[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Suffolk Shippers

You're way off. The NHL went downhill with Gary Bettman's pipe dream of removing the game from niche markets and regionalization and into areas like Arizona, Florida, etc. Hockey can work in SOME non-niche regions, like LA, Dallas, Anahiem even.

However, doing so at the expense of franchises in core areas, like southern Ontario, or Quebec, Minnesota (until the Wild), or even a second team in Toronto is terrible business. It's the thing that plagues the NHL most today. Oh, and the labor strife a few years back didn't help.

Horse racing can learn a lot from the NHL. The NHL did not need to expand it's horizons beyond a regional niche sport to be successful. Like any business, if you can carve out your percentage of the market, and maximize profit and revenue within that percentage, you're doing a lot better than most. Racing doesn't need to try and grasp at straws to burn money to find ways to bring in more casual fans. It sounds a lot like the NHL moving teams to Phoenix. A waste of money (as is being proven out) to foolishly expand the market.

I would be furious if racing foolishly spent money to get on ESPN, at the expense of much needed improvements within racing itself. All too often, those of us who make up the market for horse racing get stepped on and ignored. Why on earth would we want racing to try and foolishly spread it's wings where, we, the consumer, become even more irrelevant?

i think racing would be best served by not competing against itself. two racing networks are a perfect example, with attempts at exclusive contracts, etc. racing would do better at getting the two channels on ALL cable channels, and on directv. you have two channels with all racing, all the time. why go after an all sports channel, who is better off feeding the masses with football, basketball..and cheerleading competition ,etc.