Horseplayers' panel advocates change, criticizes industry at Global Symposium on Racing

TUCSON, Ariz. - A panel of horseplayers on Wednesday afternoon at the Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson criticized the racing industry for being too slow to adapt to changing times and failing to embrace transparency and experimentation, complaints that have become familiar in the racing industry over the past five years.

The panelists repeated complaints about takeouts, timing, and breakage, while offering several new provocative ideas such as diverting breakage to the seeding of pools. However, the panelists had merely an hour to discuss their wide-ranging ideas, and the conversation often glossed over salient points that could have brought more depth to the discussion.

Panelists included Marshall Gramm, the Rhodes College economist, horseplayer, and horse owner who is a celebrated figure among many handicappers; Jonathan Kinchen, the bettor and handicapping contest player who has recently landed positions as an analyst on racing broadcasts; and Patrick Cummings, who has advocated for bettors in his position as executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, a thinktank launched approximately 18 months ago. Rick Hammerle, the racing coordinator at Oaklawn Park, moderated.

Cummings acknowledged in comments during the discussion that the TIF has made little headway in changing current breakage practices in the industry since releasing a position paper about eliminating breakage early this year. But he said that effort has spurred the organization to begin pressing racing entities to implement a novel idea – using breakage from one or more races to seed pools in future races. Seeding pools is considered a way to lower the effective takeout in a pool, by paying out a larger share of the pool than what would have been paid out without the seeded money.

“We think this is a good idea that could be possible,” Cummings said.

Cummings and the other panelists also advocated that racetracks begin publishing imputed win odds for horses based on daily double and exacta pool wagering. The goal, the panelists said, would be to indicate to players when a horse’s odds were likely to drop in the late stages of wagering, a phenomenon that is related to the ability of more and more players being able to post their bets nearer to post time due to the availability of mobile-betting options and computer-assisted wagering.

“Players won’t feel as bad if they know they are about to be screwed,” Cummings said.

The players also agreed that takeout rates should be lower, even as some of the panelists acknowledged that they received rebates on their play. The issue of takeout rates has become far more complicated over the past 20 years due to a wide range of factors, including rebates, and most racing officials remain frustrated over some players’ incessant criticism of the rates absent a wider discussion of the factors that impact takeout decisions.

The panel also advocated that the racing industry eliminate the use of the run-up when timing races. The run-up is the distance that horses are allowed to run before timing begins, and the distance can vary widely between tracks, leading to differences in the real distance of races among tracks across the U.S.

Gramm said that racing must embrace changes in order to be relevant to the next generation of bettors, who crave more information and the ability to use data to construct their own models. At Rhodes, Gramm teaches a course called “The Economics of Racetrack Wagering Markets,” and he said the course is one of the best attended at the college.

“Their approach to it is intellectual,” Gramm said. “These are not future slot players.”

Kinchen said that horse racing “is still the best betting game in the world,” but he urged the racing industry to focus on strategies that would lead to dramatic increases in handle, rather than arguing over the size of their own shares.

“Everyone is worried about their piece of the pie, and no one gives a [expletive] about making the pie bigger,” Kinchen said.

* Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, a panel of racing television executives discussed the dramatic growth in live racing coverage over the past 20 years, with moderator Alex Waldrop, the president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, calling that increase “truly one of those good news stories in racing we hear nothing about.”

The growth began with the establishment of TVG 20 years ago, and that network now currently offers 10,000 hours of live racing coverage and is available in 45 million homes. And this year, Fox Sports reached an agreement with the New York Racing Association to broadcast 500 hours of live coverage from the association’s tracks, with 700 hours slated for next year, according to NYRA’s chief revenue officer, Tony Allevato, a former TVG executive. NBC has also expanded its coverage, mostly by increasing the amount of time that is devoted to major events like the Triple Crown races and the Breeders’ Cup.

Allevato said that Fox was interested in broadcasting more racing coverage as part of a wider movement within television studios to obtain rights to more sports broadcasts. According to Allevato, 90 percent of all sports and news broadcasts are watched live, while only 10 percent of scripted broadcasts are watched at the time the programs are initially aired.

The benefit to NYRA of having its races aired live on Fox is that the content is now on a network that is attracting viewers interested in sports betting, Allevato said. Fox has announced as well that it plans to launch a sports betting app in the future.

“There’s a unique opportunity right now to tap into a new audience that’s out there,” Allevato said.

On a similar note, Kevin Grigsby, an executive producer of TVG, said on the panel that one of TVG’s sister companies, FanDuel, will launch a betting app called FanDuel Racing early next year. The app will be marketed to the seven-million customers in the FanDuel database, Grigsby said, and will provide users with data on races that is similar in format to the data available for the company’s sports contests. Bets through the app will go into the sport’s common pools.

“It’s very elementary, it’s very simplistic, it’s not intimidating in any way, shape, or form,” Grigsby said.