Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Racing's Popularity & Short Attention Span

February 22, 2010

If racing is to make inroads with the younger generation, it will have to continue to adapt the sport to the contemporary lifestyle, as with remote wagering.

On the one hand, a certain segment of the young will be attracted to horse racing by the intellectual challenge of handicapping, just as people in generations before have been intrigued by the intricacies of figuring out who is going to win.

But that won’t deliver enough fans to keep horse racing at a critical mass into the future. To survive, tracks will have to develop pari-mutuel products that do not require a detailed knowledge of handicapping and not much of a time commitment. Racetrack offerings will have to extend beyond the core pari-mutuel product. In short, the whole experience will have to be more compelling.

The communications and information technologies that the young take for granted are a potentially huge positive for pari-mutuel purveyors. Betting has never been easier and, in addition, social networking can be employed to generate interest in the sport of horse racing.

Whether horse racing is around as a significant sport/business 20 years hence depends on how adept racing executives prove to be in crafting an attractive value proposition for people who have a plethora of entertainment options to choose from and a lower threshold for boredom than generations past.