Gural - Take 5% Now for Later. Abby's Take on Luck

Good Monday morning everyone.

Jeff Gural to "rounds of applause" last evening at the Dan Patch said this: 

• “We need someone to step up. We are getting $500 million in slots revenue and I would be so disappointed if we couldn’t take just 5 percent of that money and put it into a national marketing campaign.”

So many want to do the right thing, but there's so little in the way of results. Regardless, kudos to Jeff. Full story at HRU (pdf).

One of the items we've been on here is in a similar vein. The Strategic Wagering Initiative has been a success, but we need, in my opinion to give it a push. For a full look at some ideas and thoughts on boosting handle with it, please see this (as well in a pdf).

Cute Goat

Goats can play horses. There's a new aggregator updating links pretty constantly (new media mostly, not old) on the hunt from a fan and horseplayer perspective. Cute goat. You can see it at Goatzapper.com 

The Goat linked this story on car racing and casinos. I think it does show how precarious slots are in our landscape.

San Pail is, of course, Horse of the Year. No brainer. The iron tough everyman, Foiled Again won pacer of the year.

I see they are trying some new marketing with Kegasus. 

Abby Alger (good follow @abbyalger, by the way; she's sharp) has put forth an opine that I think we'll be hearing more and more about HBO's Luck:

Up until now the industry has embraced this show with impunity, and have promoted it at every turn. Conversely, movies like Any Given Sunday that showed the darker side of football, were not, for example, promoted by the NFL.

It is a salient point, in my opinion, and I think as time goes on, more and more folks will sway to Abby's side of this debate. However, I feel that the viewing public can be engaged enough, and in fact know enough about gritty television, that it can handle it. Any Given Sunday was made 20 years ago. Times have changed, and so has TV. Regardless, we'll see and I don't blame anyone for sharing Abby's opinion. They may be right.

Background - My take on Luck and Rounders in HRU here (pdf).


Have a great Monday everyone!!