RACING
SoCIAl MedIA ANd RACING
How the sport has been forced to move with the times
Y
oung people don’t feel you’re relevant until you have a huge social media presence creating a buzz around events and promotions, educating others and sharing experiences. Millennials, the largest generation in America, represent one-third of the population. Born between 1980 and 2005, for most of their lives this group has had wide access to cell phones and Internet, and they will be the major economic force setting trends for decades to come. They engage with and influence others through social media, creating their own content to share. So, without a clear national marketing strategy, racing fans and participants took control. Everyone has a blog, anyone with a smartphone can take a photo or video, and when people couldn’t find what they wanted, they started to create the content themselves. Racing has always been behind the times when it comes to marketing itself. The now-defunct Thoroughbred Times resisted putting content on its website even into the 2000s, believing that if people could access the full article on the site, they wouldn’t buy the hard copy of the newsmagazine. By refusing to give people what they wanted, they found that potential readers just clicked over to a different site, and the brand crumbled. one executive was paying attention. Mark Midland spent 15 years at Churchill Downs, Harrah’s Louisiana Downs, and YouBet.com, and he found that “there’s not enough innovation in horseracing.” He began Horse Racing nation, an interactive go-to starting point for reference material on horses or their connections, as well as an aggregator of articles and comments. “Horse Racing nation is providing a 58
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What Emma Stone’s character says in Birdman could be what fans are saying to the powers that be in horseracing: Things are happening in a place that you willfully ignore, a place that has already forgotten you. I mean, who are you? You hate bloggers. You make fun of Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist! WORDS: K.T. DONOVAN PHOTOS: HORSEPHOTOS, WINSTAR FARM
service for an interest that wasn’t being provided,” Midland explains. “It started when Curlin was running in 2008 and you could google Curlin, and there was no Curlin page. Peyton Manning has a Fantasy Football page, a page on ESPn, a page on the nFL website, but racing had nothing for its biggest star. So we wanted to create a place where horses had their pages, and not just current ones – Secretariat has a page – and they can be added to.” The independence from any organization or track allows Horse Racing nation to be available yearround, creating fans where the fans are, not where the horses or tracks are. “The Internet is perfect for horseracing,” Midland says. “For those of us who are passionate about it, we find that our spouses, neighbors, friends don’t care. It’s made for connecting on the Internet, and that comes in different forms. Social media has the ability to reach people specifically. They can be reached where they are, with a community to lean on.” Because horseracing is a niche sport, it lends itself well to fans feeling that they are part of an exclusive club, a passionate insider group. WinStar Farm tapped into that, recognizing that whereas racehorses start and finish their careers on a farm, most fans never have access to that side of things. Lifting the veil on this mystery,
WinStar uses social media to engage fans with exclusive behind-the-scenes information, influencing how the public views racing. WinStar raises approximately 140 foals, their own and clients’, annually; stands 20 stallions; and has its own training center. owner Kenny Troutt emphasizes to his team that part of the farm’s mission is to show people that the main point of horseracing is the horse, and a major part of the horse’s life is at the farm. Marketing coordinator Kaitlin Christopherson sees social media as a great use of the budget, as the costs to reach thousands of people are minimal. “We started on Facebook in 2008 and have 35,000 likes; 3,000 on Instagram, which we started in 2013; 12,000 followers on Twitter, which started in 2009. We’ve tripled since we started. “This is how we get to know our fans, and use the feedback to see what we’re doing right. We have a supportive fan base, and we can interact with them through our various social media platforms. This is a way for us to control the message of our stallions and their progeny, and share race results. It’s also a way to publicly recognize breeders and the horse’s connections, and buyers. “We market stallions and their progeny through social media, and are finding different ways to use social media all