By HRI FOREIGN STAFF — Back in 2022, a real headline from the New York Times read: “Digital Horses Are the Talk of the Crypto World.” A few months previously, the popular technology & lifestyle magazine Vice had an even stronger take with its piece titled: “Digital Horses Are the New Racehorses.”
Four years later, and it’s fair to say that, no, digital horses are not the new racehorses, and we would be very surprised if there is any momentum behind the idea again. Yet, there was a point in the early 2020s when it became influential enough to get the mainstream media talking about it.
Racing was based on NFT technology
What went wrong? Several things. For a start, the idea of digital horse racing was wrapped up with the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) sub-sector of the cryptocurrency industry, and while crypto is arguably not dead, the NFT craze that saw people spend millions on blockchain-based “jpegs” at the start of the decade is no longer evident.
The idea behind digital horse racing was fairly interesting, if not attractive to everyone. The digital sector mimicked the ‘real’ racing industry, allowing participants to purchase horses with data based on breeding lines, performance history and so on. Data was recorded on the blockchain and traded as if it were real. Examples of popular platforms included Zed Run.
The concept was that people who were interested in racing might see the appeal. Racing fans might already be interested in activities like horse racing-themed slot games online, so there might be some crossover appeal.
But despite a surge at the time, the idea fell a bit flat. You might look at the timing also, as many of these platforms launched in and around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic – when everything was being proposed as being virtual.
If you recall, even Facebook was talking about building the metaverse, a concept that has now been shuttered and cited as a multi-billion-dollar waste of money. It was also the time that we saw the virtual Grand National, which was at least teresting from a horse racing data standpoint.
The economics don’t add up
In addition, there were similar problems to crypto gaming in that the economics of the industry always depended on more and more people joining to help drive up the value of the digital horses. We wouldn’t go as far as saying it is a pyramid scheme, but it is a problem with these digital products that they do require new money.
Of course, the underlying problem is that the horse racing industry in general values its traditions, and, despite some accusations to the contrary, the industry reveres horses. Real horses. The appeal of racing is not just about the participation in races, but the community that is built up around the sector: Big race days, friends clubbing together to buy a racehorse and seeing it win for the first time, picking a winner because you liked the look of the horse while walking past the paddock; that type of thing can’t be replicated on a computer.
So, for now at least, the idea of digital racehorses looks like a passing fad. We don’t know what the future will hold, especially with artificial intelligence, but despite a brief surge in activity in the early 2020s, it looks like the digital races will remain niche, perhaps reserved for NFT fans rather than horse racing ones.
