Will Luck Do For Racing What Rounders Did for Poker?

In 1998, the poker movie Rounders, starring Matt Damon, was released. It did not do very well at the box office, but the film has become a cult classic in the world of poker.  It’s credited by some for giving a big boost to poker, worldwide, and young card pros like Dutch Boyd and Gavin Griffin have publicly stated the movie first got them interested in hold ‘em.  Anecdotally, according to players, if you sit at a table in Vegas, it’s common for lingo with a Russian accent (after John Malkovich’s character in the movie) to pop up after a bad beat or two. The movie clearly did enter the poker culture.

Will Luck help horse racing in a similar way?  

To read the whole article, please see this weekends HRU. 

Note: If you are interested in Luck and racing and want to chat about it, our old pal Dan is co-hosting a Luck chat on twitter Monday evenings. Follow @thorotrends for more.

Saturday Notes

Here are a few things catching my eye this Saturday.

When I started in the 'net business in around 2000, I was always amazed and interested by the freemium model, lifetime customer values, start-up spend and new business marketing. It shocked me that offshore gaming, for example, knew exactly what to offer a new customer to land him/her, to steal him away from somewhere else. Things like bet $100 get $100, or get 50 bets for referring a friend were common in 1998 or 1999.

Outside gambling this was alive and well too. Online stock brokers offered free software, 50 or 100 free trades, you first month trading free, and so on. Having worked with an online stock broker at that time on their online marketing, I always loved their passion for trying things new.

Racing never seemed to follow suit.  The last several years we've seen more of it, but it seemed like an exercise, not real marketing, and quite honestly it was disconcerting, because it's just math.

Twinspires this year though, has done the math. If you refer new customers to them, there's no pussyfooting around. You get $250 and a new Kindle Fire.

We're going to have to steer more and more people into betting on the net, so we might as well accept that and be aggressive. I bet TS gains some customers with this promotion.

The first online betting business who steps outside the box, works with industry leaders in an aggressive way, and goes after online sports bettors and poker players, wins.

Anyhow, some more things:

Great chatter in HRU today on "What happened to Meadowlands' handles?"Loved the comments from Les.

Billy Davis will have a good career with this kind of talk:

• “These trainers, grooms and owners, they work all week on these horses. They invest all their time and money and it can all go down the drain in the two minutes I sit behind them on the track.  

Nice pdf of the McKinsey plans (pdf). There's some good stuff in there.

Fascinating talk in New York state about expanded gaming, operators wanting more from slot revenue, and more. Being a free market dude, I simply can't wrap my head around it all. Don't vote me Prime Minister, that's for sure. The corporate tax rate would be zero and there would be no goofy corporate welfare subsidies. That's mainly because I don't understand business social engineering, I guess.

Congrats to Standardbred Canada's Darryl Kaplan. He's one of the good guys.

Carryover today at Aqueduct for pick 6 players. Okay super high five carry at Tampa as well.

Good luck today folks.

Wednesday's Here

It's snowing in this part of the world today, pretty hard. I watched "House Hunters" last evening and saw houses listed at $250k in Arizona that were palatial. I want to move to Arizona.

Anyhoo, here are some things that caught my eye today.

Fantastic piece linked by Scott Ferguson (I saw it on Dan's twitter feed) about Betfair. The betting business is a business and needs to be treated as such, or we'll be racing for ribbons. It's nice to see someone speak plainly about it.

A few snips. 

On traditional bookies and old racing trying to get them to pay more than them (with a narrative that really isn't valid, like we see often in North America with ADW's):

• Betfair has revolutionised betting but its effect on the on-course market has squeezed margins – good for punters but bad for racing, with its income based on gross profits. Do you have any sympathy with the view that Betfair should pay more to UK racing?
  There is no evidence that margins have been affected. That was the finding of the Donoughue Commission which looked into starting prices. Even the traditional bookmakers no longer say that margins have been affected in any material way. Do I have any sympathy with the view that we should pay more to UK racing? Absolutely not. We pay effectively the levy on 10.75% of our gross profits on British horseracing like every other bookmaker.

On the big prize money going to only a few owners with super stables and betfair's creation of series that benefit the smaller owners:

• I’m afraid that sort of thinking is consistent with the idea that racing doesn’t have to compete. The fact is you have to look after the owner – and there are 65% of owners whose horses never see the winner’s enclosure. It is vital that the bread and butter owner has a chance of a big payday.

• We support Champions’ Day at Ascot and believe premier racing is vital for the industry. But if you do that to the exclusion of the smaller owner then you do so at your peril. You should bear in mind that over 50% of prize-money goes to about 30 people. The industry is benefited by ownership from the many thousands beneath those 30 people. 

On betting to lose/corruption:

• California was the first state to introduce drug testing on racehorses. Funnily enough, there were positive examples, so people said therefore California was responsible for doping in horseracing. The recent corruption case demonstrates that we have been the only company to share specific account information and details to help police the sport. The idea that corruption in horseracing started when we arrived in 2000 is ridiculous.

Fantastic piece with a real kick in the ass attitude that racing needs, in my opinion.

 More notes:

Hoof Beats published the trackmaster speed ratings for three year old pacers in their last issue. As we know, Stan's experimental ratings were rightfully retired with his passing. It was a good report. I do disagree on who was chosen first in the TM ratings, however. I thought Sweet Lou said game, set and match in the BC Final.

Big M goes guarantee on Friday for the pick 5.

Balmoral's handles keep growing. Give this track a look for their 15% pick 4. The pools are huge.

Ahh, the sweet smell of protecting racing video's.

Free data from Bloomberg. Amazing. h/t to O_crunk

This week  - writing about Luck and Marketing for HRU. If you haven't signed up for HRU in your inbox, it's free.

I always like going through Horse of the Year votes, or others, to see what goofy things were voted on.  Monkey on My Wheel and Up the Credit got votes over San Pail.

Prix' D'amerique. Loved the fun, loved the gelding in the stars and stripes, loved the hype. Cool video.





Roger Way, a tireless horseplayer advocate and monster racing fan, passed away yesterday. It always amazes me that (he was 75) horse racing gets so in your blood that you are working today to change it, when we're likely not here to see the results of the change. I spoke with Roger several times and he always struck me as a kind, kind man. Rest in peace.