Re: Teflon Todd (510 Views)
Posted by:
sighthound (IP Logged)
Date: December 29, 2006 10:37PM
>>2-- One of the mistakes racing has made is to go too far in the direction you >>want to go-- it markets itself as a sport.
I personally thought "Go, Baby, Go!" was ill-conceived and trite at best <g>
I agree with all you say regarding takeout, handle, rebates, poker as a model, the importance of the gambler sustaining the business. All of it is rock-solid and rooted in firm reality.
That primary focus, and change as you discuss, is needed.
But I disagree that horse racing, in the past thirty years, has ever tried to really reach out, in a systematic way, to non-gamblers. Why? That's me. Or was me. Loved the sport, loved the horses, followed as much as I could as closely as I could - found handicapping comments and flat back-page recitation of results boring.
I remembered tonight, as a teenager who only saw racing yearly on TV as the Derby, buying a subscription to The Blood Horse (or whatever it was called at the time?). It wasn't what I was looking for, it didn't keep me in the sport, racing faded out of interest in favor of other horse sports that were more readily accessible to me as an onlooker who could follow along.
In the world of the racing Czars, can there be a focus to try and get the public involved in what used to be the number one followed sport in the country? Do those days have to be gone forever?
KEE is jam-packed with tailgating, over-dressed college kids at the hottest place to be seen in town. They gamble little now, they won't increase that much as they pay off college and start families and buy houses ... but if we can keep them in the sport?