Harness: Dealing with too much downtime at the track

Each week in DRF Harness Weekend Newsletter I ask a person with a vested involved in the industry, “If you could change one thing in the sport, what would it be?” While the answers vary, by far the leading response is to reduce the amount of time between races.

As someone who watches many more races from the comfort of my home than the track, despite attending 20-30 live racing cards each year, I never really paid too much attention to the time between races. Sure, the programs that drag on more than four hours and offer the final race at midnight on the East coast were annoying, but I always have the option of watching from any location in my home on my phone, so it really isn’t that big of a deal.

On the occasions when I’m live at the track, while I would notice that the races crawl along at times, I’m typically busy enough working and leave after the last stakes race, so the time moves by at least at a bearable pace.

Once a year I get the opportunity to hang out at the track, relax and play (ideally, it would be more often but it takes 1-2 hours each way for me to get to the closest track). This occurred on April 13 when I played in the World Harness handicapping Championship at The Meadowlands. Around 9 races and three hours into the card, sitting in the grandstand outside on a beautiful night waiting for the next race, it hit me – I’m bored!

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who loves harness racing more than me. I watch racing constantly. I’ve participated in the sport as an owner, driver, chart-caller, handicapper, and much more. My license plate says, “I’d rather be Harness Racing”. Ask my wife or kids, it’s a huge part of my life. But I was at the track and bored. Perhaps I would’ve had a different experience if I was winning, but I had money in my pocket, so it wasn’t like I was out of “action” and unable to wager. Sitting in the grandstand, I stared at the infield timer that indicates the “true” off time of the race and thought, “wow, is it really 16 minutes until the next race?”

It was an eye-opening experience in a way. If someone who loves harness racing as much as me was losing interest on the one recreational night I’ll spend at the track all year, how is any track supposed to appeal to a new customer and keep them engaged the entire night?

That got me to thinking, why can’t we contest races every 16 minutes to keep the action moving swiftly throughout the night? The only obstacle would seem to be allowing horses enough time to warm up. I’ve thought of two solutions: 1) Allow horses to warm-up every three races and have more time between those races only. 2) On larger tracks that have an inner track, like the turf course at The Meadowlands, why can’t horses warm up on that surface assuming the weather cooperates? I was watching races from some foreign track recently, perhaps Sweden, where horses where warming up in the infield during the races.

Aside from contesting races at a quicker pace, there must be other ways to keep the on-track audience engaged. What about interacting with patrons via their mobile devices? HQ Trivia is a popular app where people can compete to win prizes by answering random questions. What if tracks posted harness racing or even other trivia questions on the infield video board or on the in-house simulcast feed between races? On-track fans could text the answers to a number with the winners eligible for prizes – vouchers, free food, etc. That seems like an easy way to keep the attention of people who are not interested in playing other tracks via simulcasting.

How about working with the team at Farm Ventures to offer a “Catch Driver” race live between races? For those that don’t know, Catch Driver is an app that allows users to drive in a virtual harness race. Users get to decide whether to “leave hard off the gate” or settle in along the pylons, whether to urge their horse early or wait for the stretch.

How cool would it be if a track worked with Catch Driver to schedule a race with 8-12 participants? The track would set up an area with mobile devices, have the players show up just before post time for the next live race and compete 4-5 minutes after the race goes official. The races could be shown on in-house monitors and on the infield video board. The winner could receive an on-track prize.

Thinking about what other sporting events do to entertain fans during breaks in the action . . . the New York Yankees show a virtual subway car race from Manhattan to Yankee Stadium on the video board and ask patrons to guess the winner. They also play multiple other quick-hit games to keep people occupied. What if there was a virtual harness race shown or guess this harness driver contest where you reveal facts slowly on the video screen?

On the April night when I was at The Meadowlands, there were young people outside watching the races. There was a group of what looked like 8-10 year-old girls with parents enjoying themselves outside. If we want people like these to return, the experience has to be all encompassing. We simply can’t get by on harness racing alone, especially with 20-25 minutes of downtime between races.

The above solutions may not be the right ones, but the need to innovate is real. If tracks are ever going to get new people to not just check out the races, but become repeat customers, we must provide a better overall experience.