International simulcasting subject of first day of Pan American Conference

The Jockey Club conducted the inaugural Pan American Conference in New York City on June 4-5, and the well-attended event produced a number of interesting takes on the state of racing and breeding in the Americas. Speakers on some of the panels discussed how to make commerce between the Americas more favorable for racing and for a stronger partnership to grow the sport.

The conference is patterned on the successful Asian Racing Conference, which takes place every two years, and the Jockey Club would like to make the Pan American Conference a staple in the off years of the Asian Racing Conference. The Jockey Club’s goal is to help promote commerce, dialog, and trade of the Americas between north and south, as well promote its racing and breeding products to consumers outside the region.

The Jockey Club kicked off international theme of the Pan American Conference by holding a reception at the United Nations on Wednesday night, and the event officially concludes on June 6 with an outing to Belmont Park to see American Pharoah attempt to become the 12th Triple Crown winner in U.S. history.

In between the UN and the Belmont, two days of panels presented topics on racing, breeding, and medication issues. With retired race announcer Tom Durkin serving as the master of ceremonies at the event, held at the Hyatt Grand Central, the first day featured panels discussing racing and breeding in the Americas and the often commonality of pedigrees and the flow of breeding stock between North and South America; a panel on cataloging standards and their purpose of providing a context for owners and breeding in evaluating the quality of specific races; and a panel on technology and data collection and how the sport can better present a wider array of information to fans to attract new customers and different ways to provide handicapping information.

A panel of interest for racing fans and bettors was moderated by New York Racing Association Senior Vice President of Racing Martin Panza. He and three other panelists discussed the importance of the sport delivering races internationally for bettors, because of the importance in today’s market to be able to attract handle on races worldwide.

Panza, who took over at NYRA several years ago after being the director of racing at Hollywood Park, has created three racing festival days stacked with major stakes that attract horses from around the world. Those events are the Belmont Festival on Memorial Day, the Stars and Stripes festival on July 4, and a strong card surrounding Travers Stakes day.

“We want to bring international horses to New York to penetrate the international market,” Panza said.

He said that there are numerous keys to creating these events: The track must look at the global calendar to see what else is available for horses in that time frame and make sure the calendar is free of conflicts for major stakes; the track must have a nucleus of local horses to contribute runners to those stakes events; the track must be in a location to easily attract shippers; and the track must maximize its races so that the handle justifies the purses.

“In areas where it costs a lot to market horses, like New York, can more be done by adding $500,000 to a race or is it better spent on marketing?” said Panza. “I think it’s better to spend on the event and let the event market itself.”

Mike Rogers, president of the Stronach Group, which operates Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita among others, said his group of tracks has been focused on the Latin America market due to demographics, proximity, and time considerations. Magna tracks Gulfstream and Pimlico import signals from several tracks in Latin America for simulcasting purposes and the key is reciprocity, Rogers said.

“We want to import international races and export to international markets,” Rogers said. “The goal is to invest in purses and infrastructure. If we take signals, we want to make sure they take our signal. Reciprocity is very important.”

Rogers said the Stronach Group focuses on time zones, as well as a number of other keys, such as field size, affinity of the fans for the horses and races in those countries, as well as the wagering pool sizes.

“Latin America racing has a favorable time zone for us, since it’s just a one or two hour difference,” Rogers said. “Florida has a large Latin American population and our fans migrate to that product.

“We don’t commingle [with the Latin American pools] because of the takeout. It can be as high as 20 to 30 percent in those pools, so we have our own pools as a result.

“We piggyback the Latin America races by adding them to our card. At Gulfstream, for example, you may see we have 17 races, but races 11 to 17 are from Latin America.”

Alex Waldrop, president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, led off the morning session by providing details on the racing and breeding markets worldwide to give perspective to those sectors.

The Americas produce 43.8% of the Thoroughbred foals worldwide and conduct 44.7% of the races, but Asia has the largest handle and the highest purses. Of the approximately 80 billion Euros bet legally worldwide on racing, Asia is responsible for 56.5%, Europe 32.6%, and the Americas are a distant third at 10.9%.
The disparity in handle is reflected in purses, as Asia distributes 53.8% of worldwide purses, the Americas 31.7%, and Europe 14.5%.

For owners, that means it is hard to make ends meet, especially in Europe, whereas in Asia, it is easier. According to Waldrop, prize money versus expenses of keeping a horse in training are 77.9% in Asia, 67.5% in the Americas, and just 35.5% in Europe. Of the major racing countries, Hong Kong returns 98% of expenses on average due to the large purses. Singapore, an up-and-coming racing and breeding center, returns 126% of expenses in purses.

Waldrop also announced that the NTRA has expanded its National Handicapping Championship tournament footprint into Central and South America, and that initiative will start in the second half of 2015. The NTRA is teaming with the Latin America Racing Channel to send qualifiers to the NHC in Las Vegas in January 2016. On-site qualifiers have previously been limited to the U.S. and Canada.

The second day of the conference on Friday features a conversation with former NBA commissioner David Stern and a keynote speech by Frank Stronach.