What Racing Needs …
More geeks, more technologists, more entrepreneurs, more people thinking deeply and creatively about programming, experience design, usability, prediction markets, social networks, mashups, content distribution.
Racing needs a start-up culture.
Moneytrack
I just finished reading “Moneyball,” by Michael Lewis, the surprisingly engrossing story of how the Oakland A’s used statistical data to build a winning team. Like a lot of other racing fans, I have an overlapping interest in baseball stats, and I find it fascinating to follow another sport also afflicted with a sclerotic power structure, dominated by people who believe they know everything about their fans and how to put on the show or market their data. The result, a collective failure of imagination leading to a management culture more interested in brand caretaking than innovation, opens up intriguing little niches, exploitable market inefficiencies. In the late-1990s in baseball, the inefficiency was in statistical analysis; in the mid-2000s in racing, the inefficiency is in technology, which no one has quite figured out yet.
What the industry also hasn’t figured out is the benefit of making charts and statistics widely, easily, and freely available. Baseball has been pushed along by the growth of fantasy games, as well as the game’s stats nerds, and the obsessive and intelligent analysis of baseball data in both pursuits can be credited with — I think it’s fair to argue — keeping the sport in the mainstream even during during dark days such as the 1994 strike and the ongoing steroids scandal. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that racing could be similarly buoyed if it removed the hassle of finding any information at all about races run more than a week ago.
Related: Over on Handride, Patrick picks up on the news that Intel is producing chips that will substantially improve online video quality, sees a glorious opportunity for the industry.
Tuesday Odds and Ends
– California pushes the ADW mess toward a solution, beginning an eight-month experiment that splits broadcast and wagering rights. So, video remains exclusive, but horseplayers can wager on any track through any online wagering service in the state (Blood-Horse).
– From ESPN Sports Poll: “The number of people in the U.S. ages 18+ who said they are interested in horse racing increased for an unmatched fifth consecutive year.”
– It was sad to see Lava Man finish sixth in the California Cup Classic against a field he would have demolished last year (LA Times); it was also sad to see Digger all alone in the Laurel winner’s circle (WashPost).
– Nashua winner Etched is Dubai-bound, as is impressive maiden winner Music Note (DRF).
DC Ban Traces to Oregon
The abrupt ADW closures that shut out DC horseplayers last weekend were the result of a state criminal code review by the Oregon Racing Commission, reports John Scheinman in today’s Washington Post:
Commission officials recently reviewed state criminal codes and discovered it is illegal to accept or place bets on horse races within the District. As the regulator of a multi-jurisdictional “hub” for interstate horse racing bets made online, the commission advised advanced deposit wagering companies (ADWs) they were at risk of breaking the law.
The Oregon Racing Comission regulates the hub through which most US-based online wagering is routed.
Displaying their usual concern for the customer, Youbet and other services closed mid-card Saturday with little notice. “I’m betting early in the card, maybe the third or fourth race, and when I got back on for the ninth I couldn’t bet,” Mike Soper told the Post. “In the middle of the day, they decided this was illegal and they couldn’t take bets.”
10/8 Addendum: J.S. supplies some additional information from his Thoroughbred Times article in the comment below and raises a few good questions — what is going on with Youbet?
—
The California Horse Racing Board is considering requiring all ADWs that operate in the state to share wagering content as a condition of licensing. “I believe it is time for this board to step up and do something for our fans and do something for our industry,” said CHRB chairman Richard Shapiro (ThoroTimes). The proposal would sensibly separate wagering rights from broadcast rights, a necessary division for the online market to evolve.
Failure Happens
Nothing to do with racing, but I’m fascinated by the story of last Tuesday’s massive power outage at a San Francisco data center that wiped out Typepad, Technorati, Yelp, Craigslist, and a bunch of other Web 2.0 sites for several hours. Turns out, the impossible happened:
In this incident, latent defects caused three generators to fail during start-up. No customers were affected until a fourth generator failed 30 seconds later, which overloaded the surviving backup system and caused power failures to 3 of 8 customer areas.
What’s most interesting is that the redundant design of the system is what caused it to fail so completely. The failure of the fourth generator should have only brought down one area instead of three. This kind of cascade failure is common in complex & tightly coupled systems. In my experience, these sorts of failure-modes are often identified and then promptly dismissed as being “nearly impossible.” Unfortunately, the impossible often becomes reality. (O’Reilly Radar)
Actually, I guess the story is racing-related: Horseplayers well understand the impossible becoming reality, upsetting best-laid wagers, and anyone who plays multi-race exotics knows all about the necessity and danger of redundant design …
TrackNet, Arch-Rivals to Share
Don’t get too excited, it’s a one-day deal: TrackNet announced today that it would share the August 4 Claiming Crown at Ellis Park with Youbet and TVG (Blood-Horse). All three ADWs will donate fees generated by Claiming Crown wagers back to the Claiming Crown organization (ThoroTimes).
All Quiet Re: Ellis Pick 4
I’m no math genius, far from it. But a wager that puts the odds in our favor over the long term, one where track executives and horsemen and legislators from the Commonwealth of Kentucky came together and took a risk for our gain and, ultimately, theirs?
This is a very big deal, and nobody seems to care.
Reaction, any reaction, yeah or nay, was anticipated. It would have been a welcome start to meaningful dialogue between racing’s considerable uncounted majority and the industry (simulcastors and OTBs don’t take attendance). Instead, reaction was next to nothing.
My guess? Because it’s Ellis Park, and it’s one wager. If Del Mar announced lower takeout on the pick six or NYRA on all exotic plays, there’d probably be more buzz.
Pricci’s right though that Ellis took a big step, and that lowered takeout, along with expanded wagering options, are necessary for the industry to climb past the $15 billion handle plateau it’s been stuck at since 2000. T.D. Thornton briefly mentioned P2P platforms and betting exchanges in his Blood-Horse chat last month, only two weeks after an article applying “The Long Tail” to racing appeared in the magazine. The ideas are percolating; their implementation will be slow. That’s the way of things in racing, where any innovations, particularly those that are technology-based, are approached gingerly, considered threatening to the business models that have stood largely unchanged for 80 years, rather than embraced as opportunities for tremendous, exciting growth. Other industries, such as music and print media, have been just as wary, but they haven’t had the luxury of ignoring technology’s disruptive effects and doling out changes on their terms to customers. What racing needs is a similar sort of pressure, a few good start-ups shaking up content and wagering models. That’s when horseplayers and racing fans will start to get what they want, at the prices they’re looking for.
More on the Ellis Park Pick 4: “For the first time ever, horseplayers now have a positive expectation on their investment” (MSNBC).
Bet Needs a Payoff
Andrew Beyer on the TrackNet/TVG/ADW mess:
Churchill, Magna and TVG are pursuing a course of action all too familiar in the racing industry: forgetting about their bettors as they look after their own interests. This time, the industry has angered and alienated many of its dwindling number of customers, who want to make their own free choices about what they can bet and where they can bet.
CDI Buys BRIS, AmericaTab
Big news out of Kentucky this morning: Churchill Downs Incorporated has bought BRIS and AmericaTab.
6/29/07 Update: “Evans said establishment of twinspires.com and the subsequent acquisition of three Internet wagering companies gives CDI 20% of the Internet wagering market, the fastest growing segment of horse race wagering. Noting that wagering on Thoroughbred racing has been flat for the past decade, Evans said the challenge for CDI is to increase its market share” (Blood-Horse).
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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