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September 21, 2009

How to fix the problem: a multi-track Pick-8

By Alan Kirschenbaum

So we have identified the problem, then. No one knows we exist. We have fallen off the radar. And now, we either push ourselves back onto the screen, or wait for the inevitable reduction in our handouts. And it is coming, it might even be here. So we need to make one last furious push to get ourselves back onto the screen. Again, not so we can return our sport to its glorious heyday. Not so Muscle Hill will be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, or Brian Sears on the Jay Leno Show. Those days are gone. We just need to inch our way back into the public consciousness, so when civilians hear about “harness racing,” their mind immediately jumps to something positive, something exciting, something. And it’s not going to happen by giving away more t-shirts, or by hosting more concerts. It’s going to happen when people hear someone mention “harness racing,” and they think something like, “Oh, yeah, that’s where you can win a million dollars.”

We are a gambling sport, remember? Many of you do not. There are more than a few days at several of our leading slot tracks, and almost all of the B-tracks, where the purses given away dwarf the actual handle of that day’s races. What I am proposing is this: Eight of the most successful tracks band together and create a North American Pick-8, with a guaranteed pool of $400,000 to start, taking place on Saturdays, with a dedicated Internet/television show broadcasting handicapping info, the eight live races, updates on live tickets as it gets later in the sequence, and, ideally, interviews with the owners of previous and current winning tickets. One race with a full-to-bursting field from Yonkers, from the Meadowlands, from Dover, from Chester, from Pocono Downs, from The Meadows, from WEG, from Indiana, all of whom do not offer any other form of multi-race wager that day.

I remember last season when the Meadowlands Pick-6 carryover got up to somewhere around $500,000, and bettors from around North America chased that jackpot with another $900,000, making the total pot nearly a million-and-a-half dollars. And going into the last leg, three of the 10 starters had no backers, meaning there was still a chance that it was going to carry over for another day. And how much would have been thrown into the pot that next night? And that’s at one, albeit arguably the most popular, racetrack. Now imagine if the marketing efforts of the USTA, Standardbred Canada and each racetrack were behind this, with a few months lead time to make sure every pari-mutuel gambler in the world knew about it?

And here’s the thing: in my opinion, it wouldn’t even cost anything! That $400,000 pool guarantee is just a guarantee: each track guarantees $50,000, in an ideal world, this would be split evenly between each facility’s management and purse pool. But with proper marketing and awareness, the first night’s wager will be higher than the guarantee, and if there are not tickets with eight-out-of-eight, and another week’s lead time to publicize the estimated pool size, by the second Saturday, the pool will be in the millions. And this will get people’s attention.

And if the pool doesn’t exceed the guarantee? And the purse pools and track managements take a little hit every now and then? I personally don’t think it will ever happen, but so what? Does the open trot at Woodbine, or at Yonkers, really need to go for $50,000? Would anyone’s life change drastically if one week it went for $45,000? You’re all involved in a gambling sport, right? So gamble. Because we’re gambling even more if we don’t do anything. We’re gambling that no one’s going to mess with our slot money. And as a gambler, I don’t like those odds.

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September 01, 2009

The cold slap: We have never been more irrelevant

By Alan Kirschenbaum

There's no doubt that Hambletonian Day 2009 was the best foot our sport is capable of putting forward. It was a beautiful August day in New Jersey, the racing was terrific, and on national television, the spotlight dance was performed by the best three-year-old trotter we have ever seen, an effortless march to glory by an incandescent animal who in short order nearly erased our memories of the three great colts who most recently visited the Hambletonian winner’s circle. It was as good as harness racing gets, I promise you that. And here’s the cold slap in the face that may end our friendship just as it gets off to a very nice start: Nobody cares.

But, you say, there were 25,000 people in attendance. And I say “so what?” And I say “so what?” to the 50,000 wonderful fans that will show up in Delaware, Ohio in a few weeks for the Little Brown Jug. These are the two biggest spectacles we have to offer, and they are great days, but what do they add up to? The overwhelming majority of those in attendance get their harness racing fix on these special days, and are satiated until the next summer and fall. And another year goes by, and the day-to-day crowds at the races get smaller, and interest in our magnificent sport dwindles even more.

Except perhaps for these two days, we put on this show for ourselves. We are the performers and the audience. We clap for each other, because no one else will. We are the buyers and the sellers of horses. The money just gets passed around. How many people in the grandstand on the average Saturday night at your local track do not have owner, trainer, or groom’s licenses in their pockets? You may bury your head in the sand, but I will not: we have never been more irrelevant to the sporting world, and to the world at large. Are more people, or less, interested in harness racing or Renaissance Fairs? Civil War re-enactments? Collecting dolls?

But what does this matter? Why am I pissing in the punchbowl? Purses have never been higher. The catch-drivers and veterinarians have never made more money. Maybe some owners and trainers are doing the same. Maybe it doesn’t matter if anyone cares.

Ah, but it does. Because, at the moment, in the worst economic conditions on this continent in 60 years, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent subsidizing this sport we love. And before someone extremely powerful wakes up one day and asks why, we had better do something about it. We need to make people aware, and we need to make them care. And, with all due respect to Muscle Hill, or Somebeachsomewhere, it’s not going to be because of a horse. We’ve seen the best horses in the existence of the breed the last few years, and they didn’t move the needle. Not for more than a few days, anyway. And if they raced until they were four, or five, or 14, that wouldn’t change. And it’s not going to be because of a human-interest story in the paper. There’s only one thing all humans are interested in, and that’s money. Ideally, lots of it. And the chance to get it. We have one opportunity left, and the window is closing. We need to go back to the future, and reinvent ourselves as a gambling sport once again. More soon…

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August 25, 2009

An introduction to Tongue Tie Off

By Alan Kirschenbaum

I used to love writing about harness racing. For a few years in the 1980s, I did it quite a bit. I would go to the biggest events, get there early to make sure I could get a parking spot, show some sort of press credential so I could get backstage, into the paddock or the winner’s circle, where the thousands of people in the stands couldn’t go, and do my interviews with the drivers, trainers, and owners of the winning horses. Then I’d return home to my apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan and stay up late into the night and write my pieces. Maybe the average Joe out there in the world didn’t find the people compelling, or the animals magnificent, but I surely did. I was passionate, and enthusiastic, and never had to fake it, or make anything up.

I’m writing about harness racing again these days, and, heart-breakingly, I have to make up quite a bit of it. No, not for this blog, which I am honored to be writing. The Canadian Sportsman has provided a quality and quantity of journalism that in my opinion, exists nowhere else in this sport. Dave Briggs and his staff are willing to embrace controversy and use tough words; they see what is happening to harness racing with a clear eye, not through the rose-colored glasses that our administrative bodies often are forced to use.

In my real life, I am writing a screenplay for a movie, a comedy in which the main character, our hero, is a degenerate gambler, with a lifelong dream of owning a champion racehorse. His streak of bad luck changes early on in the story, as he stumbles upon a family he never knew he had, and the main action of the film deals with his emotional arc as he learns about what it really means to be a parent. And, as so many compulsive gamblers do, along the way, our hero doesn’t limit himself to betting on the horses. He wagers on sports, plays the Lotto, and considers himself a world-class poker player. But there are quite a few scenes at the track, and that, unfortunately, is where I have to start dealing in fiction.

Our hero hangs around a racetrack where the grandstand and clubhouse are always crowded, where it is difficult to score a table in the Turf Club, where there are lines at the pari-mutuel windows, where the thousands of fans rise to their feet at the start of the race, and scream their lungs out at the finish. And sadly, the only place I can see a harness track like this is when I close my eyes, and my memories take over.

Yes, things have changed in the last 30 years, and I understand that as long as bettors have their online accounts, and money still gets wagered, and the slot machines continue to spin, there will be racing. But the empty grandstands and the disinterested slot players won’t make for a very satisfying movie. And that’s what I fear the most; that when this script is finished, and it turns out well, and someone actually considers making the movie, they will ask “Where do we shoot this racing stuff?” And when they look into where we as a sport are today, they will suggest a rewrite to make it about thoroughbred racing, and want to film in the summer at Delmar or Saratoga, where it will be so simple to visually translate the beauty and excitement of horse racing.

The bad news for screenwriters is that, best case scenario, it takes a few years for a movie to get made. But maybe that’s good news for harness racing. Maybe by the time this movie gets shot, if it ever gets shot, there will be more people in the stands, and there will be more interest in our sport. Keep reading over the next few months to hear some ideas on how we can make that happen.

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