(Tip of the Stetson to Blackie Sherrod for his columns, and to his brother, Bud, for all the drinks.)
I love horse races. They’re picturesque. I am not a reliable supporter. By that, I mean I don’t attend very often. At my most active, I went about once a month during the season (Louisiana Downs). Now I go once every couple or three years
I love the ambience, particularly at old tracks such as Saratoga, in New York . It opened in 1863 and the architecture reflects that. I spend all the time between races taking pictures.
I don’t go often because it’s a couple of hours drive each way. I suppose I wouldn’t make a good athletic supporter. My support is limited to one admission, about $20-$40 in bets, and the same on beer and food. I have no idea how to handicap a race correctly, so I just pluck numbers from where the sun don’t shine. I’m not going to put much money on what you might call a “dark” horse. I know the beer and BBQ is a winner.
Much of racetrack attendance once comprised inveterate gamblers whose other options were home games or back alley games with an occasional trip to Vegas or Atlantic City. The track worked very nicely for them.
States which disallow gambling in any other form are now running their own lotteries. Riverboat and reservation gambling are plentiful and offer more action for those whose very life is gambling action. Those tracks which have retained decent attendance have done so by providing slots for the action seekers. Tracks which have failed to follow along are in a world of hurt.
Consequently, horseracing is dying. Attendance is paltry except for a few days a year when classics such as the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes pump up the attendance and get some television coverage. There isn’t much to cover. A race takes a couple of minutes. The action is fast; the undercurrents and nuances are lost on most watchers, the thrill is short, and the time between thrills, long. TV has to compensate by covering weird looking hats and nice looking babes. They also can be relied on to bring in a few experts with Blago hair to discuss why horsie A is going to beat horsie B. Between races they’ll explain why horsie B beat horsie A despite their expert prognostications.
Is the death inevitable? Poker, once a game for a few rabid devotees, became a huge sport (game, actually) because of massive TV coverage and the ability of players to participate online and dream of winning a seat at the WSOP. Golf became a huge sport because of massive TV coverage spurred by great golfers (and entertainers) like Palmer, Nicklaus, Player, and others. The fans could easily get their own licks in by ambling to some nearby course where they could dream of getting a couple of birdies a round. Wrestling and the roller derby became popular among the mentally deficient when TV, which often caters to the mentally deficient, noticed the market and blasted the airwaves with the product.
How much horse racing is on TV? Except at the track or a betting parlor with closed-circuit feeds, there’s damned little. Owners won’t run their horses at tracks where there’s no purse. Fans won’t attend tracks where there are no runners.
I’m just a country bubba and high finance is beyond my ken, but I suspect that one way to increase purses is to move in the slots and require them to pay some of their profits into the purses. Another way is to make the sport exciting and popular with TV watchers. The networks will scratch up the advertisers and bid for the broadcast rights, thus increasing the purses. I don’t know how you do that second thing, but someone better be figuring it out Real Soon Now.
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