No, TVG-Fanduel TV's Demise Wasn't Inevitable

The big news in horse racing land the past week was not the Florida or Arkansas Derby, Repole fighting a two front war while trying to run a football league, or even salt-of-the-earth Marcus Hersh getting flamed on the twitter. It was, of course, the huge news about TVG. 

• FanDuel TV will reduce its workforce by about 60 percent at the end of June, after honoring commitments to Keeneland and Triple Crown coverage. The remaining employees will continue through the end of November.

Horse racing is a tight community, and I, like many of you, have chatted with TVG folks over the many years. This clearly sucks. For them mostly, but for us and for the sport in general. 

What irks me to no end, quite frankly, is hearing people profess about how inevitable this all is. That horse racing is yesterday's sport and that it's a complete eventuality it all goes away. 

That, in my humble opinion, is a pile of horse shit. 

Back in 2012 Kodak went under, years after controlling 80% of the film market. 

Old-school film was replaced by digital, as we all know, and off they went into the sunset. But Kodak's folding wasn't inevitable either. 

Kodak had a massive revenue edge, with money sitting in a bank account to invest. 

Kodak knew about digital and had the technology right under their roof before many others, but they failed to do anything about it. They held the skeleton key to the disruption that was coming, but they didn't have the courage to disrupt themselves. 

They rested on what they had, while the customer was telling them they weren't liking what they were offering. They chose legacy over responsiveness and agility. 

In our sport, we have been gifted billions upon billions of dollars through slots and legislation, and we've watched - meet after meet, month after month, year after year - demand crater, without diversifying and investing where it was most-needed. 

We can complain about the CDI Death Star getting their cut and spending it on historical racing machines and casinos and stock buybacks and making Arlington Park a parking lot, but they're a private company; they're not responsible for the sport. The other half of the slot money went to the various alphabets; they're ones who are tasked with caring about it. 

In our sport, the ubiquitous alphabets knew what was coming - sports betting, digital casinos and everything else we can bet on, including if the President will have a ham sandwich for lunch tomorrow.  

How did they prepare for this, no less while they were given a monopoly on online wagering for years? I'll wait for your answer.  

Kodak (and others) taught us that new technology is important, right? Today, all we read about is Kalshi and Polymarket. They're everywhere, they are the AI of bubbles, the cocaine that fueled the cocaine bear; they're hotter than an otter's pocket. 

Well, TVG is owned by the company that owned the world's biggest, best and most used prediction market - Betfair. To add insult to injury, in 2012, California passed legislation granting monopoly power to racing for exchange wagering/prediction markets. 

If you didn't know that, you read it right. If the sport acted on this 14 years ago, instead of holding on to what it had, scared of "cannibalizing win pools" or whatever else it used to excuse and encourage their paralysis, the private equity folks and the Trump kids would be coming to this sport - horse racing - for a piece of the action. 

Imagine that. Horse racing - you and me, and the grooms, the hotwalkers, the TVG cameraman, the trainers and owners and everyone else - would get a slice of every settled bet wagered for who is going to win the Super Bowl, or what square-jawed, creatine filled headshot king is leaving the Bachelorette next. 

So, yes, it disturbs me that a sport with billions in wagering, with billions in purses, with billions of slot money, with hundreds of thousands of participants and fans and bettors; and farmers, and vets and vet techs and farriers and feedmen, has been represented so poorly. 

And to hear over and over again that this was all "inevitable"? 

Give me a freaking break. 

Record Keeping with Wagers Acts as a Good Mental Proxy

In Chris's newly released book, he spends some time talking to players about the sometimes/often boring task of record keeping. I think most of us know it's important, but it can take a back seat to the work of handicapping, or more often in modern betting, database tweaking. 

To me, one of the best things about record keeping, though, is what it can tell us as in bird's eye view. 

I recently went through my quarterly stats, and was pleased to note that what I was intrinsically feeling about my play was confirmed. 

First, I looked at my pick 5 volume as a percentage of total play. 

At Woodbine, my pick 5 play totaled about 12% of my total play (this may sound high, but in harness with mucho-chalk, it's a lower takeout staple). 

At the Meadowlands, it was less than 1% of my total play (0.7%). 

Leaving aside the fact that Mohawk races more often and they have two pick 5's a night, this volume difference is stark. 

However, those of you who play the Big M know full well that the first pick 5 involves amateur drivers and the cheapest horses on the grounds, often both. 

I'm not consciously trying to play less, but my decision making is forcing me to play less. 

In effect, it confirms my decision making is good. If I was playing a harness racing staple like a pick 5 to push volume, my Big M volume would be greater. I'd be "playing just to play".

A lot of the benefits of record keeping do not have to be stats-laden, mathy, wild exercises. It can be used to confirm if we're seeing the ball well, or not seeing it well; if we're pushing in areas we should not be, or underbetting in areas we need not to be. 

I was chatting with a professional player yesterday and he typed, "really, gambling is just a massive test of curiosity, grit, discipline, and work ethic." 

I think that's right - and monitoring our play, even as simply as above, can help us all become better. 

Have a nice Monday everyone. If you want to order Chris's excellent book, it's at the link above. 

Not to Be Outdone, TSG proposes an Exciting New Bet to Save Horse Racing

Yesterday we all woke up to the exciting news that Turfway Park has created a new wager, the Octofecta.  

This bet involves selecting the top 8 finishers in a race, and if no one hits it, it carries over, and over, and perhaps over again. 

If there's one thing we players have asked the industry for lately, it's more high takeout, impossible to hit bets that the CAW's will swoop in to suck every inch of value out of on a mandatory day. 

Thankfully the fine people at Turfway/CDI have delivered. 

Although we might think "Mission Accomplished", Santa Anita is proposing to make this sport even greater by being responsive to our needs and wants. 

I have it on good authority that for the upcoming spring meet, the Great Race Place has created a new bet of their own. They've called it the Octco Octofecta. 

This bet involves selecting the top eight finishers in a race but you have to do it eight consecutive times. Is your mind blown? Mine is too. 

"We spoke to Alix Earle and other influencers and they loved the idea", said an unnamed Magna TSG, exec. "They believed this will really attack the Gen Zers who love lots of money."

The influencers have also agreed to make some tickets on the Tik Tok. 

"Win-Win for everyone", said the TSG exec. 

There are a lot of people out there on Horse Racing Twitter who are downers about the sport. 

Big Al hasn't posted anything positive in months, ITP is super cranky, Bucky is so sour on the sport all we get from him now are porn references. 

But this, once and for all, in this observers humble view, proves without a doubt that this sport never stops working to grow the bet; to never rest until it squeezes every last living dollar out of everyone. To what, yes, to make Horse Racing Great Again (#MRGA). 

I for one will be hammering the Octofecta at Turfway, and with all my profits? You guessed it, I am going after the octo-octofecta at Santa Anita. Let's roll. 

A Good Pod Listen - A Few Solid Gems for Players

I thought I'd drop a quick note about Chris's Sport of Kings pod drop yesterday for the Fountain of Youth pick 5 with DeRosa. 

With Chris carrying on this pod for Scott, there's been a slight shift where the guest talks about style of play and game philosophy and I thought Ed brought up some worthwhile topics. 

Record keeping can be hard to look at, especially if we're losing, because who wants to revisit a train wreck. But, Ed used Keith Bush's friend Claude to look at his betting from 2022 (downloadable at Twinspires and Xpressbet for example... sorry HPI guys no soup for you) and he says he learned a lot. His tip might help you. 

When it comes to tickets and selection, he also had a neat anecdote regarding his big leans on "A" horses in his grid. These are the horses that stood out to him, of course, and he found (so far, but I imagine this to be the case long term) they are his true best bets. 

I think we know our blink-type horses (if we're any good at all) for pick 'ns' are the drivers of our revenue. Sure we might've got lucky with a spread, but over the many years our pick 4 and 5 hits are horses we liked that we leaned on. Lean-on horses in sequences our experience tells us will be sneaky and good.

What most struck me with the discussion was what I believe wholeheartedly, and what I've spoken about as a trait of a lot of successful players - confidence. 

Ed looked at his record keeping and he knows what he's good at. Steph Curry is confident he can hit the three so a lot of them go in, and horseplayers, in my view, are the same. Ed knows what he is good at, and what he is bad at. It's easy to pull the trigger when you feel right, and know, in the long run at least, you're going to be in good shape. 

It's the same with pick 'n' leans. If you're confident it's a good play, not only do you have a chance at becoming a winning player by learning to construct better tickets, you also handle your losses better. It's an amazing feeling to lose and say "it was a good play that I win at, so it's no big deal I lost."

Anyhow, I thought I'd drop this note today because even if you're not handicapping tomorrow's solid GP card, I think there's some sweet stuff in that pod. 

Have a great weekend everyone. 

Monday's (Tiny) Super Spectacular Blog

Hello everyone. I have not wrote a Super Spectacular Blog © in a long while, and well, this isn't one of them either. But since it's been quite some time, I figure I'd jot down some random things that filled my head. 

The Biz Loves the Hard to Hit Bets

The $1 Big M pick 8 debuted on Friday with around $5,000 in the pool. The bet is seeded with $50,000, so technically, if you are the only winner early on, it's big EV. This is not dissimilar to the one at Scioto a couple of years ago that I and many of you chased from time to time. Regardless, a $1 pick 8 in the Big M races which can be amazingly curious and non-formful in spots, we could see some big pools sooner or later. 

Unpaid Plug

Chris's Bet with the Best book will be available soon. You can keep track of it, and other things, by checking out his website. 

Corporates Everywhere

I missed last night's halftime show with Big Bunny (Gabe Prewitt you're making me mistype this) simply because a guy I never heard of, singing songs I have never heard, in a language I don't understand, seemed negative EV. Plus, I did have some halftime betting to do. 

But, as many have pointed out, it's the way of the corporate world right now, especially in sports, and the NFL is probably the best at it. Namely, growing the game in all parts of the world, or with demos you don't have, is black type for the Wharton grads. We see it with Alix with an i at Gulfstream in our small way. 

I notice the NFL-MBA suits are pushing Germany bigly the last couple of years. If the overlords decide that next year's halftime show is Germany-icon David Hasselhoff singing the hits, it could be hard to pass up. 

It's Early, or is it?

Early Derby top ten lists are generally the worst. The best colts probably have not started yet, and recency bias prevails. Every prep race it seems is the next big thing.

This year, David Aragona popped Nearly into the number one slot, and I wonder, is this season perhaps different? This colt was dominant and seems he can go forever. 

Barn Raids

Rumors usually abound regarding the powers-that-be raiding barns and this past week it was no different. I heard from a couple of folks that they happened. 

I guess these "visits" have to be done in secret, and we're never going to know the details for sure. But they do piss me off. As one of the barns - rumored to be visited - got cold this week, what's real and what's memorex? When will the barn get uncold? If a barn gets cold isn't that an admission of guilt. 

So many questions, so few answers. And as usual, bettors are the last to know. 

Just Say No to Narratives

Trent Dilfer, Jake Delhomme, Rex Grossman, Nick Foles, Colin Kaepernick, Jimmy G and Sam Darnold. It could be a law firm, or could be a "middling to bad quarterbacks who never made it" trivia answer. But of course, each of them either brought their teams to, or won a Super Bowl. 

Embrace of Betting but Only if I say So

One of my favorite videos to watch from time to time, especially for the old footage, is Adam Sandler's (what I think was hilarious) The Lonesome Kicker. The NFL clearly licensed this video, but equally hilarious was their editing. 

"I didn't realize if I shanked one and blew the point spread some drunk guys would throw me into their hibachi after the game" was changed to "I didn't realize if I shanked one because my toe hurt".

 

 Now, of course, we can't turn on the tee vee for the NFL ten seconds without being inundated with gambling chatter. Point spreads were alive and well when Sandler made this video, and they're alive and well now. Nothing has changed, but everything has changed at the same time. Sometimes it feels like we're living in a simulation.

Have a very nice Monday everyone. 

Racing's "Vanishing" Attendance

Bucky shared an interesting graphic today on the twitter - 

This isn't a shock and awe for you and those who follow the sport, but it is interesting to me nonetheless. 

Back in the 1960's, with the emergence of television, Pete Rozelle and the NFL were worried. If people could watch football at home, who would be left to go to the games? That clearly didn't happen. NFL games are, and were an event; Americana if you will. 

In 2025, stadiums are packed with people buying $400 tickets and $12 beer. They're camping out, tailgating, and in Buffalo at least, jumping off stuff to break tables. 

Racing on the other hand, as the graphic shows, has not had such luxury. 

This is primarily, in my view, because it was never a sport in the first place. We aren't tailgating before the third at Aqueduct; we aren't looking for tickets on stubhub for the feature at Mountaineer. Other than a Triple Crown race or a trip to Saratoga, we just aren't doing it. 

We're watching on television, on phones or on a computer .... and we're betting on the same devices. 

In my opinion, the sport has spent a ton of money and thinking and sweat equity on trying to drive people from home to the racetrack. We've paid money to Alix with an "i" Earle and many others my demographic have never seems to have heard of. We have a Youtube dude that owns a piece of Sandman. We had an ABR Bus. We've had kids in suits and hats getting smashed on Grey Goose (hey, it's today's sponsor). 

The sweat equity, cold hard cash and machinery thinking we've exhausted on trying to get people to watch the sport is truly mind-boggling. But, again in my view, it was misguided because unlike NFL football, the reason people packed the stands wasn't to watch the sport. 

No, 37,754 people showed up in 1946 on Met Mile day to bet the sport, not watch it. And the millions who poured into Roosevelt and Yonkers over the next fifty years on cold and rainy Tuesday evenings were there for the same thing. 

The sport of horse racing's attendance never "vanished". It was never real in the first place. The only thing real was the gambling.

When we lost that, as we have the last twenty or so years - I think, in part at least, by spending too much time on buses and suits and influencers and marketing, and neglecting the betting game itself - it's an enormous task to turn around. 

Have a good Wednesday everyone.