Harness: Building a betting brand through effective social media use

In the quest to increase handle, one track that has pushed forward and done well in recent times is Pompano Park, in large part due to effective social media use and a creative and catchy hashtag that caught on with the wagering public on Twitter.

It would seem that Pompano should always do well with horseplayers, given the normally good south Florida weather and its position on the calendar when many tracks in the Northeast are dark, but track announcer and harness racing’s jack-of-all-trades Gabe Prewitt noted that definitely wasn’t the case when he arrived there a few years ago. Of course he couldn’t foresee the day where they had a $145,000 pick-5 pool like they did Monday night (January 28).

“We weren't getting much traction and handle wasn't great,” Prewitt said about his early days at the facility. “We sort of evaluated everything from top to bottom, like what nights of the week do you race, what nights of the week do you race your best cards on. We kind of realized that Sunday was going to be our highlight night. When we first got here, we were racing all our big races on Saturday, just like old school.

“I remember vividly like four or five years back, we added a $2,500 guarantee to our pick 5, and we missed it so many nights in-a-row that we just had to give up on it. We didn't want to, we wanted to stay with it, but we couldn't get $2,500 in a 50-cent pick 5, and these days even with no carryover it'll be $8,000 to $10,000, somewhere in that range. It's just amazing to see how things have grown from where they came from. Nobody remembers those days, but we struggled mightily when we were first doing some of this stuff."

While there were also changes to Pompano’s wagering menu, such as lowering the takeout on the pick 4 to 12 percent, that no doubt helped its status with the gambling public, Prewitt’s robust social media presence has definitely played a role as well, something he says came out of their desire to change things up from a stale status quo in those early days.

"As far as the social media aspect goes, it just kind of came with it a little bit,” explained Prewitt. “It's something that grows a little bit over time. I would go to the races, and maybe one or two people would reach out and interact throughout an entire night, and maybe not anyone, and that's even if I was tweeting about the races. These days, you fast forward, it's a good problem to have, but it's tough to even keep up sometimes with everything I've got going on. People are tweeting to you and messaging you, and anybody that does reach out, I try to engage about the races. We've got a lot of new fans and a lot of people that seem to follow us on a regular basis that seemed to get interested and get involved through social media.

“You want to have something good to promote too, so we changed our wagering menu, and pretty much every night to some degree we've got some sort of carryover or something to promote, so it's always fresh. We're not trying to do the same thing night in and night out and just hope people show up. We've been pretty fortunate that we've had a spike in handle and things that have helped us out. We've had pretty much always something to push out there.”

If you’ve spent any time around harness racing Twitter during the winter, you’ve no doubt come across #senditin and the dedicated Pompano players who have been dubbed the “Send It In Army”. That hashtag caught on like wildfire, with merchandise like t-shirts and hats to go with it, but Prewitt explains that it was sort of an organic thing and not some great vision he had.

"I would like to say that was some great vision and creativity, but for some reason that one caught on,” he offered. “People would use it, and it just sort of became our tagline at Pompano. It did catch on, but it was by sheer accident. I used other hashtags in the past that didn't catch on, and that one did.

“One of our guys, Scott, he's the guy that does the shirts and stuff. We sold those shirts to raise money for Sam McKee's family. Even before we sold the shirts, his brother owns a print shop or something, so we randomly get a box in at Pompano one night, he didn't even say anything, he designed a logo and there were a bunch of "Send It In" t-shirts. He said 'hey, my brother owns a print shop. He had a bunch of extra shirts sitting around, so I made these shirts, and I thought you guys might want to use them for a contest and stuff.’ Literally, the Send It In Army has basically just grown from the Twitter following, primarily at Pompano."

Another key component of what Prewitt tries to do with his social media presence is to bring the feeling from some of harness racing’s glory days to a virtual setting.

"All of us probably got hooked on racing because we went to the track and we had camaraderie with people, and, at least in my case when I first started going to the track, they wanted to educate you so you knew what was going on a little bit,” he said. “Those days are almost gone. It's hard to go and get that feel. I feel like the send it in, and the Twitter camaraderie and things, it's almost like an online version of that. If you're playing at Pompano enough, there are going to be people to chit-chat about the races throughout the night, so it's almost brought that online."

Prewitt handles social media the appropriate way through the night, interacting with people who mention him and want to talk about the races, but his status as a horseplayer himself has given him some cache, so people know when they’re talking to him, they’re talking to someone who has been there before, good or bad.

"Other people may have different opinions, but in my opinion it's extremely important,” Prewitt said about knowing how horseplayers feel. “I think it's vital almost because they know you're genuine. I don't think that anybody will have trouble believing this, but I'm in the trenches every night. I'm playing the races, I'm playing the pick 4's and pick 5's. I play races because that's what I enjoy doing. If I wasn't working at the track, I would be one of the guys on Twitter talking about the races wherever they were going.

“We all like to celebrate the wins - I ask people a lot of times if you made a nice score, tweet it so we can all kind of celebrate. I think that's important too because a lot of times people see these big payouts, and they think it was some super-sharp guy that hit it, but most of these big hits are by regular, everyday guys that are playing just like we all are. We like to celebrate the big hits, but yeah, I get a lot more people tweeting at me to discuss bad-beat stories, which unfortunately I'm very well-versed on as well."

Pompano and Prewitt really push carryovers on social media, which is vital because of the natural takeout reduction they provide to horseplayers, and thanks to the support of the wagering public, Pompano has been able to increase the guarantees on their low takeout pick 4 to $30,000 on Sundays and now $15,000 on weeknights. Prewitt said that USTA’s Strategic Wagering Program is also a big help, and they give him something to address on social media as well.

"I think the USTA's Strategic Wagering Program is awesome, I'm a big proponent of that,” stated Prewitt. “Chris Schick heads it up, and he's been awesome. When they missed the pick 5 the other night with the $23,000 carryover, I announced the guarantee within ten seconds for the next night because Chris and I had discussed there was only one horse covered and we'd been going back and forth.

"Michael Carter and the USTA, they get the PP's up instantly, and I think that goes a long way too. Horse racing, we make it so difficult on people, a lot of times it's hard to find live video, it's hard to find past performances, or you have to pay for either. To have a program like that, that gives me something to promote when I'm out there on Twitter and social media: ‘Hey, ‘X carryover, guaranteed pool tonight, free pp's.’ You'd be amazed at how many people when you have a carryover ask for PP's, but it's not easily accessible for people."

Given Prewitt’s direction on social media and Pompano’s attractive wagering menu, expect the Send It In Army’s ranks to only swell through the meet’s closing day on May 4.