Making Betting More Friendly: Steve DeCaspers

[Wandering Eyes]

With racing’s temporary opportunity as the only game in town, the TDN’s Katie Ritz took a poll of some industry insiders known to like a good bet and asked them: what is one simple way that tracks could make betting more friendly for existing horseplayers and/or more effective at bringing in new players? As you’ll see, none of them could stop at just one.

Number 1: Horseplayer Ombudsman
Racetracks should hire a horseplayer ombudsman who would–to steal from legendary Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee’s description of the role at his paper: “represent the horseplayer in whatever strains might arise from time to time between the racetrack and its customers.” This horseplayer representative would be empowered to privately and publicly voice concerns to racing officials about policy development, racing operations, and overall quality of the gambling product.

This is a recognition that the racetrack serves as a middle ground between numerous competing interests–shareholders, the state, horsemen, jockeys and horseplayers. Of those, only horseplayers lack a clear representative at the table. By coming out and saying “this person’s job exists to hold us accountable to you,” a racetrack that used this role well would build much-needed trust among grizzled, veteran horseplayers and be better positioned to attract new ones.

Number 2: One Coordinated Saturday
Racetracks should work to coordinate a few Saturdays a year for ADW-centric players. If you are one of these players, you know that Saturdays are both awesome and dreadful. The good: full fields, big races, exciting payouts and the sport’s stars on display. The bad: post-time overlap, too many races crammed into a 4-hour period, scratches/changes, missing the live feed of a race at one track because you’re sweating the photo at another. It’s a glorious mess. I would love to see a group of racetracks commit to one orderly Saturday and see how it goes. Does it increase handle? Was it able to be administered? I’m not calling for tracks to do this all the time because I realize certain days are also critical to the on-track experience and coordination with others could diminish that experience.

I think this could be done in the winter with Aqueduct, Gulfstream, Tampa, Fair Grounds, Oaklawn and Santa Anita. It would require adjustments to start and finish times, centralized communications and, of course, post-time coordination. Just asking for it once–maybe it won’t be the Xanadu that this horseplayer thinks it would be, but it would be great to see racetracks try it.

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