Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  The Who

I used to say that whatever job you have, the first thing you demand is that your boss be the person in the company most qualified to be the boss. Even if you are a customer of the company it is critical to believe the person in charge is capable of making sure the company provides the best customer service possible.

The boss walks a fine line between keeping his employees and shareholders happy and making customers believe the company also has their best interests at heart. When either group has complaints, even if those complaints are off the wall, the groups expect the boss to at least listen. They expect the boss not to be arrogant or dismissive. They expect the boss to be measured and wise in his response. They realize that they may not always get their way, but they will respect decisions that are made with sincerity, thoughtfulness, and fairness.

If you follow the public media, taking potshots at racetrack management  is a common occurrence. If Twitter had been around since the 50’s the documented list of complaints, real or imagined, would be volumes longer.

Management has done plenty right. As is normally the case, good decisions rarely get mountains of praise, but bad decisions will unleash a volley of negative response. But it is different now than it was in the 50’s. Then the sport was still closer to the summit than the base. The big three (baseball, horseracing, and boxing) were still the big three. Football and basketball were years from becoming the mega-sports they are today.

If you told track management in the 50’s that by 2015 they would be a minor sport struggling at many levels, you’d have been laughed out of their offices. Why is attendance lagging? What are the real problems? Drugs? Too many tracks? A balkanized structure in which states govern with a myriad of different rules? Takeouts that are too high? Too many overlapping post times? An aging customer base? In-breeding that has weakened the breed?

If you did a survey, all of those things would show up on the list, and they are problems, but the basic issue is that the racetrack experience is no longer an essential part of horseracing. On any given day, the percentage of dollars wagered at locations other than the racetrack approaches 85%. Except for the boutique meets like Saratoga, the on-track experience in 2015 is often not much different than it was in 1955, other than warehouse sized video screens and better betting machines. In fact, racing in many cases is taking place in the same facility it did in 1955. Racing has lost its appeal as a gathering place for race fans and has been reduced to its one critical element – betting. How did you fall in love with horseracing? Was it no more complicated than you could bet a horse? Or did it have something to do with the atmosphere of the track? That first time you heard thundering hooves. The smell of cheap cigars. Surly tellers.  We’ve lost the one thing that hooked us. We loved being at the track. It was the place we felt at home. How do you attract new fans, young fans, when the experience has no more romance than a video game?

I’m not suggesting we go back to the 50’s when you could only make a bet at the track, but there has to be a place where the racetrack experience becomes real to budding fans. Horseracing has to be different – better – than a lottery ticket or a slot machine. The stars of the sport must become an essential part of the experience; it must rival the other sports for fan attachment.

It is rarely marketed as a sport, especially on the racing channels. If you knew no better you might think he raison d’etre for racing channels is to promote their affiliated betting sites. How much of the day is devoted to education? How much of the day is devoted to the beauty of the athletes? As long as racing makes its sole line of promotion gambling, it misses the opportunity to promote itself as a sport. The NFL may be as popular as it is in part because of betting on games, but it doesn’t market itself as gambling but as a sport with team loyalty and star power. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

The irony is racing is trying to attract a younger generation by marketing the sport to them as an opportunity to spend money they don’t have. Despite a society that venerates older people by giving them discounts on everything as if they were on the edge of a financial cliff, the reality is that there is no generation so financially well off as the one comprised of people looking in the rear-view mirror to watch their disappearing middle age.

The medication rules being promoted by ARCI  and RMTC will help some people believe in the integrity of racing, but all the medication rules in the world are unlikely to ever satisfy the animal rights people who firmly believe the one thing a horse was born to do, run, must ultimately end up as abuse if the running occurs on a racetrack. And as I have pointed out, despite the ARCI promises of fair medications rules, the implementation in places like Maryland hasn’t been quite so smooth.

The solution to balkanization can take many forms. There is a faction that believes there must be a central authority for all tracks with a uniform set of rules, sort of a Roger Goodell for horseracing. There is a faction that believes over time if we do nothing in particular the small tracks will continue to fade away until there are only the mega-jurisdictions left. Sort of a Darwinian approach – the strong will survive.  There is a faction that believes the entire idea of horseracing should be taking a back seat to the real gambling money-maker, casinos. The one solution I never hear is some form of revenue sharing, much like the National Football League does to ensure small market teams have an equal financial ability to compete.

The high takeouts? This is in fact complete ignorance and disdain on the part of states. Despite the studies that consistently show lower take means higher profits, it is harder to sell than space heaters on the equator. This is really the place where bettors can influence tracks. Player boycotts have generally been ineffective because bettors will simply not give up playing the high takeout tracks en masse. If you are betting tracks in Pennsylvania with a trifecta takeout at 30%, YOU share equally in the criticism. Stop betting there and perhaps they will change.

Perhaps the most difficult problem to solve is the betting menus at many tracks. Unless a track is handling Belmont, Gulfstream, Saratoga, Santa Anita or Del Mar type money, the first thing a track should look at is consolidating pools. There should be no separate show pool but a combined place/show pool that plays to the first three horses across the line. There should be no races with separate quinella and exacta pools, but one exacta pool. A $1 exacta box is the equivalent of a $2 quinella. And if someone whines they would be lost without a $1 quinella, perhaps they are undercapitalized to be betting, The minimum bet for most of the 20th century was $2, even when middle class people were only making $80 a week. Now that even the minimum wage pays four times that much, bettors still demand a ten cent minimum on some bets. You figure it out. Smaller tracks often do a bang-up job of discouraging betting by having pools too small to provide an incentive to act. Unfortunately, unless some group of major bettors gangs up on management, those in charge are unlikely to change the betting menu.

There are a lot of really smart people who care deeply about the game out there. If the bosses are smart, they will find them and listen to them and change the things that should be changed.

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over by the train if you just stand still.