If #harnessracing is Afraid of the Answer......

There's a saying, apparently, from the legal community - never ask a question if you don't know the answer.

Today at the USTA meeting Jason Settlemoir put forth a motion that the USTA ask its membership the feelings on a question regarding slots and marketing. In a nutshell, it asked if a percentage of slot money should go into a slush fund to be spent on marketing and ancillary items to promote and grow the sport.

When the 54 director votes were tallied, the score was 47 to 7..... against.

Yes, the leadership of an organization voted down, in a landslide, asking the grassroots membership a question. 

Sure this seems super-silly, but why they did it, I think, is an easy one. They knew that if they asked the question the answer would be a resounding "yes". Then all hell would break loose. They'd have to try and get that done.

If harness racing is afraid of the answers to questions, they don't ask them. That seems to be the mantra of the sport. And it's probably a big reason why its growing more and more irrelevant.

The New York Times New "Anti-Trump" Ad Campaign Isn't Wrong, & Racing Can Learn From It

The New York Times is running their very first TV ad campaign.

The goal of the new campaign is to increase their paid subscription base. This base, with every Trump tweet against the NYT, grew in Q4. But despite the top-line growth, advertising revenue was down in Q4 by more than subscription revenue was up. They clearly need to build up the subscription base, in this chicken and egg corporate scenario.

A tweet caught my eye about this marketing spend, and it echoes something we hear in racing quite a bit:

What I don't get about the NY Times ad campaign is that it is targeted at its base audience and employees. Won't encourage any new converts.

— Rory Cooper (@rorycooper) February 26, 2017

This is indubitably correct. They are absolutely preaching to the choir. But is that bad? Not in my view.

Currently there are many millions of 'soft readers' who completely agree with the Times editorial slant, who do not pay. Using Trump, "truth" and his tweets which shine a spotlight on their paper is tactically sound way to encourage the soft readers into paying ones.

Conversely, I don't read the Times much at all and I won't subscribe. Why would they waste marketing money trying to convert me (and others like me) to a paying customer?

Racing, as we talked about before, has a 'soft' set of previous customers who have grown weary of high takeout, had other things going on in their lives where racing took the short end of the stick, etc. That's a target market for racing, just like it is for the Times for news. These folks, with a nudge, are predisposed to give you another chance.

In racing, we often hear about national ad campaigns, advertising that speaks to the party-types, going after millennials who like video games and bars and bands. Why would we divert precious and finite dollars in campaigns targeting people who probably will never become long-term customers? Racing, like the New York Times, shouldn't.

The Number of Races Aren't as Important as You Think

'Spreading a product too thin' is something that major league sports, like the NFL, grapple with.

"For the 2016 season, that meant a total of 110 NFL television windows when you add up the three every Sunday, plus Monday nights and Thursday nights, Thanksgiving and Christmas, That’s more than the league has ever had before, and the ratings data suggest that some fans felt that football was spread so thin that they simply couldn’t keep up with it all.

The NFL may realize that’s a problem, and there are already indications that the league is looking at scaling back".

In racing we (obviously, look at field size numbers) spread much too thin, but there are clearly forces at play -- mainly about keeping the supply side humming.

However, and more broadly, there is a parallel to horse racing.

When we examine the monthly quarterly Equibase handle numbers, we may see a headline "Handle down 2%, races down 2%" and think everything is fine. But that's missing an important point. Like the NFL, as the windows shrink in number, the gambling product gets better, and the betting menu gets uncluttered. This doesn't result in a one to one reduction (or increase) in handle.

The obvious example is Hong Kong, where they run few races to monster handles. If the meet tripled in length, they are not going to do three times as much handle.

In North America we've seen this first hand, where in Canada harness race dates were clobbered after slots were removed, but customer demand held fairly firm. For those who remember the "elite meet" at Monmouth, this same thing was apparent. In 2009, NJ thoroughbred handle was about $350M. In 2010, with almost 50% fewer racedays, handle was over $470M.

Smart people say the number of races should be looked at more like field size is, as a handle determinant. That's probably a good place to start.


Have a good Monday everyone.