (who should pay for it? With casino and sports betting models this is easily resolved).
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