What is Racing's Biggest Current Hurdle?

[Kasept]

Originally Posted by cmorioles

It isn't that easy in my opinion. Right now, most of the handle is coming from people betting with a rebate. If you "repair" that model so the host track gets more, all you are going to do is cut the rebates of the biggest bettors.

The biggest hurdle to the game is declining handle. Now, there are a myriad of reasons for this. The economy is a convenient excuse, but far from the only one. There are too many races being run at too many tracks. Fields suck, so people don't bet as much. The takeout is certainly a factor. Even those that say they don't care about takeout can figure out they are going broke quicker. Signal wars don't help either. How many accounts do you need to bet all the North American tracks today? Three, four, five? It might be more next month.

Until the handle is addressed, fighting over the current shrinking pie is short sighted and a colossal waste of time.

Think we're on the same page on this generally. 'Declining handle' is a broad-based issue that cuts through a wide array of the more mundane to intricate issues.. Agree wholeheartedly about too many races at too many tracks. The boutique meet philosophy continues to stand as the example to be emulated: Less racing of full fields for better purses = solid handle. From what I read and hear, adjusting the revenue split reasonably does not have to take away from rebates. And if the top level bricks and mortar operators had an appropriate 'modern era' revenue stream from the simo model, they could more easily approach state governments with plans for takeout reductions.

There is no simplistic 'fix-all' here is the message I think... There are so many inter-related issues that depend on almost a domino effect. That's why in the "Our Industry" segments I'm doing with Satish Sanan, we keep coming back to his 4 point program that tries to address things comprehensively AND specifically:

1. Overall Industry structure and governance
2. Re-sizing game and repairing the revenue model
3. Integrity (Medication; Safety; Tote; Sales)
4. Horseplayer/Customer-centric Marketing/Service