Quote:
Originally Posted by dalakhani
There aren't...yet. Again, we have to adjust our thinking to a changing world. The role of women in sports and commerce is changing. Surely you understand this. We are the first generation of women that have grown up with this level of empowerment. Do you think that is going to go backward somehow?
The sports that have embraced the female sports fan have thrived, the ones that haven't are in trouble. Gambling is the same way. Women in the past didn't have the independence financially or otherwise to make decisions on how money was spent. Now?
You check out the way Las Vegas has changed their approach to the female gambler. Racing has, for the most part, been stuck in the fifties.
How many women do you see at football games today as opposed to 20 years ago? Baseball? how about hockey? How many women do you know that fill out tournament brackets? Has that gone up?
And TV is NOT a pipedream. If networks pay millions to watch rednecks drive a chevy around an oval for 5 hours, Im sure racing can put together a product that would at least be equally appealling.
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It is a pipedream.
And what other sports do isnt that relevant. I do remember Las Vegas trying to promote the "other" aspects of vegas with poor results and they went back to what had worked before. And there is a huge difference between promoting slot machines and promoting handicapping races.
How many women show up at a baseball or football game isnt relevant because showing up and buying crap is the ultimate goal of those sports marketing teams. People showing up at the track and not betting (outside of the Derby or other big "event" days) simply arent much help. Probably one of the biggest barriers that horseracing faces is that so few of the people in positions of authority understand the handicapping/gambling dimension. And that includes the management of tracks like CDI which rarely hire anyone with any type of racetrack experience and tend to look down on gamblers in general despite being in the gambling business.