Thursday Notes

Jennie Rees makes some great points about the Arlington experiment to tie field size to purse size. It will be interesting to see if AP makes some changes as time goes on with this experiment. h/t to Equidaily.

The dominoes keep falling: Hastings lowers take and now has the best WPS rake on the continent. I am not sure about 2011 in this industry, but I am 100% sure national handle will be up solidly in 2012. Too many tracks are finally coming to realize that customers need to be cultivated, not sucked dry. Bettors bet more when they have more in their pockets.

Try and try again: Western Fair, who lowered their win 4 takeout to 15% has also offered a guarantee. 

No Cam Fella start for the undefeated St. Elmo Hero this weekend as he has spiked a temp.

World Series of Backgammon? Yes, I checked that out over at R2.

Ferguson has a look at Betfair and their bid to buy Monmouth Park, which may or may not be happening. This is probably one of the better developments we have seen in awhile. If they took both Monmouth and the Meadowlands, those two tracks would get a ton of play. Being featured on their channel is a big thing. Perhaps it won't be long before Matt says (like all the telecasts do now in the UK and Australia) "the seven is taking no action and is 9-1 at Betfair, while 4-1 on the board". That's some killer exchange branding.

Dan over at Thorotrends released the results of his first ever survey into thoroughbred racing. There were some neat results and some cool questions. I was struck by the age demo for the survey. Being primarily online, we seem to get a bit of a boost on younger fans/bettor demos. Check it out.

Dan asked a question on the Players Boycott of Cali Racing, which I and many of you share support. That question showed some results which I was a little surprised about. The data pool was extremely broad, yet it seems there was good recognition of it, and some support.

HANA's Harness Survey was chatted about on the HANA blog this week as well. The results are pretty much what we expect, and chat about here on the blog. Rake is too high, too many supertrainers coming out of the woodwork and winning at 30%, pool size is too small.

The funny thing to me is the cause and effect of that, and the spiral. Rake is high, so handle goes down and we have small pools. Supertrainers winning at 2-5 dropping horses and claiming new ones providing zero betting-value makes handle go down and pools be too small. In the past, some tracks (to combat falling revenues) raise takeout to "make up the difference". Then handle goes down again, and we have even smaller pool size. Racing is one of the levels in Inception.

Allan checks out some of the results at VFTRG.

North America Cup eligibles have been released. Last year looked like a solid year for the three year olds, but it ended up being nowhere near expectation. This year looks like a weaker group. Maybe the opposite will happen.

Jessica reports that the fight between the horsemen and Suffolk is close to over.  Who wants to bet that the deal signed protects the status quo? I'll give you 10-1.

CDI does not want to sell their signals easily. Gee, wonder why.

Racing at a Crossroads with Online Wagering

Today the Wall Street Journal has a feature piece on online gaming. In it they review several states that are looking to the avenue to make up for budget shortfalls.

One of the states, as we know, is New Jersey and they are further along than any other state at the present time.

Once one state passes an online-gambling law, "you will see other states go 'aha.' It will spread very rapidly," said Anthony Cabot, an expert in Internet gambling law.

Racing has had a virtual monopoly on online wagering for some time now (a legal one anyway). What have we done with it? Most would say not much. Archaic 1978 rules for a 2011 internet world, horsemen fighting tracks for revenues or "more of a shrinking pie", huge takeouts in a very low marginal cost medium, and red tape to sign up for an account that would make one's head spin are a few of the unaddressed problems. 

We don't have much longer to capitalize on this medium, in my opinion. But with the aforementioned stakeholders digging their trenches for more of less and not relenting even for a moment to work together does not make anyone very optimistic. Horse racing might be the only industry, aside from music, who have the shown the ability to use the internet to help destroy itself.

Branding Works, Even With Bettors

With a restaurant or a retail place of business we tend to see sales or other customer-focused techniques work rather well. In racing it is much different. Being a skill gambling game we are funded by skill-game players. They rarely react to an on-track giveaway, a band or some sort of one-day sale. We as horseplayers tend to simply show up to the races like it's our office.

However, one thing it appears we do respond to is branding.

At this moment some tracks have good vibes, like Tampa Bay Downs, Keeneland and several others. More often than not if you ask a patron about those tracks the brand comes up; Keeneland might be "fun" or Tampa might be "good value on pick 4's" etc. On the flip-side, visit a chat board; you can find the bad branded tracks in a flash.

The problem is it's really quite difficult to shake some bad branding. It takes time.

The recently concluded HANA Harness racing survey shows the branding angle, almost to a "t".

Several years ago (you'd know this if you were a player, or followed many blog posts and comments here) the Meadowlands allowed a trainer back who had been caught with EPO. Around the same time Ledford who was expelled, was kind-of-not-really expelled, and was allowed to compete if he wished. This angered players a great deal. The Meadowlands I am certain wanted to get rid of these types, but because they were a public institution, they could not kick them out forever. If you go to any simo-center today, or read on chat boards, the Meadowlands is known by some as the place where every shady trainer can go, without having a problem. Many times you will get an email or read a topic where existing trainers at Woodbine or other tracks make the trip to the M and their horses all of a sudden find "life".

This has stuck with them. When the harness players in the HANA survey this month were asked what was the number one problem at the Meadowlands, the majority answered "questionable trainers". This finding is somewhat surprising due to the fact that field size and field quality has been such an issue of late. Those factors scored low, however.

The thing that I think is positive about this branding though is that it can be reversed. Another part of the survey offers evidence of that.

The WEG circuit has had their share of shady trainers, just like the Meadowlands, and the complaints from the early 1990's onwards were there. But WEG have taken a hardline against them in the past eight or ten years. If you are a 25 year old lighting up a horse like a Christmas tree and winning at 40% off the claim, chances are you are going to be given a rough ride at Woodbine.

If it was the year 2005, I would bet dollars to donuts "Questionable trainers" would have come first at Woodbine too in a survey. However, in the HANA survey, it came third.

If Jeff Gural gets the Meadowlands off the ground and tackles that number one branding problem, I would submit that in a few years another survey would take place, and the questionable trainer category would be down the list.

I think that works with most tracks, too. There are a ton of thoroughbred tracks with bad branding problems due to questionable trainers. There are a ton of tracks where people know the takeout is sky high, or the field size is too low and it is what those tracks are known for. It will take them awhile to see the fruits of their labor in trying to attack these issues, but in my opinion there is some fruit on the tree if they have some foresight and patience to give it a shot.