Plonk Joins Kaplan & Y'know What is Neat?

What is neat is sometimes you go and write a blog post, then get sidetracked, click around for a second and find that someone wrote half of what you were going to speak about. Well today that's about right. Cangamble has a good post up on some of the wild stuff happening in racing. Check it out, he writes better than I do anyway.

HANA (the Horseplayer Association) has a good post on a story written by Jeremy Plonk today at ESPN, with a full link to the article. Jeremy really let fly today. Some choice quotes regarding the fighting in the US over signals and money in this falling sport:

Wake up and smell the monopoly.

Tracks are losing. Horsemen are losing. Worse yet, horseplayers are losing patience and interest.

Racing organizations had better realize this: I'm not a crack addict.

I've sat in conference rooms and been on conference calls where racetrack executives and horsemen's representatives act as though the bettor is a complete degenerate who simply will do cartwheels in order to satisfy a $2 jones.

I've sat next to a president of a state horsemen's group who openly complained about a handful of customers in the grandstand of his local track calling in their bets on the cellphone to an ADW company instead of going to the track's betting windows, thus depriving the horsemen of a bigger percentage of those few bets. How simpleton can you possibly be?

Let's just be honest: most of the old schoolers representing horsemen didn't see the light at the end of this tunnel. At that time, many thought E-mail was something Captain Kirk received on the Starship Enterprise.

Horsemen should thank ADW companies for coming along and bringing Thoroughbred racing into the 21st century. Private enterprise gave life support to an ailing, insular racing industry. Those who compete for purse money should be thrilled to gather every penny on the dollar they can get from customers who otherwise wouldn't walk within three states of their local venue. They should be happy as a lark that they bear ZERO of the expense involved in developing software, staffing, marketing, promoting or processing a single wager.

Those are only a few quotes from a good piece. I thought Kaplan's piece in Trot on the lack of effort and marketing was an eye-opener! Regardless folks, not only the players are not standing for this nonsense any longer. Now the press is getting in on the act. Bravo.

On a lighter note, the lack of ADW can cause serious problems. See the people in this video? This could happen to horseplayers without a track to play. We need this fixed.


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