Fleeting Racing Wagering Opportunities

I was having a quick chat with an ADW dude on the twitter today. We were speaking about the lack of advertising of ADW's, and horse betting in general. I'm too lazy to check, but I am sure there are a hundred blog posts here on that topic. It's certainly real - it's difficult to advertise horse wagering in a number of places.

However, despite these roadblocks (and lobbying to break down the regulation should have been done), the fact remains - for racing and its online wagering, the critical mass is just not there, advertising or not.

The graph above shows (click it to enlarge) total searches for betting horse racing, month by month. Other than the Derby month, the number of people wanting to learn about betting horse racing online is a very small pool. In some months there are barely a thousand searches for "horse racing betting" and associated matches (if you look at exact, bet horse racing, the numbers are much smaller).

For a comparison, here's a snapshot of one game (daily fantasy) and one sport (the NBA).

Daily fantasy basketball has only existed for a brief time, and brand searches are higher than many broad match horse racing betting queries.

I believe this is a pox on racing's house. While initiatives like America's Best Racing have been funded for lifestyle dynamics (and this was recent), horse racing and their monopoly on online wagering didn't do the work. The monopolist's mindset (and general average cost equals price inefficiency) has ruled the day, in my view.

Why do the work when you're technically the only game in town? You do the work because you want people searching for what you're offering to increase over time. We do the work to increase pull demand with push demand. The sport never really embraced that, and even in times like this where marketing should increase to capture new markets, it does so in a bit of a vacuum.

Have a great Thursday everyone.