Progress in the Sport - We Learn Things if You Let Us

The Pegasus' timing was wrong. How do we know? Because some people - not employed by Gulfstream or Equibase or any alphabet - had access to video, and the brains to decipher what they were seeing.

10 or 15 years ago no one would've even known.

Meanwhile, January's handle numbers were released.

Hold it, who is the person with the funny avatar? Where are the real numbers, the ones from the industry?

They're not being published until the quarter is over.

Reporting of handle has progressed, and it's gotten better, but it's not coming from the industry. Social media discussions, and some (like o_crunk) with access to the numbers, have provided that progress. We are smarter because of it.

As above, we don't need a degree in statistics to figure out that January was a decent month for the sport, with the tracks in the middle down a wee bit.

This industry data has still not been unleashed; it's really been about one or two people doing some datamining. But think what might happen if it was?

Maybe there would be study of what bets are working; subsetting weather data with handle; the number of races, time of day, day of week, types of races, card length, post dragging.... all of those things may be analyzed by smart people, interested in the sport. For free.

Ditto with timing. Smart people having access, and offering solutions to run-up, timing issues and just about everything else that goes into a past performance.

The sport will learn something if they become more transparent and open-minded. It can increase revenues for the sport, and make life better for customers.

Note:

Thanks to Brandon, I see Swedish handle was about $US1.4B last year, up another 6%.  Sweden's economy is about the size of Pennsylvania's. And this is all bet on harness racing.

"ATG has, on behalf of the sport, has invested considerable resources to reverse any negative years and meet the sharply increasing competition in the gaming market"