The Horse Corporation Makes Moves (and so Do the Degens)

Death Star news hot off the presses -- CDI has purchased the 'intellectual property' for the Preakness (and Black Eyed Susan) from Stronach for $85 million (almost a whopping eight Flightline two year olds). 

What's that mean? I'm not totally sure what CDI does with it, but I think it tells us something about 1/ST racing, i.e. the divestment plan is very real. 

Corporate entities have the chops to run with something like this - Sony Music bought Springsteen's stuff, not @angryyankee from Jersey - while single type proprietorships generally don't. In the long-term it's not hard to imagine this working out for the Death Star. 

CDI CEO Announcing New Bets

In other Horse Corporation news, ladies and gentlemen, The Corporation has brought you new bets. To great, or maybe not so great fanfare, we have, for the spring meet, odds and evens and match up bets. 

The warm and cuddly one broke down the math:

That's ummm, not really very good. But in horse racing land, where the sport is scared of its own shadow, it's probably expected. After all, the only way exchange wagering was tried was if the juice was astronomical. 

It's very hard to understand, for me anyway, why each and every time, the sport takes zero chance on a wager. The odd/even bet is clearly targeted to newbies, probably playing the two big upcoming cards which make up most of the meets newbie handle. I get charging some juice. 

But the match-up bets could really attract some gamblers who don't normally play this sport. 

Different cohorts, the same price. I think they should write that on the sports' epitaph.

On the bright side of the moon, we have betting degen, the (second) best racecalling horse driver in the United States, and guy who sold a bachelor pad in Lexington worthy of Charlie Sheen's character in Two and a Half Men - Gabe Prewitt. He runs Hoosier Park, and he noticed (again because he's a degen like us), that the hole giving at Hoosier was startlingly insane. 

Thanks to @RacingBeard for reaching out & a BIG thank you to those that raced Friday night that put on a first class show https://t.co/sBlx2fuexK

— Gabe Prewitt (@gabe_prewitt) April 19, 2026

Gabe, unlike most, decided to do something about it. Because he knows the game so well, and cares about it, let's hope the early reaction from participants - Gabe is a #%$)@*)$ - is more mellow, and they try to comply. 

Change is hard in horse racing. Every new bet has to have the juice of a state lottery; every change to how the game is presented is either dismissed out of hand or considered heresy where the perpetrator should be burned at the stake. 

I don't hold out hope the Corporate Entity will change, but maybe little ol Gabriel can get the job done.

Have a nice Tuesday everyone. 

Lower Juice Never Hit Us Right Between the Eyes

RBC, one of the big banks up here in Canuckland, released a report this week detailing that one trillion bucks left Canada the last ten years. This is nothing new for the movers and shakers, they've known this for many years, and have been warning about the consequences of the lower growth that followed. 

While the headline screamed in some financial papers, a few folks have popped their heads up to notice, but it's kind of a yawn, especially in the MSM. One trillion is a big number that's hard to get your head around, plus what does this have to do with our daily lives anyway?

Likewise, it's kind of the same story with lower takeout. We've talked about it for thousands of posts here alone. There have been seminars and discussions and gambling conferences; just about everyone talked about it, at least intermittently. 

But it's kind of always been met with a yawn. Purses up, handle down meant things were fine. We should be picking winners and not worrying about gaining value with lower juice. "I walked through the grandstand and no one knows what takeout is". The Fanduel bettors are betting higher takeout parlays, take that! The "takeout people" were not sharp bettors, they were "hawks" like we all wanted to invade a track in Grenada. 

Even when a study or some metric was reported that showed how handle could increase, it was summarily dismissed. I remember when the Horseplayer Association arranged a boycott of Santa Anita after their takeout hike, the handle fell. One of the CHRB members blamed the losses on the upcoming Olympics. There was always something to pin something on; to misdirect from an important issue.

Just like a country needs businesses to invest to grow, an industry needs customers to. Lower juice means more money invested into the sport, which means a healthier industry. It's really not rocket science. But when we muddy the waters with nonsense, that simple equation is like fourth year calculus. 

At the conclusion of World War II in Japan, the United States dropped one of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima. Due to the slower dissemination of information at the time, the citizenry primarily received unremarkable accounts and was largely enthusiastic about this new power. Support for the use of another bomb was high in surveys. 

About one year later, as more information became available, a New Yorker article, complete with photojournalism, illustrated the dire reality in a 30,000-word piece. The article presented the facts without any editorializing. This piece hit the public square in the forehead. 

The response was overwhelming. Support for ever using a bomb like it again plummeted. One article changed everything. 

We've never had the "one article".  The thing that said, here's the truth - let's get to building a modern game. 

We've gotten misinformation, misdirection and frustratingly  - modifying a system that says (wink, wink, nudge, nudge don't tell anyone), of course lower takeout works, it's why the CAW's get it. 

It's likely the fight for lower takeout for every day players is over. Seriously, when a track like Kentucky Downs hikes the juice where it doesn't depend on the amount bet, it has to be. But to those of you who tried your best, I suspect you were on the right side of history. 

There just wasn't a New Yorker article to share it. 

Broadcast is Dead for Racing, so What's Left?

With the recent demise of TVG's broadcast arm, we were met with more news that NYRA would be grabbing the ball to broadcast more 'TV type' coverage of the sport. I welcome that, as I am sure you do as a fellow die-hard. 

But I wonder, in the long term, does it matter?

Over the years, I have been a daily reader of Cord Cutters News, and it has become increasingly evident that the broadcast industry is experiencing a significant decline. However, in recent years, this trend has intensified. Whether it is the closure of a popular cable channel or the substantial loss of 40% of its subscribers by ESPN, these events are a clear indication of the industry’s challenges. 

What has taken its place has been primarily community-driven. Individuals gravitate towards a brand or personality they perceive as authentic. These outlets, as you are aware, offer a substantial number of long-form interviews that are generally on-demand and free. 

I think many are very good. For we Canucks, we may have watched the long-form Bloomberg interview with Canada's opposition leader a couple of weeks ago. It was hard-hitting, where we saw a pol answering deep policy questions we don't see them have to answer very often. 

Over in gambling land, this is prevalent. Yes, we still get the pablum of the Michael Strahan parlay brought to you by Draft Kings, but solid gambling content on YouTube and twitter channels has grown. 

Rob Pizzola's Hammer Betting Network is one I follow. Just yesterday their live Masters Betting broadcast had 3,000 views in real time across Youtube alone. Although that might not sound like much for a live broadcast, we can put it in context. 

ESPN, beamed into 100 million homes, had terrible ratings on their similar shows, sometimes averaging well under 100,000 live. Yes, this was during the era where their hosts were encouraged to share their politics that turned so many in their targeted demographic off, but regardless, the numbers were low. Rob's network is one of hundreds, and when you add them all up we see the sea-change.

The problem for this sport, as I see it, is that we were never free to build-out these communities. 

Racing, from the beginning of time, was centrally planned. Want to show a race on Youtube? Roberts would say no. Want to create something - anything - outside the racing politburo, it was near impossible. Even if you showed a past performance screen shot you might get a nasty-worded letter.  

People in our sport today try - and bless you all. But the customer base is now so thin that you find yourselves trying to build a sturdy community out of water-soaked kindling.

Is community building via new broadcast mediums impossible for horse racing? Is it too far gone? 

I don't know, but I do look at what Chess.com has built for that old, slow-moving game. Leaving aside the subscribers, which suggest a net valuation of about $2 billion for their business, live games get thousands of views and the community itself is filled with very good content creation. It's not centrally planned - it never was - and these channels drive defined revenue. So, I guess there's hope. 

For our sport it might be a pipe-dream, a Rick's Natural Star. But I believe, with TVG out of the space, perhaps there is some opportunity to open the sport up once and for all. If we ditch the protectionism and stab the intransigence with a steely knife, who knows, maybe something pops up. 

Have a nice Wednesday everyone.