| CALIFORNIA THOROUGHBRED TRAINERS |
ACHTUNG! ow there’s a word to get your attention. For those of us of a certain age, it comes freighted with emotions from our parents, who fought World War II. As well as from countless movies and books whose characters would shout it at hapless suffering minions. But it’s really a simple German word meaning just that, “attention,” although sometimes translated to carry “danger” along with it. Here, I mean it both ways. During this championship season in America every year . . . and the northern hemisphere . . . we’re treated to such definitive racing, including the Arc and British Champions Day. Then the Breeders’ Cup, while still not really the “world championships” worthy of genuflection, is a wonderful showcase of the sport. Ending the calendar year gives us a chance to take stock of where we stand, what has changed, what hasn’t, and where we’re going. To me, there’s no question that the Breeders’ Cup has unalterably changed American racing over its three-plus decades. On balance, mostly for the better, I believe. Fortunately, the spring classics have held their own, and the year-end enormity of the Breeders’ Cup unquestionably served to organize the calendar and better defined our annual championships. Its cost to top racing for older horses elsewhere in the year has been pronounced, but it’s not the only cause of that decline. I’m not going to dwell on that now. However, the revolutionary opportunity presented by John Gaines 35 years ago still hasn’t nearly been realized, if we’re honest with ourselves. He envisioned a television spectacle on the order of American football’s Super Bowl, or soccer’s World Cup, bringing enormous added popular interest in racing to hitherto unknown gigantic audiences for our sport. Perhaps he suffered from the myopia so many of us seem to have: the vast “others” out there don’t (and cannot?) see racing as we do, don’t enjoy it as we do, and just don’t respond as we do to its allure. Nearly 50 years ago, I remember being told as much when I first joined Santa
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TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 46
Anita, literally as a whippersnapper: “You’ll never see 50,000 people at this old pile again.” Since I had been placed in charge of what was then called “public relations,” I had to consider the possibility that my love of horses and racing wouldn’t (or couldn’t) successfully be conveyed to enough of the population to make a difference in our waning business at the time. Then I discovered advertising. Soon followed by marketing, a relatively new term in business way back then, and unknown in racing up to that point. And I had the great good fortune to work for someone (Robert Strub) who was willing to risk significant expense to find out if they actually worked. Could marketing, including advertising, bring provable adequate returns on sizeable investments in them that the bean-counters considered nothing short of scandalous? They did, and they did. During one balmy period, we even averaged over 60,000 on Sundays for a few months in on-track attendance. The “old pile” was rockin’. Yes, it’s a far, far different world now than it was then. Virtually everything about the competitive sporting and gaming landscape has changed, and not for the easier. But the principles of business and marketing have not changed, and never will. Nor will human nature. With very few exceptions – and the Breeders’ Cup is not one of them, sadly – aggressive marketing of racing is moribund. Fabricating attendance figures and/or eliminating admission and other charges are not marketing – they’re delusion, pure and simple. After all, the market senses that something you don’t have to pay for is worth . . . . well, not much. A price of zero has an even worse
side effect; it takes the critical tool of price incentives away from the marketer. Perhaps forever. So, at a time when the marketing toolkit is overflowing as never before, the accountants (and even the marketers?) seem more intent on counting and banking, vs. spending and risking, than ever before. This mentality is bad enough in any business, but in a business like ours . . . a business of risk from start to finish . . . it’s indefensible, in my opinion. Marketers of racing must market for profit, of course; but they must always take risks in their marketing, limited only by their imaginations and their capacity for hard work. There is no certain textbook on the marketing of anything, only trial and error, both expensive but both potentially highly profitable propositions. Aside from a pervasive defeatism, the most pronounced, erroneous outlook I sense in racing’s marketing is the idea that since interest in our sport is flat or declining, we need not “waste money on advertising” since the existing racing fans already are aware of the essentials. There are two and only two ways to spur more interest, or maintain what we have: stimulate existing fans to become more active, and induce trial from the rest of the market, a more mammoth opportunity than ever in history. Compelling, forceful advertising, sales promotion, and sophisticated marketing do both. For anything! To be effective, however, they need relentless and powerful investment, an exceptional commitment and work ethic, and unsentimental, rigorous analysis to discard what isn’t effective. Yes, with very few exceptions, opportunities in North America to drive on-track attendance and betting have ebbed. But they have been replaced by an elaborate distribution and wagering system potentially reaching inside virtually every single household and to every single citizen. This opportunity, and threat, is here and it’s staying here . . . how are we going to realize the full potential of the opportunity?