I actually took some time this weekend to watch a little bit of the NBA playoffs. Now, I’m a huge basketball guy, but an average fan of the NBA (at best). Too long of a season, guarantied contracts make too many players lazy and the court is too small for these mammoth athletes (how about that one??? Think about it, the court for a 5th grade girls game is the same width as an NBA game…no wonder they stall in the half court). Anyway, despite everyone’s constant bashing of the NBA, it is a popular league and one thing they do better than almost everyone is the promotion of their stars. This point was driven home with the 500,000th shot of Kevin Garnett sitting on the sidelines in a suit, scowling at opposing players and trying to blind them by bouncing a run away stadium laser light off his boulder sized diamond ear ring. The guy isn’t even on the court and he is a focus. Why? Because the NBA promotes their stars no matter what.
Flash back to a blog post a couple of weeks ago in which I was talking about the need for racing to have aged horses racing for multiple years. I truly believe that is a NEED of racing in order to gain the public’s interest. No one outside of the tight racing community will have a clue who Somebeachsomewhere is by the end of this year (heck, they may have forgot about him already) and like I have said, he is a legit SUPERSTAR. Pardon my bluntness, but he is a worthless superstar in the breeding shed from a promotional perspective. No one knows about him and no one cares. Horses can start breeding at 6 or 7 just as easily, but as his owner stated, they need a reason to keep racing. What better reason that money and fame? Certainly seems to keep Mr. Favre interested in playing football.
Everyone can agree on one thing: racing need to market and promote much better. The question is how and with who? I really believe that these efforts need to be focused. You simply can’t promote ALL of it. You can’t cover every age, every gait, every race from a conditioned claimer on up to the Hambeltonian. It is literally impossible. I’ve always thought if you focus your promotion on the best of the best, the rising tide will lift all boats…including $2,000 claiming races at a small track.
Which brings us back to the loosely described idea I had a in a blog entry a couple of weeks back. An annual series that focuses on the aged pacers in harness racing (as a side note, trotters should also be considered, but it is important not to bite off too much at once). Aged pacers offer as the most marketable for a number of reasons including name recognition, durability (compared to younger horses) and anohter is consistency. The problem with focusing on the Hambeltonian or any younger horse race (especially trotters) is the general public have no idea what a break is, what it means or why it is happening. They think the horse is hurt, drivers are stiffing the public or it just ruins the race. The less breaking, the better.
I’ve recently been reading a number of well known horsemen describe a 5% or 10% solution in which a certain percentage of purses will be skimmed by the USTA and used to market the sport. That same solution should be used for this plan. The promotion and marketing needs to be FOCUSED and the series I’m about to describe is prefect for that. If you can identify with aged pacers, other ages and gaits will also benefit. Think of Nascar. They focus on the Sprint Cup series, but because of the success of that, the Nationwide series benefits, the truck series benefits and on down the line.
In a bullet point summary, here are the high points of a potential Harness Racing Series:
-A twelve race season with one race in May, two races in June, July, August, September and October. The final race will be in November. This represents enough races that a horse could miss (due to injury or other commitments) and not ruin the entire season. Also, twelve races over the course of six months is not overly grueling.
- Track schedule would obviously have to be negotiated, but in a general sense, the following tracks could be used in some sort of order: The Meadowlands, Yonkers, Pocono Downs, The Meadows, Chester Downs, Deleware (LJB track), Hoosier (or Indianapolis Downs), Balmoral Park, Springfield, Lexington, Dover and it could end at The Meadowlands again.
- Events in similar regions would be clustered together to avoid access shipping.
- Each event would have up to four separate divisions, drawn at random, meaning a maximum of 40 horses could compete on a given event. If more than 40 enter, ties are broken by series earnings first and lifetime earnings second.
- Each event would either race for $800,000 or $400,000, so if there are four divisions, individual races would go for either $200,000 or $100,000.
- 100 points are also awarded in each race in the following breakdown (from winner to last in a 10 horse field): 33, 22, 15, 10, 7, 4, 3, 1, 1, 1
- The first nine races would set up the final three. In the final three races, horses ranked 1-10 will compete together in the AAAA division finals. Horses ranked 11-20 will compete in the AAA division final, horses ranked 21-30 in the AA and horses ranked 31-40 in the A division final.
- These fields do not change unless of an injury or another reason a horse is pulled out. In which case, the horse with the next highest point total will get moved up one division (AAA to AAAA, AA to AAA and so on).
- Purses for the final three weeks are as follows:
AAAA: $500,000 per race
AAA: $200,000 per race
AA: $100,000 per race
A: $50,000 per race
-The winner of the AAAA division of the series will receive a $1,000,000 bonus.
-In addition, the winners of each division will receive a trophy (which will be named to build recognition and history over time).
That is how I envision the series in a nutshell. With any idea, there are numerous questions, but I’ll address the obvious one first: where is all the money coming from? Under this scenario, you would need $10.75 million in purse money to cover all the races and bonus. Here is where the 5% solution comes in.
In 2008, the top 50 two year old and three year old pacers earned a combined $36,860,000. Taking 5% of that purse money equates to $1,843,000. Again, that is just the top 50 two year olds and top 50 three year olds. It does not apply to aged races, claiming races and so on. The 5% solution could apply to more than just those horses. However, I believe it should have a floor, meaning that it should not apply to purses checks below a certain amount (say $10,000).
Additional revenues could come from starting fees (if it were just $500 per race with 40 starters and 12 races, that is another $240,000). A portion of the purse money could be offset from track handle as well. I would venture to guess that these races would be very well bet given the constant racing, balanced fields and marketing efforts.
There must be a lot more to make this series successful, including incredibly stringent testing and massive penalties for violators, limitless amounts of marketing opportunities (on the silks, on the bikes, on the numbers, on the track, you really can’t rule anything out) as well as gimmicks (driver helmet cameras, build up of rivalries between horses, trainers, drivers and owners, fantasy horse racing and on and on). I will continue to lay out more ideas over time. I really believe that something like this is what is necessary to draw new attention to harness racing. I’m not sure if anyone will agree or even hear about this, but feel free to pass this on to anyone who might be interested.
In other news, Mr. Mo will qualify this week on Thursday and I can't even talk about it. Just too nervous. Sounds like he has been doing his work well for John Butenschoen and should be ready to go. We are so hopeful, but you can't put the cart before the horse (literally and figuratively). We will have an update on Friday.
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