Here’s a She-Tip For You, Andy Stronach
Pay attention to female racing fans.
I know that on a typical day at the track the crowd is overwhelmingly male. Last night I went to Suffolk to catch a couple of Santa Anita races and I was one of about three women in the place, and very likely, the youngest. The numbers aren’t as bad on a sunny weekend afternoon, although even then they still skew to men. Yet, as research commissioned by the NTRA in 2004 showed, 52% of loyal horseracing fans (defined as consumers 18+ who are very or somewhat interested in racing) are women. Women follow the Triple Crown races. They express interest in going to the track and learning more about the sport. The only other sport women are majority fans of is the WNBA.
Yet there are almost no advertising or fan education initiatives aimed at women, and the impression one gets from most racing officials and executives is that women fans don’t exist.
What’s earned my ire this evening is the news out of Grand Forks, ND, today, about Andy Stronach, son and heir of racing magnate Frank Stronach, who’s testing new betting machines. This little detail about a machine in development caught my attention:
Stronach had the machines delivered to the Turf Club in two large semitrailers labeled ‘She-Tips,’ which is a separate project that will incorporate female models into betting machines and online betting services, he said.
Another trailer outside Fargo’s Howard Johnson Inn for more than a month served as an auditioning studio, where models were photographed in sporting gear, Stronach said. More than 2,000 models have been photographed in the United States, Canada and Mexico as part of the project, he said.
“Horse racing has been all guys when you get to off-track betting,” he said. “These girls aren’t experts in betting, but they’ve got this huge database to back them up.”
I’m sure Mr. Stronach thinks he’s making a winning bet that customers will like looking at a pretty face as they’re losing their money. The She-Tipster machines may well spread to simulcast lounges across the land and women as well as men will use them without complaint. Like the poker ads illustrated by busty blondes that pop up on DRF.com and the handicapping system ads populated by scantily clad models in the pages of American Turf Monthly, the She-Tipsters will be just another slightly annoying background image to be ignored by female fans intent on enjoying racing.
And that’s the problem, this having to enjoy the sport in spite of the message that comes through in certain ads and which will come through on Stronach’s machines: That as a woman you’re not the intended audience, that you don’t factor into some racing executive’s business plan, that you’re where you don’t belong. It’s a message that keeps some women from going to the track on their own or from enjoying their time there as much as they should, which only harms racing in the long run. Women are already fans; they’re ready to be more engaged fans. A good first step toward making that happen would be recognizing women as a valuable segment of the sport’s fan base and not marginalizing them as fans and bettors with initiatives like this one.
