I was asked to contribute my rankings by the hosts of the racing blog websites “Railbird,” “Green but Game,” and the harness site, “Pull the Pocket.”
Between them, they fashioned an interesting list of innovations that the industry either got right or are on their way to making the plight of horseplayers better.
http://www.r2collective.com/content/2009/12/20/top-innovations-for-racing-in-the-2000s/
Survey results are being posted at the above this week, one each day: Here then, in alphabetical order, are the proposed Top Innovations of the Decade for your consideration. My top five preferences follow.
“CONDITIONAL WAGERING – With late odds drops the norm and bettors none too happy about it, several ADWs brought in conditional wagering whereby a bettor can specify what (minimum) odds he will take on a horse at a [predetermined] post time. Premier Turf Club, an independent ADW, first revolutionized the concept.
“HIGH DEFINITION PICTURES – HD TV has been used by sports for most of the decade in some form, but recently Churchill Downs Inc. and Keeneland have brought it to racing.
“PEER TO PEER WAGERING – eBay was brought to horse bettors this decade. Betfair had less than 3000 members in 2002. Now they have 2.5 million. Trading horses on an exchange has been embraced by a new generation of horse race bettors. Despite racing's ills, Betfair counts horse racing as their number one sport, over soccer and other professional sports.
“PROLIFERATION OF RACE REPLAYS – Think 1995. Standing at a replay center at some [but] not all tracks was how you watched replays. Now almost every ADW has free replay features and many tracks are offering free replays on their website, or on Youtube.
“ROI TRACKING/BET TRACKING – For years and years players had to track their bets and profit or loss with pencil and paper, or by hand in a program like MS excel. Not any longer. Almost all ADW’s offer some sort of tracking, led by Youbet with their MYROI program, where you can track your bets by jockey, distance, surface and more.
“SOFTWARE GOES MAINSTREAM – Formulator 4, Jcapper, Horse Street, HTR and many other software programs have seen the light of day in the 2000’s due to higher processor speeds and ease of use. More and more players are handicapping by these means this decade, and they are here to stay.
“TRAKUS – Several tracks have adopted the “chicklets." Not knowing where your horse is in the morass of a pack of 12 is a long held complaint, especially from newbies. The GPS driven Trakus has changed the way we watch racing at simo-centres everywhere.
“TWINSPIRES TV – Watching 5 screens simultaneously has changed the way at-home players watch racing. Built-in replays, handicapping odds line and more are all on the same platform; and HD pictures are also supported. We as horseplayers do not watch one choppy feed like we did in 1998.”
Peer-to-Peer wagering, clearly the most successful “bet” innovation of the decade, is a concept that, if embraced, might ultimately save the business side of the game: It’s all about simplicity an effective takeout rate of 5 percent.
As to the argument that this rewards players for betting against certain horses in a proposition format is an invitation to skullduggery, horseplayers are betting against certain horses every day already.
In an eight-horse race, players who bet on the seven non-favorites are effectively betting against one horse. And if regulators can’t monitor wagering activity, it should be allowed to stay in business, anyway. Horse racing is a well regulated gamble.
I’m not interested in being drawn into the political aspects of whether American racing’s relationship with Betfair is ultimately good or bad for the industry. No company deserves carte blanche treatment; so the industry needs to do its due diligence.
Imagine that Betfair, a British based company, does much better business on horse racing than it does on soccer? There must be a lesson there somewhere.
Unless the cost of the racing product is lowered to match the perceived reduction in quality, racing will continue to lose market share. And unless that trend is reversed, it will be game over, sooner rather than later.
Conditional wagering is an excellent feature, even if the only thing it did is to reinforce the notion of value. For public handicappers and bettors, value is the most over-used and least understood term.
Value has nothing to do with price, per se. Even-money can be value; $12 might be an underlay. It’s always about “compared to what.”
Conditional wagering in our view is the red-headed stepchild of fixed-odds betting. Locking in the payoff you want is the best means of bringing horseplayers that have walked away back into the fold.
Fixed odds betting can be done; write the code already and just institute ir. The industry doesn’t have enough lobbying money to buy Washington the way Big Pharma and the Health Care Industry obviously has.
Think about all the positive publicity the implementation of fixed-odds betting would generate. It might even attract sports bettors who bring a different handicapping mindset to the table and can relate to a fixed odds scenario.
For race watchers, Trakus is the best thing to happen since a serrated edge was introduced to a loaf of bread. “It’s post time and they’re off: Do you know where your horses are?”
Not only can players follow the action more easily but newbie and veteran race-watchers alike can see how comfortable his runner is or is not and the degree of difficulty it faces. It demystifies race watching, making the whole process easier.
The proliferation of Race Replays helps to further depict the excitement, color and dangers of the profession, the athletic aspects of the horses and riders, and are an excellent instructional tool.
Sophisticated software has made the plight of serious fans easier by presenting comprehensive handicapping data in a user friendly manner. It allows today’s players access to the kind of statistics made necessary by the burgeoning popularity and impact of trend analysis.
23 Dec 2009 at 09:22 am | #
Hi John,
It does amaze me, being a horseplayer for a long time now just how different it has become.
Remember the “quiet horse” who was going to win? He was checked, or blind switched and is now shipping in? We watched the race out of the corner of our eye a few weeks ago and no one saw it. We kept training stats on this trainers shippers and know he is sending the horse to make a score. He is 10-1ML. He opens at 8-1, drifts to 12-1 and with one minute to post he is 10-1 (and we know he is going to stay there, not drop to 5-1 at the 3/4’s)
Now everything is lightning speed. I love technology, dont get me wrong, and this world is much better today than yesterday for it. But I am the only one who longs for the old days with packed tracks and 10-1 shots we could find that are not twittered about immediately?
Happy holidays,
Dean
23 Dec 2009 at 02:45 pm | #
Thanks for the greeting and happy holidays to you and your family.
A friend of mine who works in the industry and wagers--betting doesn’t compromise his job one way or another--often said he regretted there were replays and PPs at all! Talk about being the ultimate wise guy!
But you know, Dean? If the takeout were, say, 10 percent, and was at that level for a long time, there would be a lot more money in the pool and the “smart money” would have the kind of impact it has today. What we’re seeing to a certain degree is wise-guy cannibalization.
Pre-simulcasting, when I followed one track, I depended on trips. I still do to a certain degree--especially with young horses, turf and stakes class runners--making horse-to-watch notes for stable mail from whatever venues I might be following. But I need to depend on performance figures for wide “expert coverage,” so to speak.
Any way you cut it, you’re absolutely right. It’s getting tougher and tougher to find true value.
Happy hunting.
JRP
23 Dec 2009 at 07:05 pm | #
John:
Thanks for the mention for conditional wagering. It means a lot to be recognized for being the first ADW to introduce it.
I have always believed that technological innovation be it in the form of conditional wagering, bet structuring tools, mobile platforms, fixed odds wagering etc. can really help the industry in the face of dramatic decreases in handle. I look forward to the day when all past performance data, handicapping software, archived video and a state-of-the-art wagering platform are all seamlessly integrated through a single connection point, creating for horse players what Michael Bloomberg created for Wall Street.
Ian Meyers
Former CEO Premier Turf Club
23 Dec 2009 at 11:50 pm | #
Care to take a guess as to when “peer to peer” wagering will become available to U.S. citizens?
Hypocrisy lays over our country like a mushroom cloud when it comes to gambling. You and I break the law when we bet on the outcome of a football game, while the Governor of Pennslyvania holds hostage the jobs of 1,000 state employees as the price for not adding “table” games to his states’ slot parlors. The NFL fights attempts to legalize sports betting in states that want to allow it (gambling is bad you know, don’t want it tainting our image--drugs and rogue behavior aside), while being involved in promoting state lotteries in other states. And, it’s OK to bet on a horse race online, but it’s a crime to bet on a poker hand in an online game. Technology is great but only after some politicians receive some serious brain enemas!
24 Dec 2009 at 11:10 am | #
And palms full of racing lobbyist loot. You’re so right about the hypocricy.
I write about that all the time: The NFL loves the idea of pointspreads because they can charge the same ad rates in the last two minutes of a blowout as they can in a game that comes down to the wire.
Simplistic, I know, but hypocricy makes me crazy.
Ian, your mouth to someone’s ear! Actually, I have an idea for a new paradigm; we should talk. In any case, thanks for weighing in!
JRP
26 Dec 2009 at 10:53 am | #
JP,
One thing I do like is the access to replays. If I see something in the form (bumped, etc.) I can now follow up on how badly a horse was affected. One thing I really try to follow are horses that got in trouble for waht ever reason. In this aspect, technology is a great help.