Music Lesson
“The lesson from Napster and iTunes is that there’s even MORE music than there was before,” marketing guru Seth Godin says in a recent interview. Pull the Pocket translates for racing:
The lesson from ADW and the Internet is that there’s even MORE opportunities to see racing than there was before.
It Bears Repeating
A reminder: “Web 2.0 is a conversation.”
See also: “He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.” (There’s a lesson for racing in that understanding.)
Will do: “Look for the NTRA to continue its efforts … with a heavy emphasis on wikinomics.”
Just one small thing: “The age of crowdsourcing your way to success is over.”
It’s Awesome
Version 1.2 of the MLB At Bat iPhone app wins raves from baseball fans. And makes this racing fan a little envious. Imagine: Results from any track? Final times, fractions, and odds? Chart comments? Video highlights? All on my mobile device? Yes, yes, yes, yes, please. As long as I’m dreaming, let’s throw in the ability to look up historical data on horses, jockeys, trainers, etc., and simple stats too.
Related: MLB has been ahead of most sports when it comes using web and mobile technologies successfully. Check out this interesting Fast Company article about the success of MLB Advanced Media, started in 2000 after 30 clubs pooled $75 million. The group, responsible for developing wireless services, web apps, streaming video products, etc. brought in $450 million in 2007. “No one in the game believed that the Internet would be as pervasive a commercial vehicle for us in such a short amount of time.” There’s a lesson in there for racing, despite the industry’s fragmentation …
Activist Punter
… organizes complaints online about the going over UK turf courses, accuses tracks of misleading readings, gains support. Progress lies ahead, reports the Guardian:
“This is very much an issue that is being looked at,” Paul Struthers, of the BHA, said yesterday. “The problem is that to be able to make realistic comparisons between GoingStick readings at different tracks, we need to compile sufficient data. At the end of this year, we will have two full years’ of readings, which should enable us to do just that.
“Use of the GoingStick will be required at all tracks from January 1, when we would also hope to encourage clerks to take readings much closer to racing, which could be published on our website.”
This goes back to our conversation on Monday, neatly demonstrating how technology has changed the relationship between racing and its fans by giving people an easy way to connect, wherever they might be, whatever the issue …
This Is Key
From the transcript (PDF) of the HTA/TRA joint meeting “Racing and New Technologies” panel comes this key insight from Eric Wing of the NTRA:
I think the goal should be to use the technology, not to make the bet simpler or to bet more money, but to bring the passion back into the game.
Absolutely, and here’s a good place to start figuring out how to accomplish that.
Lucky Hockey Fans
And no, I’m not talking about Teresa getting a sweaty blue shirt, as fun as that sounded. Earlier this week PaidContent reported that the NHL is expanding its online presence with a video player that offers seven channels (more to come as each of the league’s teams add content) and deep archives:
The new channels, organized around themes, give the league a way to pull its digital content into linear viewing instead of piecemeal. At the same time, users have flexibility to pick clips and to go deep. For instance, click “more” under the results of a game in the Game Highlights channel and you can see a list of goals and click on the corresponding video as I did with Sunday’s 500th goal by Keith Tkachuk, then click on his name and see video clips for his goals stretching back to November 2005 after the hockey lock-out ended.
Imagine such a video player for racing. Or, something like MLB’s Mosaic. (Admittedly, Mosaic is problem-prone and not everyone loves it, but still — six games at once!)
One thing that struck me reading about the player is that its development was overseen by the NHL’s VP of broadband and new media production. That’s one benefit of having a real league office — your sport can hire someone to direct these sorts of fan-friendly innovations or, as MLB did, push for the creation of an entire division devoted to online and mobile development.
Here Comes Everybody
Well, this is interesting: On Left at the Gate yesterday, Alan posted a conversation he had on Saturday at Aqueduct with Breeders’ Cup media contact Jim Gluckson about the BC changes announced earlier this year. According to Gluckson, BC officials were taken aback by the ferocity of the criticism and charges of sexism from bloggers, racing forums, and prominent columnists that greeted the news. Changing the name of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff to Ladies’ Classic was a mistake, albeit well-intentioned, said Gluckson, and going with Filly and Mare Classic might have been a better choice. Hardly scandalous stuff, but you won’t find that post on Left at the Gate today. Alan told me in an email that a Breeders’ Cup representative asked nicely if he would consider taking down the post since Gluckson was speaking informally, and he chose to do so, pending an official statement. (On the web, though, nothing ever disappears.)
I’ve been reading Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody,” which is the tech buzz book of the moment and deservedly so, since it makes sense of how social networks and web 2.0 tools are upending relationships between individuals and institutions, consumers and businesses. Because of blogs, YouTube, and Twitter, the airline passengers’ bill of rights is a legislative issue, the world knows about the crackdown on Buddhist monks protesting the Burmese Junta, and Michael Arrington has a working web connection again. Every institution is subject to being reshaped by the net. Racing is no exception, and neither is the industry’s struggle to figure out how function in this wired landscape. Just last month, NTRA president Alex Waldrop wrote a column that talked up the organization’s web 2.0 strategy for connecting with fans and horseplayers:
Already, amateur bloggers and core fans are communicating and creating content every day on the Internet about racing and the industry. Why not formally enlist them in the process? … Using the social networking opportunities that dominate the Internet, we can now engage our most enthusiastic players on a massive scale and foster the collaboration so necessary for real change.
Sounds promising, and you can now find widgets, podcasts, and a link to the NTRA Facebook page on ntra.com, but it takes a bit more than that to engage your audience these days. There are two challenges to overcome for this strategy to be a success: One is for institutions like the NTRA and Breeders’ Cup to grasp that they don’t control the conversation anymore. The traditional model of broadcast communications — from one to many — is no longer effective, at least, not if those organizations want to keep and attract fans and customers. The second is to foster a web 2.0 culture within the industry. Not so much among fans and players — give people the tools and data they want and just watch them create — but among the managers and executives. What Gluckson told Alan suggests that the industry is paying attention to the conversation happening among its most ardent fans, but the BC’s request that Alan reconsider his innocuous post says the old ways still rule.
By the way, have you signed the petition calling for the Breeders’ Cup to restore the name of the Distaff or change it to the Filly and Mare Classic? Click here to add your name — it sounds like we have a shot at making that happen.
This Includes Racing
“We are plainly witnessing a restructuring of the media businesses, but their suffering isn’t unique, it’s prophetic. All businesses are media businesses, because whatever else they do, all businesses rely on the managing of information… The increase in the power of both individuals and groups, outside traditional organizational structures is unprecedented. Many institutions we rely on today will not survive this change without significant alteration, and the more an institution or industry relies on information as its core product, the greater and more complete the change will be.” — Clay Shirky, “Here Comes Everybody”
—
“People take information and build knowledge. When you give them new information they will create new knowledge, absolutely and without question.” — Bill James, NYT
—
And here, Gary Vaynerchuk explains how tech 2008 looks like hip-hop 1985. What we find revolutionary now will be ubiquitous and mainstream in 10 years:
Now Playing on Hulu
TVG. The racing network has launched a broadband division and uploaded a selection of evergreen trainer and jockey profiles and handicapping clips to the favorably-reviewed video site, which attracted a bit of buzz at SXSW when it was announced Monday that the site would come out of private beta this week. You might be thinking this is no big deal, but Hulu is no YouTube. Content isn’t user-generated, it’s original programming from NBC Universal and a raft of other providers — including the NHL, NBA, and Fox — and despite some shortcomings — such as no downloads or international access — the site is a pretty remarkable web service, pointing the way premium on-demand video is going online and offering significant potential for attracting an audience to racing — so long as the content is compelling.
About
Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
Elsewhere
Find Jessica on Pinboard and Instagram, Railbird on LibraryThing and Twitter.
Etc.
Links
Search
Boston Racing
Spreadsheets/Data
← Home
Copyright © 2000-2023 by Jessica Chapel. All rights reserved.