Monday, June 29, 2009

We All Scream for Ice Cream

(CHICAGO, IL – June 29, 2009) Last Friday members of the press received a media release from the publicity department of Salisbury Racecourse - a minor, albeit picturesque, track in the quaint English countryside of Wiltshire.

The release was no more frivolous than a NYRA announcement that pink wrist bands were being given out to women who’d be admitted free to Belmont Park for Rachel Alexandra’s return to racing in the Mother Goose Stakes or a Churchill Downs notice that racetrack officials themselves would be vending beer for $1 a pop on the second of its three “Downs After Dark” programs.

But the release originated from a city eight miles from Stonehenge that is said to be haunted, and the Brits’ bit of news had a whimsical quality that caused a few writers on these shores to titter – and perhaps Twitter – as if nothing was less important.

Headlined “Ice-Cream Gate,” the amusing release conveyed that Salisbury, as a result of the ire of its faithful, was reversing itself in regard to its new policy that banned taking ice cream into its Members’ lawn enclosure – the viewing area most desirable on special racing occasions such as Family Fun Days, the third of which was held Sunday.

“We have decided that the first 99 racegoers in each of our three enclosures, including Members’, will receive a voucher on entry and be entitled to a free ‘99’ ice cream,” Jeremy Martin, Clerk of the Course and Racecourse Manager, reported, hoping the gift ice creams would soothe the hurt feelings of snubbed patrons.
“We won’t be coning off any special areas; racegoers can eat the ice creams anywhere,” were the words Martin chose to conclude his remarks, implying that he, too, was aware that Ice-Cream Gate wasn’t on a level with the information that Ouqba, a recent Salisbury graduate, won a Group 3 stakes at Royal Ascot this June or that many 2-year-olds that win the K J Pike & Sons Ltd Auction Stakes, Sunday’s feature, go on to become mighty nice 3-year-olds – the 2006 Epsom Derby winner Sir Percy included.

Sir Percy’s success is the kind of news normally developed and expected from racetracks. But no bookie on the lawn of the Members’ at Salisbury would give you better than even money on the proposition that news about Ice-Cream Gate wasn’t what everyone who likes racing in England was talking about. You see, in the end, most people enjoy simple things such as ice cream and wrist bands and $1 beers, not the mind-testing things like handicapping a race and deciding on which horse to bet on.

For certain, a sport gains in stature from the competition it presents. But a brand develops personality by the details that surround it. Thus, Saratoga draws its crowds for the reasons of its historic nature and laidback picnic grounds. Arlington Park is renowned for its modern architecture. Del Mar has the ocean, and so on. Racetracks operating without a unique selling proposition are limited in their appeal by the inadequacy of gambling. Risk-taking is fun for awhile, but not worth the price that one pays for it.

The takeout these days is twice what it was during the days when horse racing flourished. The playing field for people that choose to chance money on a game of luck has expanded to state-run lotteries, air-cooled poker rooms and glitzy slot machine parlors. More than 500 casinos offering table games flourish in 28 states and there are more on the drawing board. How can anyone expect horse racing, which is slow to learn, lacking action and favoring the house unfairly, to compete?

Without receiving subsidies in some form or another, the racetracks, as a business built on gambling alone, have poor prospects for sustaining the popularity that will enable them to accommodate an industry that’s modeled to suit a big enterprise. If you think other entertainments provide better alternatives to horses today, wait until a few years when states further hard-pressed for making their budgets eye the pie that’s available from all-sports gambling.

How does one cultivate fans? That’s the big question. But the answer lies not in reaching for straws or looking for handouts. Kentucky, the state with the most to lose, may be temporarily insane for allowing the money to flow over the Ohio River to neighboring territories. Nevertheless, sooner or later, the Commonwealth will come to its senses. New York legislators – custodians of the bankrupt Empire - will greenlight construction of the Aqueduct racino once they’ve tapped into the bank accounts of interested parties during the lucrative fund-raising season of Saratoga. But then what?

Just about everything in horse racing is screwed up. It’s unimaginable to think that the sport can ever get back to being run sensibly on a national level. Centralizing authority to produce a comprehensive plan that would at least provide an organized game plan is ridiculous for as long as each faction clings to its own special interests. Spending money on advertising is inefficient. But outsourcing the function of racetrack management to people adept in creating environments that are pleasing to the public could represent a method for getting the fans back.

One wonders how racetracks would have changed if decades ago, at the height of their popularity, they had been taken over by Hollywood movie studios or Las Vegas casino operators or Motown music producers. Today’s racetrack operators emerge from a silver-spooned culture in which the ingrained marketing tendency was to open the doors early. Horse racing 30 years ago maintained its nimiety on cruise control. The lax requirements attached to the production of enterprise in those days led to a succession of miscast managers – a different species entirely from the promoters of pop culture who stir peoples’ emotions.

An overwhelming comfort with horse racing-knowledgeable individuals at the helm has ruled hiring practices. Current management at the racetracks isn’t bred with abilities consistent with being successful in the world of entertainment, where creating something pleasing out of thin air is more valuable than accepting what exists and tending it carefully. No true innovator begins the consideration of an idea with reasons why it won’t work, but that sort of obstruction is standing operating procedure in most horse racing quarters.

Lobbying for aid, adjusting the medication policies, curtailing the cheating – these are jobs that the professionals in which horse racing’s future has been vested can comfortably address. Three fillies running for a Grade 1 purse of $250,000 aside, the tracks have the management of the sport’s core under control. Not knowing how to serve up the ice cream is what’s causing their meltdown.

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Monday, June 22, 2009

Uncommon Virtue in “Downs After Dark”

(CHICAGO, IL – June 22, 2009) There was something operationally exceptional about Churchill Downs’ foray into night racing that went beyond its 28,011 fans. More than three times the usual attendance for a Friday in mid-June was on hand. Yet, numbers alone don’t tell the story about the “ Downs After Dark.”

Several years ago, the management of the Louisville racecourse began the practice of refusing to divulge attendance figures, claiming that handle, not the number of fans, was the way to measure success. Few people believed Churchill’s leaders then, and fewer people believe them now, especially in light of Friday’s head count. But here they are, proudly boasting a total as if the turnout was the final result of a championship game.

At the same time, the experiment was the rare innovation that dared to do something about horse racing’s woes, and backtracking on policy is what good leaders do when they’re faced with a winning streak. Without an announcement of attendance, how would anyone who wasn’t squeezed under the twin spires on Friday have known what a grand success horse racing presented as entertainment can be?

Many places conduct meets after sundown, including Mountaineer Park, Presque Isle Downs and dozens of ailing harness tracks. That’s not what took place at the home of the Kentucky Derby. What took place at Churchill Downs was the creation of spectacle. By the way, is there anyone in racing that does spectacle better?

Handle is down roughly 10 percent at America’s horse tracks. The reason given for the decline is that the economy is bad. After all, what can anyone do about the recession but wait it out, goes the common refrain. This explanation, of course, follows form for an industry that routinely faces its problems with idle acceptance. Nevertheless, here was a leader trying to reverse these trends, working overtime to lure people to its product, and in that one could find uncommon virtue.

From as long as anyone remembers, there has been too much belly-aching and not enough problem-solving in the horse racing game. Excuses superseded solutions whenever adversity hit. If the sport made a new customer each time a track manager said that attendance was off because of the weather, the grandstands would bulge with two-fisted gamblers trying to lay a bet down. If the number of complaints made about unfair competition from the gaming industry was met by an equal number of warm bodies passing through the turnstiles, the racetracks would reveal their attendance figures daily.

Historically,when trouble arose, life went on in a manner that cost people jobs, diminished the spectacle and lessened the public’s interest. Finally, in the past week, we witnessed a change in philosophy and, more importantly, an influx of action. That the sport’s leadership came forth with responses to problems was as shocking as anything the sport has seen in decades.

For example, the Breeders Cup took further steps to modernize. Its nominators elected a board of members and trustees that seems to reflect a forward leaning perspective. Gone were two of the old guard – Donald Dizney and Tracy Farmer – and in were people known for challenging the status quo. The election’s biggest vote-getter, Richard Santulli, the visionary chairman of NetJets, now stands to move on to the Breeders’ Cup’s operating board. Life could get interesting in a hurry, if that development transpired.

It was only a year ago that Santulli was rejected by the members and trustees to serve on the smaller operating board. It’s the elected members and trustees who vote on which members and trustees participate on the operating board and it’s the operating board that determines major decisions regarding the conduct of the Breeders’ Cup. Recently, Santulli’s popularity in terms of being elected to the operating board was burdened by a decision on the part of his company to withdraw its sponsorship of one of the Breeders’ Cup races. But even that doesn’t seem to have held him back this time.

Kentucky was also the scene of proactive behavior on the part of the horse industry to stem the flow of available gambling money to Indiana. Nearly a thousand industry representatives, including Nick Nicholson, the president of Keeneland, and jockey Calvin Borel, racing’s current superstar, trekked to the Capitol in Frankfort to demonstrate in favor of VLTs at racetracks. The parade of supporters included people of all walks of life from veterinarians to feed supply salesmen. It was a truly amazing demonstration from an industry that derives its economic strength from disagreement. Moreover, the action illustrated the point that laissez-faire is a foreign concept in today’s desperate climate.

For nearly a decade now, the Commonwealth’s legislature has disdained proposals to turn the racetracks into racinos as Kentucky’s thoroughbred industry dwindled. But shortages in the budget have gotten so bad that finally the issue was addressed seriously last week. The Democratic-controlled House passed a bill that would bring slot machines to racetracks, even though the “Party of No” in the Senate is sure to oppose it. Nevertheless, the entire thoroughbred community is united on this issue, regardless of party affiliation. As a result, Kentucky is one step closer to righting its sinking ship. More importantly, the industry behaved proactively, proving for the third time in seven days that it was engaged in its future, not simply willing to accept the consequences of history.

That being said, it may be too early to draw the conclusion that horse racing has finally awakened to the understanding that markets are made. Still, the events of the past week, especially in Kentucky, offer hope that this widely-held business principle is indeed applicable. Even within the context of the game's highest levels and biggest businesses, stagnation has burrowed its way deeply into behavior, creative thinking is rare and the level of professional marketing is abysmal. These aren’t tends that are reversed quickly.

Regardless, " Downs After Dark,” after all, may be more than the name of a Friday night promotion. It may represent a movement.

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Be Careful What You Wish For - Hialeah Redivivus

(CHICAGO, IL – June 15, 2009) There is a prevailing nostalgia for old Hialeah Park that just won’t accommodate the infusion of quarter horse racing. In a setting as rigidly remembered as the house that Widener built, the presentation of thoroughbreds is to the running of quarter horses as Degas is to Twombly. Each needs its own gallery.

Thoughts of the track in its day conjure up fancy folks dressed in finery alighting from big cars with wavy fenders, pink flamingos in flight, and marble floors and palm trees. For those who recall it, the air on the edge of the Everglades was damp, dense, and tropical, cooled by an ocean breeze or a sip from a fruit smoothie - not still to the extent that a mouse scampering across sand makes a sound that will echo off mountains.

Quarter horse racing is held in a heat that is prickly as cactus. It’s about slow-talking horsemen in black hats and cowboy boots, dusty backstretches and shots of biting tequila. The game’s gunslinger demeanor was forged on the back roads of Oklahoma and points west where the length of a man’s sentences is as short as the distance a horse races.

Yet, if all goes as planned, the new Hialeah will dress Casey’s Shadow in sequins. The fabled track – once the stomping grounds of FDR, Winston Churchill and Bold Ruler - faces personality reassignment. In all likelihood, at the whim of its owners, the vine-covered grand dame will soon be the second South Florida track to bypass what people truly want in favor of ego-driven expedience.

Last week, Hialeah owner John J. Brunetti and son returned from a trip to Remington Park; all reports are they liked it. Accompanied by track manager Dennis Testa and a local hotshot named Luis Rojas, Brunetti, Jr. vowed afterward that soon the track would be back in business again. His remarks stirred the passion of racing fans, but they hid insincerity like a politician’s pronouncements.

Thoroughbred fans have been clamoring for Hialeah to reopen since last spring. More than twelve months ago, the upstart Halsey Minor announced that he would seek purchase of the famed racetrack, lending credence to hope. Minor proclaimed that he had a plan to restore racing to its glorious past – to bring back the social amenities that brought tourists in droves to the vine-covered citadel. Then the deal fell apart.

Regardless, in its wake, the fans’ expectations sprouted like ten-cent superfecta wagers. Now Brunetti, ashamed that he hasn’t done anything in ages, is acting like he, better than Minor, is the one who will resurrect Hialeah. “You can’t go home again,” warned the author Thomas Wolfe. But people keep trying. Brunetti’s plan portends nothing of what people want. Instead, it provides the same out-of-sync thinking that made rebuilt Gulfstream Park regrettable.

“When it is back, I think it will have every bit of the grace, the charm and the wonder of the days of old,” Minor told Channel 10 in Coral Gables, Florida a year ago. “It is our hope that the new Hialeah Park will not be limited to quarter horse racing. We also envision a casino, a card room with poker and dominoes, and slot machines,” Brunetti, Jr. said after spending a day in the Sooner State.

Minor’s plan was to present thoroughbred racing at Hialeah without the support of other forms of gambling - the way it flourished before the surrounding community began to scare people off to the north where two other racetracks, both less intriguing and beautiful, seemed safer and cleaner. Eager to cash in on the casino-styled gambling opportunity, Brunetti will provide half-assed repair to the once-glorious facility, spend less than is necessary and rush to begin making money.

The ease of attaining a quarter horse license permits Brunetti to move forward with what he is really interested in – cashing in on slot machine revenues. The rush racetrack owners get from the influx of money that’s available to them without having to spend on their own product provides the same kind of high that one gets from Ecstasy. It lasts only so long, leaving users confused, with no redeeming benefit to help them along when the dawn comes. Hialeah – a quarter horse track with a casino? I don’t think so. Can’t Brunetti leave Hialeah alone so that, at least, we will have its memory?

That Hialeah, one of the most revered thoroughbred racetracks ever, will be racing a breed other than thoroughbreds isn’t a slap at quarter horse racing, a sport that deserves admiration for its own unique qualities. But the point in all this is that when things, which by nature derive their identity from one set of criteria, become defined by some other set, they become something else.

When a man of myopic vision sees something he hadn’t seen before, it is dangerous. When he travels to quarter horse country to find ways to remodel a thoroughbred racetrack, it is blasphemous to both institutions. The Brunetti plan turns the fragrance of bougainvillea into the scent of disaster.

As for you, racing fans, be careful what you wish for. Some places, especially those that pretend to be not what they are – meaning Hialeah Park redivivus - may seem better in repose than resuscitated.

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