I’ve gone through an evolution when it comes to people who have an emotional sort of attachment to a horse in the same way fans have attachments to sports teams.
When I first started over 40 years ago, my mentors were adamant that you cannot develop “feelings” with regard to any horse. That worked both ways – you could no more dislike a horse than like a horse – because it could affect your betting. You job was to be dispassionate, make the right bet, and try to make money. You couldn’t “love” California Chrome nor “hate” him. He was either a likely winner at good value or not. That was the equation. And people who thought differently were just not on the correct plane.
A horse would break down – it was just part of the game. A well-known horse dies suddenly – that’s too bad but I’ve got races to handicap. It was in part the generation, and in part the expectation about horseplayers as unemotional and cynical.
Over time I changed my opinion, mostly because I realized that the success of a sport has a lot to do with people having a rooting interest beyond any single event. People follow football for a lot of reasons, but everyone has a team they root for and a favorite player or two on that team. Can you imagine if everyone rooted solely based on which team they bet? I like the Broncos because I bet on them against the Chiefs, but next week I might not care about the Broncos, and instead I’ll root for the Seahawks because they are my bet. Most of the ardent fans could care less about the point spread as long as their team wins.
On a Sunday in Denver the town is full of people wearing Peyton Manning jerseys. The newspapers and TV stations give the Broncos more coverage than any other story. As soon as the game is over the Broncos are the lead news story and TV stations are in the locker room asking the most inane and unnecessary questions. “How big did you think it was to intercept that pass with two seconds left and preserve the Bronco’s one point victory?” Don’t you think the question actually answers the question? Last February one of the news stations actually interrupted coverage of a live NHL game late in the third period just to show the Broncos deplaning in NJ where the Super Bowl would be played. The world stopped so we could see a group of very large men walk down the gangway. Now that is team loyalty.
It was then that I realized that horseracing, just as much as any other sport, needs stars much like football, basketball or baseball. When Dance With Fate, winner of this year’s Bluegrass Stakes, passed away suddenly, the Twitterverse was awash with sadness and sentiment. And this was just a somewhat minor three year old stakes horse. I thought that was great. The sport can only flourish with people who feel passionate about the participants.
You ever listen to sports talk radio? Opinions are myriad and the arguments ceaseless. California Chrome fans passionately believed in the horse, and when he lost the Belmont the emotion came pouring out. This is where my opinion has evolved. If loving a horse gets someone involved in the game, great. Yeah, we need people really betting on the races, but first we need to get them to care about the sport.
Of course horseracing has an inherent problem when it comes to building a fan base centered on rooting for specific horses. The really good horses have short careers. Secretariat never made it past his three year old season. Any fully functional stallion is the exception if he makes it to his five year old season. LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning all have longevity and the opportunity to build a fan base. But having a fan base beyond the betting aspect is critical to the future success of horseracing.
My first thought on promoting a broader fan base is to take a page out of the big three sports – the fantasy league.There are virtual stables out there, but they are not heavily promoted and they certainly are not well-used as a marketing tool. Fantasy leagues with daily and weekly contests would assuredly develop a fan base. The NFL is currently three days a week, five months out of the year. Horseracing is pretty much a 365 day sport. This gives the sport visibility beyond getting to bet a race.
I totally understand that if you are betting pari-mutuelly you have to look for the horse you think is the likeliest winner and determine if it has value. The idea of a fantasy league has to supplement the individual race betting aspect without replacing it.
Horseracing has a lot of problems, not the least of which that too many people care too little about the runners themselves. That is one of the things that has to change if we expect there to be a healthy, flourishing sport in the future.