Staying The Trip:
A View into Horse Racing’s Future
INTRODUCTION: Stranger than fiction
“Just give me a little more time
Give me a little bit of warning
Baby, I’m gonna be fine
When I figure out where I’m going”
“One More Second” by Matt Beringer
In the time spent researching and reporting this thesis, sources have said what happened to horse racing, particularly its rise and fall and rise again, is “stranger than fiction.” If one were to view my interview transcripts, they might want to start a drinking game.
One user on social media said horse racing lacks stories that attract people to the sport. “The sport is full of stories. I’m sure if you ask people in my generation, you’ll find they were brought into the sport by hearing Secretariat’s story or Easy Goer’s,” the user posted. “Nowadays, the PR departments at racetracks focus very little on what makes racing so great, the stories of everyone involved.”
Researchers in South Korea agree with the post. In the 2009 study on the “Horse Racing Image,” the research team found people are more likely to go to a track or watch a race like the Kentucky Derby if they see the horses and hear their stories. The study said people love to romanticize the sports they are watching. It gets them invested.
The researchers in the 2009 South Korean study say if advertisers can tap into a consumer’s sweet spot with throwbacks to the past, they might be able to get them to invest heavily into the present. For example, when NBC is advertising the latest Kentucky Derby, the marketing department would be best served to focus on the history of the race and remind the audience of the race’s cultural significance. Show them how the race used to stop the country for two minutes. Tell the viewers how the horses that have won the race are immortalized in the sport’s history forever. Essentially, market horse racing as the true “Sport of Kings.” Get the target audience giddy to watch a Wednesday afternoon claiming race in the middle of the winter.
There are many in the horse racing community who say the marketers of the sport forgot about its charm. These critics will say that there were times in American history where a sitting president would stop whatever he was doing to watch and/or listen to a horse race. This was the case for the 1938 Match Race known as “The Pimlico Special,” which plotted the fan favourite Seabiscuit against one of the sport’s best Triple Crown-winning horses, War Admiral. Why is it those marketing horse racing cannot find a way to capitalize on the sport’s rich history?
Dan Packel, a lawyer and part-time writer for The New Republic, argues in his 2014 column that yes, there once was a time where a horse race could trump everything else going on in the world. Obviously, the sport’s glory days are long gone. Long gone are the days when a horse race could captivate the nation. The sport lacks star power, a casual audience base, and a way to market itself to those who do not consume horse racing at all. Even so, those who still follow horse racing say the sport has plenty to offer. These fans will say there is plenty of money to be made playing the horses, especially for those who take it very seriously. Packel says he agrees with the idea, but also says he also thinks horse racing needs to find a way to attract people who bet on mainstream sports like football and baseball. He wonders how the sport could attract “sharp bettors” (people who bet on sports professionally) to invest heavily into a horse racing card. To him, the promise of riches alone will not get the job done when it comes to attracting new bettors, because sharps have found ways to make money outside of horse racing and would be unwilling to risk their bankroll on something they do not understand. Building superstar horses is not working like it once used to in the past, which is why many owners opt to sign their stars up for stud duty instead of continuing their racing careers. Of course, Packel does not know the way forward for the sport, but he speculates horse racing is not too far away from meeting the fate of greyhound racing as a sport that will cease to exist.
In recent times, TV deals have been struck with Fox Sports to broadcast more hours of horse racing content and big races will be mentioned in some newspapers, but those efforts alone may not be enough to get fans to believe in what the sport has to offer in terms of pure entertainment value. The demographics of horse racing indicate the sport has an aging fan base. The hope is the older generations of fans can expose the younger generations to the sport. The thinking is it has worked in the past, why could it not work now?
The horse racing industry has had ups and downs over the history of the sport. The question now is how can the sport remain relevant? The sport is not dead, but the stats show it is not very much alive either. What will be the invention that brings people to the track? The answers are not simple. Yet, they are out there.
Join me as I look for them.
CHAPTER ONE: The narrative drives the story.
“I know that I know nothing,” Socrates.
The sport of racing is not really complex. It is all about how fast someone is compared to their opponents. Onlookers will antagonize each other with their picks to make it past the finish line first. Whether it is the 100-meter dash at the Summer Olympics or the Daytona 500, everyone is content with watching a bunch of people doing their best to outrun/out drive each other. For most, the thrill of the race keeps these fans on the edge of their seats.
Roy Bragg, a sports columnist for San Antonio Express-News, argues on one level racing is kind of funny. On another it is admirable. Not that racing is terrible and anyone who watches any form of the sport is childish. It is different. Racing grows the ego of those who succeed in the conquest of the sport. Racing also breaks the hearts of those who cannot find a way to win. At the end of the day, does it really matter who is faster? Yeah, it kind of does because it would not be a race otherwise.
In a way, one could argue racing is trivial in its very nature. Yet, those same people could argue that life itself is trivial.
Here is the thing, during my reporting for this project, I have learned that horse racing is a way of life. To the people who partake in the sport, it is the farthest thing from trivial. For horse people, it is a way for them to make money to support their families. In essence, horse racing is their life’s work. Like the great Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Chuck Noll once said, “People ought to take pride in their life’s work.” That is why the sport passes down from the old generation to the next, because horse people take great pride in what they do. Each generation tells its own stories of breathtaking triumphs and heartbreaking defeats. Those stories are what inspires horse racing’s descendants to grab hold of the brass ring and carry the sport into the generations to come. The stories keep the spirit of the sport alive.
Speaking of stories…
The thing about stories
Stories are what drives people to watch/read about/listen to sports. What world record is the decorated sprinter Usain Bolt going to break in this race? Can one of NASCAR’s greatest of all-time drivers Jimmie Johnson win one last Daytona 500 before he drives off into the sunset at the end of the 2020 season? Will Super Bowl LV be a passing of the torch from Tom Brady to Patrick Mahomes? Breaking news: it was not. Brady got his seventh ring and stamped his name as the greatest quarterback of all-time.
Stories make people watch. Stories get people invested in the outcome. People relate to the stories of others. These stories become entrenched in the mainstream psyche. They give meaning to what one might call “the trivial sports.” When times were at their worst in The Great Depression, the story of the racehorse Seabiscuit, who was down and out, but never out of luck, inspired those who could not be inspired. Seabiscuit’s unwarranted success made national headlines. Books have been written about the horse’s story. Disney even made a movie.
Who was Seabiscuit?
Seabiscuit was a well-bred horse with the potential to be a star. In his two-year-old season, he could not find a way to win. His first trainer thought the horse was lazy and would never live up to his potential. In other words, he gave up on the horse. Then along comes a man named Tom Smith. In the depths of The Great Depression, Smith was living out of a horse stall in New Mexico. His luck would change as he started to train winning horses for a rich car magnate. In 1936, Smith set out to find a low-risk, high-reward horse for his boss. That horse was Seabiscuit. Smith, along with troubled jockey Red Pollard, would help turn Seabiscuit into the best racehorse in America. While doing so, Smith and Pollard would become folk heroes themselves, because they represented the notion that even during the hard times of The Great Depression, the idea of the “American Dream” could not be crushed. If there is a will, then there was most certainly a way.
Seabiscuit’s story is a part of the wonderment of horse racing.
Horse racing has been around for centuries. In Ancient Greek mythology, it is said the gods had chariot races in the sky. These races would capture the imaginations of the Greeks. William H. Robertson, historian and author of “The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America,” wrote that the peasants wanted to honour their beloved and often feared gods, so they adapted horse racing as a sport. At first, it would be rich people of nobility racing their horses out in the field. The races were not these big competitions, they were more like those “whose horse is faster” friendly types of races. Then the competitions would get more public and take place in the town squares. Eventually, the Greeks started having legitimate horse racing contests. Thus, began the sport’s infusion into mainstream society of the time.
To this day, the sport still pays homage to royalty. In Britain, the Royal Ascot festival includes a morning visit from Queen Elizabeth II. Canada’s premier race for three-year-olds, the Queen’s Plate, is obviously named after royalty. Godolphin, a horse racing stable located in Dubai, UAE, is privately owned by the Al Maktoum family, the ruling family of the Emirate of Dubai. The stable’s name was meant to honour a horse from the desert who went on to become one of the three founding stallions of modern thoroughbred racing, Godolphin Arabian. Godolphin is also a term used to describe a person of English nobility. The sport very much stems from royalty.
However, horse racing was not just for the rich and famous.
Horse racing and the ‘common folk’
The common folks helped carry the sport into the mainstream. According to Robinson, the average British citizen likes horse racing just as much as those in the monarchy like to calculate where there are in line to the throne. Each year, the Epsom Derby, “The original Derby,” as people call it, stops a nation. Bettors wait in anticipation. British pop music radio stations are interrupted to update listeners on the progress of the race. Everyone needs to know what is going on in Epsom, England.
The Grand National is steeple chasing’s biggest race of the year. The race has punters and racing fans from all over the world eagerly waiting in anticipation of the spectacle for months. For those who may not know, steeple chasing is a form of horse racing where horses jump over hurdles as they race towards the finish line. When the 10-minute race begins at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, England, punters like retired steeplechase jockey Richard Dunwoody say, “nothing else matters.”
The Japanese are fascinated with horse racing and their crown jewel is the Japan Cup, one of the richest Derby-like races for three-year-old horses. In 2015, the Japanese wagered $22.5 billion on horse racing, according to an article by CNN. The article also said for the 2016 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Japanese horseplayers wagered more than twice the value of bets than in France, which hosted Europe’s richest race. The stats show the Japanese horse racing fans simply cannot get enough of the sport.
On the first Saturday in May in the United States, people tune in to watch one of the world’s most famous races, the Kentucky Derby. People watch with anticipation to see which equine hero will win the roses and edge their name “into forever.” Spectators dress up. Drinking establishments pop open their finest bottles of wine. Viewing parties are hosted all around North America. Bookies make a hefty profit off the high volume of bets the Kentucky Derby generates.
Aussies treat their biggest race, the Melbourne Cup, like their very own Super Bowl. The buzz for the race is unmatched. The race may not be as popular it once was, but Aussies still love the Melbourne Cup, Racenet’s Ben Dorries wrote in a 2020 column that the Melbourne Cup is Australia’s showcase of the immortals, borrowing the phrase that Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) uses to describes pro wrestling’s biggest spectacle, WrestleMania.
Although some people like the New Republic’s Dan Packel may argue horse racing is dead in North America and around the world, there are others who will beg to differ.
In Ontario alone, the horse racing industry creates 16,000 jobs. In the United States, horse racing accounts for hundreds of thousands of jobs. Many economies rely heavily on the sport. Horse racing generates millions of dollars for states through tax revenues. Breeders were making money before the pandemic. Despite the worries many in the racehorse sales industry had, losses were not as great as once expected during the pandemic. Yet, the sport finds itself in a midlife crisis.
By now, the days of horse racing being America’s favourite pastime are in the rearview mirror. The sport has been dealt with what some would say is a faulty hand. There was plenty of unpleasant PR from a cheating scandal involving one of the sport’s better-known trainers Jason Servis. To make a long story short, federal authorities found trainers throughout both thoroughbred and standardbred racing were illegally doping their horses on a mass level. Top that off with a lack of interest from the public, one might think things are not looking so great. These problems and others may be the reason why the sport could continue to struggle in the years to come.
Luckily, according to Hallandale Beach, FL’s Gulfstream Park announcer Peter Aiello, there are executives in the industry who have been thinking about the sport’s future for a long time and have been creating strategies to work around these problems.
CHAPTER TWO: What makes a horseplayer play?
“The finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton Rouge, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn’t see that the game was crooked. And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, ‘I know. But it’s the only game in town.’ And he went back to the game,” Neil Gaiman, American Gods.
In the process of my reporting, I have done a bunch of research regarding why people gamble. The answers I found were something that my peers in the J-school newsroom would call “interesting.”
Researchers Brad R. Humphreys and Levi Perez wrote in their 2012 article for Estudios De Economía Aplicada or Studies of Applied Economics that most people gamble for that rush of adrenaline. Casino gamblers get hooked on hearing the slot machines go ding-ding-ding. Lottery gamblers get amped up to see if the numbers come in their favour on the evening news.
Humphreys and Perez said in their paper what makes sports gamblers different from the average “thrill enthusiasts” is that they expect to make a consistent profit like a stockbroker when they buy into a stock.
These gamblers whom the researchers write about in their paper value stats like Return on Investment (how much money a bettor is making from their initial investment) and strike rate or win percentage (how many times a bettor wins a wager divided by how many wagers the bettor placed in total). Although they do get a thrill out of picking the right outcome of an event like a horse race, the goal is to profit, and build a bankroll (money that can be gambled). The hook is the adventure of trying to win money and in most cases, break-even on a day out at the races.
How does a bettor make a profit consistently?
Sports consultant “Bookie Killer” Steve Stevens says in his YouTube series Sports Betting 101 that the essential goal for a profitable sports bettor is to win more than they lose. If bettors can finish with a win percentage over 52.42, they will win money and have a good time doing “crushing the bookies.” The goal is to build up money over time. As a bettor’s bankroll (how much money a bettor has to wager) increases over time, so can the amount a bettor wagers on one game. For example, if a gambler has a $1000 bankroll and they bet $50 per wager, that will mean he or she is betting five per cent of their bankroll on each bet. Let us say after a month, the bettor doubled their bankroll to $2000, their wager amount would change to $100 per bet.
It should be noted the research focused on a specific audience of people who fit the perimeters of the study. As Stevens says in his video, a lot of people bet on sports like horse racing as a hobby. In an effort to build on the research and get closer to the answer of why people gamble on horse racing, I reached out to a Facebook group for horse racing fans called Thoroughbred Horse Racing to ask that question: Why do you bet on the horses? What motivates you?
Here are some answers from the many I received.
Mary Ellen Nagle and John Deely say they like trying to figure out the past performances. Deely says being able to find an “edge” (a handicapping advantage that most in the public do not have) and use it to his advantage has him glued to playing the horses. Nagle says she likes playing the horses because it “keeps her mind sharp” and puts her knowledge of the sport at the forefront.
Many within the Facebook group shared their sentiments.
Candice Curtis, a show horse rider, says she likes to wager on horses because she likes to give back to the community that has given so much to her. “I come from a horse showing background and always had a couple of bucks riding between my friends and parents at the shows on who’d win the most/best ribbons,” Curtis explains. “Horse racing allowed me to expand on this game as well as win bigger prizes. The wagering game is the least promoted aspect of our sport and yet it is the most important because all purses are funded by the bettor’s dollar.”
Marc Asnes says he bets the horse because he likes the competitive nature of trying to find a winner in a 12-horse field where there is no “true” favourite. “I used to be a skilled athlete and it’s just exciting and thrilling for me to watch and root for a horse that I think has that chance to shock people.”
Steven Kosen says he gambles on the horses because for him there is nothing better than making memories at the track. “When I was 12 years old, my father took me to the dog track. I won $29 on my first bet. That was a lot of money for a kid in 1967 but I could only go if he took me, for obvious reasons,” Kosen says. “So many years passed before I could ‘pass for 18’. Then, I would go with my pals in the summer. We would pool our meager bankrolls and enjoy a night out.
“Many years later I moved to L.A. and fell in love with Santa Anita. Win or lose, I just enjoyed being at the track. Going on Saturdays was the best day. Lots of action and friends to play some races. It wasn’t until the simulcast era that it opened up so many other betting options for me.”
Kosen says he only wagers with cash. If he loses, it is okay. If he wins, he says it is time to have a Busch party.
“I never bring anything but cash to the track. I kept records for two years and had an average loss of $124 per day. In the end, when asked about the losses I would say two things. First, I can afford it. Second and most important, I don’t play golf, because ‘capping the horses is my hobby! Get off my back.”
Suzanne Arun says she was “brought into the trade” by her family. “I have spent my life around the horses. I used to go to Narragansett Park with my great uncle as a little girl and he taught me a lot about the horses,” Arun says. “It started as betting on my friends’ horses. I started figuring out that I was pretty decent at it. So, I expanded my betting, went to visit more tracks, got to know more people and sopped up that knowledge like a sponge.”
Tim Hopper says it is the idea of outsmarting the betting public with his betting system that keeps him coming back for more. “How many speed figure programs are out there? How many track bias program websites are there? How many race forms? Yet, someone’s shoe fell off yesterday, so they placed $5 win bet on a horse named Flying Shoe in the third race of the day,” Hopper says. “People have their superstitions. Greys, roans, chestnuts, bays… each of us studies the field with an almost visceral business plan whether for enjoyment or profit hoping for success. Some love smaller fields: I choose larger for the potential Return on Investment. We all get to play the game and in reality, it's mainly against each other.”
For Frank Turner, he says betting pays homage to his youth. “I was born on May 4, 1973. My mom’s family spent many summers at Lake George and went to Saratoga. I love gambling on just about anything, but horse racing has a special place in my heart because I grew up watching it and many family events included horse racing pools. The horses remind me of my youth.”
As society evolves and technology keeps advancing, the way people play the horses and how much they play them has changed. Horseplayers may still play the horses for the same reason they did 20 years ago, but the entire landscape has evolved. The internet now plays a major factor in off-track gambling. More horseplayers are playing online than ever before.
Some wonder if it is for the better.
CHAPTER THREE: Gambling and horse racing
“Gambling is risk-taking. It might be said the owner of a casino gambles, takes risks, but he has the odds in his favor, so that’s intelligent gambling. If I wanted to gamble, I’d buy the casino.” Jean Paul Getty
As Holly Kruse, a professor of communications at Rogers State University, writes in her 2016 book Off-Track and Online: The Networked Spaces of Horse Racing, more people are beginning to gamble online. That means there are fewer people going to the track.
Yes, the parimutuel system (basically means the public decides the odds of a horse based on how much they do or do not wager on it) is still in place at the tracks. Now here is the thing, race tracks get most of their online profit from what is called “advance-deposit wagering” websites (ADW). Unlike on-track betting, race tracks only get a percentage of the profits, which means over time they tend to lose handle (money wagered on horse racing).
As a response, race tracks have had to change the handicapping game by focusing more on multi-race wagers.
For those who may not know, the usual wagers tracks offer are things like “win,” “place,” and “show” bets. Then there is something called “multi-horse bet” like a “exacta”, “trifecta,” or “superfecta.” Essentially, horseplayers try to determine what horses will finish first, second, third, fourth, and so on, in the correct order. If horseplayers feel lucky, they can do something called a “multi-race wager” like a “Daily Double” where they try to predict the correct winner of two races in a row.
Recently, tracks have introduced new multi-race wagers like the “Pick 3”, “Pick 4”, Pick 5”, and “Pick 6.” These wagers offer higher payouts, but a gambler’s odds of winning a multi-race wager are significantly lower than winning a single outcome wager like a win bet.
Sports gamblers might refer to multi-race bets as a “parlay,” because they function much the same with the caveat that multi-race wagers payouts are determined by the horses who win the corresponding races within the Pick 3, 4, 5, etc., whereas a prototypical sports parlay’s final odds are predetermined.
The Blood-Horse, a horse racing news publisher, reports multi-race wagers have brought in a whole new wave of gamblers to the sport.
In my interview with professional horseplayer and expert handicapper Matt Bernier, we talked about the effect of multi-race wagers on the sport of horse racing. Bernier told me that multi-race wagers are a great way to generate a big payout for gamblers and a nice “takeout” (money that the track makes from the multi-race wager pool) for the track, but it is not all sunshine and rainbows.
An issue always raised with multi-race wagers is the takeout rate. When asked about the takeout rates on multi-race wager pools, Bernier says a line needs to be drawn.
“Twelve point five per cent is a fair takeout rate on a Pick 5 or Pick 6 pool. Race tracks have to make money. They have to be able to pay for the purses and the track’s operations. It’s unreasonable to think that it should be in the single digits,” Bernier says. “Then again, it’s unfair to the horseplayer when the tracks start taking out a larger chunk of the pools, like, let’s say 20–30 per cent. It drives away potential handle for that pool, whatever it may be, even when there’s a mandatory payout (all the money that is in the pool, minus the takeout and carryover, is paid out in full).”
Another problem with these wagers is they are unfriendly to newcomers to the sport. “Betting horse racing is not as easy as betting a hockey game or a football game,” Bernier says. “Betting hockey and football is more simplified in the sense that data for these sports is readily available for free online. Unlike those sports I mentioned, horse racing’s data is put behind a paywall where users have to pay a premium to access such things as past performances (PPs).”
Paywalls become a problem when trying to promote the sport on a broader scale because it is harder for those wanting to understand handicapping and how statistics play a role in aiding the horseplayer.
Throughout my own research, I have talked to many horseplayers who say they have calmed down on their horseplaying because of the price of things like past performance papers.
I have also spoken to sports gamblers about how they would feel if they had to pay for basic data that they usually use to analyze a basketball or hockey game. The answers were colourful. Most conveying the message they would probably bet on something else that has free and easy to access data if a sports league like the National Basketball Association (NBA) decided to put its basic data behind a paywall.
Bernier says ease of access to data is a major barrier that is drawing potential gamblers away from horse racing. He says another idea to consider is teaching people how to analyze the data. This presents a problem because horse racing is not a mainstream sport anymore. There is a lot that needs to be learned and to the casual gambler with no knowledge of the sport, the learning curve can be very steep.
You might be asking yourself: If people do not want to learn how to handicap the races, how does horse racing go about getting new people to wager on the sport?
Peter Aiello, the morning line oddsmaker and announcer at Gulfstream Park, has an idea. “Look, it’s all about investigating the ‘psychographics.’ Why is it that a poker player is more likely to be drawn towards betting on horse racing as opposed to a casino gambler? The industry needs to do a better job investing its resources to figure that out,” Aiello says. “In my opinion, there were far too many resources put forth to try and turn slot machine players into horseplayers. I’ve got news for you, studies have been done by reputable researchers that show the crossover between a casino gambler and horseplayer is very small because the psychology behind that type of gambling is different.
“So, with that being said, the horseplayer and the poker player have a much tighter bond psychologically in terms of what fuels their love and interest in the industry, so to speak. I think we need to focus more on the psychographics instead of the demographics. We need to find people that enjoy betting but enjoy betting against other people because they put a stake on something they formulated an opinion on through statistics.”
Aiello says with the United States legalizing sports gambling, the public is being “force-fed the spokes” when it comes to wagering on sports, including fantasy sports, a newer form of wagering that has taken the sporting world by storm. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a fantasy football player is far more likely interested to gamble on horse racing rather than a slot machine,” Aiello explains. “And apps like Stable Duel picked up on that. They said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we have all these horse racing fans that are going to play fantasy football already. Why not give them a platform for horse racing that resembles fantasy football but is different from the pari-mutuel sector?’.”
How does Stable Duel work? It is almost like daily fantasy football or fantasy hockey. At the start of each day, a person opens the app, looks at the fields for the races offered, and adds horses to their stable. From there, players can enter contests or compete one-on-one with their friends or another random player for money. How their horses finish throughout the day determines a stable’s score. Whoever has the highest score or finishes “in the money” wins a monetary prize.
The creators of Stable Duel hope this type of wagering can bring in new horseplayers and get people engaging with the sport.
Aiello says he is curious to see how horse racing could pull in more fantasy sports players and get them on apps like Stable Duel to enjoy the races. Aiello said if the sport could find a way to bring those players in and get them to gamble on horse racing, it could change the industry for the better.
Could this approach work long-term? Aiello says “it has potential, but it’s too early to tell.”
CHAPTER FOUR: How horse racing executives are looking towards the future
“The future depends on what you do today,” Mahatma Gandhi.
Horse racing fans often worry about the future. They talk about the doomsday scenarios the sport could face in the coming days. They worry about what is going on in states like Pennsylvania where the state’s Governor Tom Wolfe decided to allocate money from horse racing to education. To some people in the industry, trends like these are worrisome, because in most states, wagering is not what it used to be. Some tracks rely heavily on government money to fund race pursues while penny-pinching to cover operational costs. If there is no government funding, the purses take a hit. For some horse people, their operations are in danger, because they rely on the race purses to pay for the expenses that come with racing horses. If horse people cannot fund their operations, they will cease to exist. This creates a bigger problem. If there are less horses to race, the wagering product suffers. If the field sizes continue to get smaller, bettors will gamble where there are bigger fields. If wagering dollars go down in a state, the entire industry in that state begins to falter. There are fewer races for jockeys to ride in. Owners begin to make less money, so they cannot spend as much at the auctions. Breeding barns are forced to lower stud fees in order to maintain their businesses because there are fewer incentives for breeders to pay hefty fees to breed their mares with the barns’ stallions and then sell them at the auctions.
According to a 2019 article by Horse Racing Nation, wagering on horse racing only accounted for 10.9 percent of all racing purses in Pennsylvania. This means that wagering on racing cannot come close to slot machine profits, which creates a problem. There is not enough balance to contain the value of race purses. With no government money coming in to assist with race purses, the amount of those purses is bound to drop. The Thoroughbred Idea Foundation speculates this could lead to a 50 per cent reduction in purse money. Pennsylvania could be one of the states where horse racing falters.
Dan Prince, a researcher for The Sport Journal, did a comprehensive study of the California racing circuit in 2010 called Trouble on The Turn: How Trainers View the Financial Viability of California Horseracing. His research found casinos were starting to attract people who would bet money at the track. With less money being wagered throughout California on horse racing, purses had to be reduced. Lower-level trainers were either forced to change their business models, move their operations, or in some cases, cease operation of their stables due to financial constraints.
For decades, California was seen to be one of the stronger markets for horse racing. Historically speaking, California was known for having the best top-level horse racing in the world, Now the market is experiencing its own share of troubles with the reduction of racing purses.
Researchers like Prince say that those in the horse racing industry do not want the situation in California to get as bad as the situation in Pennsylvania, because the belief is if horse racing starts to falter in California, there is a good chance the sport could slowly die out in America like greyhound racing.
Matt Bernier talked about that in our interview. From what he said and the information I could gather on the web, the owners of Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif., decided that the plot of land where the racetrack was housed would be worth more as a plot of land rather than a race track. “The other unfortunate reality of the situation is, you’re seeing it now with Arlington Park, in the Chicago area, the value of that land is astronomical. And whether we want to admit it’s a problem or not, the reality is race tracks take up a great deal of land, There are a number of other things that people who are not automatically or very much tied into the industry itself could do with the land to make more money,” Bernier said. “I think if you just look at it from the overall population of people compared to the population of horse racing fans, many people will look at that and say, ‘This is a prime piece of real estate that we can either build a housing development on, we can build a mall, or we can build whatever we want it to be.’ I think that’s the difficult thing with some of these tracks that happened to be close to very expensive areas.
“Suffolk Downs was in East Boston, it’s just on just outside of the proper city of Boston. Again, Arlington Park, just outside of Chicago. You see some of these other tracks, Hollywood Park, which closed several years ago, that’s now where the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams new stadium is built. It stands right on the grounds of the beloved old Hollywood Park. The land itself, being in prime locations like those and being worth what it is, makes it very difficult in certain instances not to invest in other things outside of a race track.”
Prince would agree with Bernier’s take. In his study, he had race track executives tell him that in certain areas that they would be hard done by not to use the land for something else other than a racetrack. Simply put, there is too much money on the table.
There is hope for horse racing in certain areas of North America though.
I spoke with trainer Mark Casse, whose horse Helium just won the 2021 Tampa Bay Derby, about the issues facing horse racing in North America.
For people that do not know Casse, he prides himself on doing things the right way. “One of the things that I’m proud of that is that you can do things the right way and still succeed. You don’t have to cheat to win our sport,” Casse said. “That’s not just in our sport. There’s so many bad apples in every sport, whether it’s you know, you think back about cycling with Lance Armstrong, you think about baseball with the steroid use and everything.
“I was voted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. Recently I voted to into the National Horse Racing Hall of Fame and the one in British Columbia. I was talking about that and I said, it shows that if you can do good things and do them the right way, you still achieve your goals. And to me, that’s the most important thing.
He says he thinks the sport will be fine, because there are people doing the right things.
“You know, I think horse racing is strong right now. I think the higher-ups in the sport are doing well by it. Things have changed so much. In the last 50 years, we have lotteries, we have the horse racing TV broadcasts, and now we have pro-betting,” Casse said. “It used to be that horse racing didn’t have all the competition it has today with other sports. We didn’t have all the casinos and stuff. So the racing executives had to battle that and find ways to fund purses outside of casino profits.
“I think they’ve done a good job, but they’re going to again have to step up to the plate again with the new issues that come with time passing. They can’t stand stiff, or they’ll get run over. So they always have to keep coming up with new ideas to be better.
In Casse’s mind, if there are executives in horse racing like Woodbine Entertainment Group’s CEO Jim Lawson, the future of the sport is in good hands.
“And again, I’m gonna say this about Jim Lawson and Woodbine: I think they are one of the leaders in innovating the sport. They’re always trying to do new things and I appreciate that. I’m very proud of Woodbine and my association with them because I just think they do such a super job.”
Casse says he loves how Lawson has turned Woodbine Racetrack into one of the best products in North America. “The new all-weather track surface is safer for the horses and the turf courses are exceptional. It’s better for the horsemen and the bettors because more trainers will want to run their horses at Woodbine.”
How did horse people in Ontario go about innovating the horse racing product in the province? They created a profitable system that incentivized the provincial government to invest in its horse racing product.
How exactly?
Horse racing executives in Ontario worked with the provincial government to create a plan that would see the provincial government investing heavily in the future of horse racing in the province.
It was a lengthy process that saw economists taking a long and hard look at the state of the industry.
In a 2012 report to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Elmer Buchanan, John Snobelen, and John Wilkinson outlined a bold strategy that would see race tracks throughout the province offer bigger race field sizes, better purses, and eye-catching incentives to Ontario breeders.
In the new model that the panel presented to the government, the hope was to fund the purses through wagering instead of having 60 per cent of the purses paid from a government horse racing fund.
With the idea purses would be funded by wagering, the hope was the provincial government could invest in the operational costs of the tracks. The goal was to increase the customer experience and to invest in marketing the sport while maintaining and upgrading the tracks throughout Ontario.
Nine years removed from this final report, the province took much of the points into consideration. The horse racing industry has experienced positive strides in Ontario. The handle is increasing and more people are engaging with the product. Tracks like Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto and Mohawk Park in Campbellville have been renovated. The wagering menus across the province have been updated with new multi-race bets. More incentives are being offered to Ontario breeders. A TV deal has been struck with TSN to get live Ontario horse racing broadcasted on its channels once a week. Apps like Dark Horse have been introduced to the public in the hopes of attracting new bettors to the sport.
Lawson, along with other racing officials, has worked hard on enhancing the wagering product throughout at Woodbine Racetrack. With the new aforementioned incentives for horse people and breeders in Ontario, race field sizes have increased from around the “seven mark” prior to the deal with the province to precisely 8.25 in 2019.
Trainers like Casse are taking more of their horses to Woodbine Racetrack and the Ontario racing product has been getting global exposure with horses from all over the world shipping into race in the province’s tracks. Bold Eagle, an all-star standardbred back in Europe, won the 2019 Breeders Crown Open Trot against a loaded field of North American horses. Woodbine Racetrack has seen an increase in international entries into top-tier turf races like the Ricoh Woodbine Mile and Pattison Canadian International. Irish-bred Desert Encounter has won the Pattison Canadian International in back-to-back years in 2018 and 2019. Lawson said in an interview with The Blood-Horse that with the success international horses have been having at Woodbine, he only expects increased participation from overseas horses in the future.
Casse says if other racing jurisdictions can look at what the Ontario horse racing industry worked out with the provincial government and try to implement it in their circuits, the industry would be well off for the foreseeable future.
Now the question becomes: Can other horse racing jurisdictions make Ontario’s horse racing model work?
My research says the jury is out on that one, but there is hope for the future of the sport.
A 2010 magazine article for The Blood-Horse called What’s working said although horse racing is facing problems with a decrease in handle, lost interest in the sport, and bad publicity, the industry has made many strides. The authors talked about horse racing’s new television deal with NBC at the time and how that new TV deal was going to ensure younger demographics would be exposed to the sport. The article mentioned the trend of younger riders, trainers, and owners getting started in the sport. The strength of the breeding market also gave those at the magazine hope for what is to come.
In conclusion, most of my sources told me that there is too much money in horse racing for the sport to fail.
