As we have been discussing, some areas of social media for racing have merit, some probably do not, and opinion on each is not hard to find. Looking at the micro-blogging platform Twitter for a moment it seems it may be nothing more than a chat site, to burn time. If we look deeper, and think a little outside the box, perhaps for racing, it could be more than that.
I remember stock trading in the 1990′s with my 56.6 modem cranked up to full speed. I hooked into a small cap volume alert thread at the growing and soon-to-be-popular Silicon Investor website. A trader or two, or a stay at home mom not even trading, had a their volume alerts set and would enter a trade based on them. They would post the potential mover, and a few of us would add it to our screens. I would also have a real time news feed to study why the stock was moving, and if it was a good buy based on how stocks have moved on similar news. I lived on that site for a couple of years. Real time stock trading was born on sites like this all over the world. It was not only a way to get hooked up with other traders and learn, it was a money-making tool.
The key to it all was that there was a subset of people who wanted to do this. They were “The Long Tail” of stock trading. It worked, and it grew into a phenomenon that is used today, and will be tomorrow.
We are slowly seeing this subset of people using twitter for racing. Joe Riddell has his Keeneland report (he is paid by Keeneland to do this), now we have the Bridgejumper alert tweet thread, which alerts people to bridgejumpers who might want to take a shot against them. The carryover thread, long overdue, has been a godsend to many who want to know about carryovers. Literally thousands of people are on twitter for racing, and offering opinion, and handicapping insight.
I think this is only the beginning. Because when subsets of people that used to do things with pen and paper who can now do things with the computer, it is always that way.
Back in the day at Greenwood a harness and thoroughbred dual facility at the east end of Toronto, there were the clockers for harness. I was one of them – you would show up right at 6PM with a program and a watch, sit up in the stands and watch warm ups. There were countless good bets found for people who want to work at it. Everyone had zero problem sharing data with whomever would listen, as well.
There were the post parades and score outs along with religious watchers of them. If you met in the clubhouse and a horse broke while scoring out, you were alerted and bet accordingly.
All of these things were hard work, and they were only available to you if you were there. of course this is not the case any longer.
The Racing Post UK has real time alerts, right on the side of the screen for anyone playing from home. If a horse is fractious in the paddock you will know about it. If a horse is washed out you will know about it. I would bet dollars to donuts Twinspires.com and others will have the same thing on their interface within the next 12-24 months. There are people out there who want to know near post if a horse washes out, they want to know if a rider is galloping a willing animal before post time, they want to know if a horse breaks in the score down, or if a trainer of a harness horse zipped the horse a 31 last quarter in the warm up mile. A twitter track feed on a scroll via your adw is not rocket science. It could be done tomorrow.
Will it be make or break? Will it be the difference between losing or making money? No. But added information is looked for by some, and some will use it.
There are players out there doing things with computers that most players can not imagine. If a track used twitter to update each horses warm up, paddock presence or fractiousness in such a way to encourage it, say by tweeting “trainer name”, “horse”, “presence” and one or two more factors, this would be super-easy to scrape off twitter into a spreadsheet, where the player would have a warm up/pre-race tendency database, and be easily alerted when something is up.
This is only one example. I am sure people could think of hundreds of things they would want to track and see if they could exploit down the line.
In online poker (long ago now) hand history’s are available for download. You can see what your opponents did, what you did, and what the outcome was. Poker players use this data in spreadsheets and otherwise, to give them an edge. It is something that is expected by players, for any online service. Racing is not that much different.
If there is one thing the long tail has taught us, is that the market is silent, but can be out there. And in the aggregate it can be very big. Ten years from now your adw screen will look very different, and if we do it right, and think completely outside the box it can help racing grow, as it has so many other sports and games of skill.
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dean, once again a cutting-edge look
“There are people out there who want to know near post if a horse washes out, they want to know if a rider is galloping a willing animal before post time…”
I think this can be solved with better simulcast camera work. I watched the Japan Cup last weekend via Twinspires TV and was blown away by their camera work. The camera is never not on the horses, even before the current race is official the cameras are back in the paddock for the next race. The commenters are voices overs and any pool info in shown in combination with the horses.
Compare that to tracks in the US that barely show the warm up and some that even show commercials during the warm up! I think a big part of the problem is that they just don’t understanding, or even want to understand their “customers”. If they did, we’d be seeing more of the stuff you mention already. Hats off to tracks that have already dipped their toes in the water but there’s certainly more than can be done, regardless of the tool set!
I started using Twitter almost 8 months ago for my website – http://www.pick4win.com . With Twitter , I can send a hot horse or play right to someone’s cell phone as a text message WHILE they are at the track. They just read the text and go to the windows. Its a great customer service perk I can provide.
Dean,
I think the “Long Tail” concept is great for internet sites selling commodities – meaning millions of sales of only a few items. For instance, it you want to buy that Flock of Seagulls CD you can’t find it at Best Buy you’ll easily find it via Amazon.
But what is racing selling? Bets. A more instructive concept for racing may be found in Chris Andeson’s more recent book “Free.” It seems that the racing industry has turned wagering information (past performances, race replays, etc.) into a commodity when the only reason people buy that information is to bet. So a better strategy might be to make all wagering assistance information free and easy to access thereby encouraging people to bet more, and more often. And technology is the enabler for this to happen efficiently.
Does this makes sense?
There are free past performances and replays available all over the internet. If people look , they can find them. But its not that easy. Horse players are creatures of habit. They don’t like change whatsoever.
But to compare – a local OTB used to put PP’s on the wall for free. When they took them away, people came out of the woodwork to complain.
Jessica and OCrunk have long been part of the ‘free’ PP et al bandwagon. They make some good points, imo, as you guys do. It makes sense – a restaurant would not charge for a menu and racing should not either. Today there is quite a bit of free stuff, though. I believe without this and other perks via ADW we would be at 10B wagering.
Steve – there is a long tail for racing, imo. Right now we offer one thing only – parimutuel. We do not try anything else. There are people that would wager with fixed odds. Some would play fractional wagers. Many would play on an exchange, like betfair has shown. We are pigeon-holed and insular in our thinking here in NA.
Case study on betfair here in a longtail way: http://www.startup-review.com/blog/betfair-case-study-target-a-niche-and-expand.php
Dean
Dean,
Thanks for the link. I had actually read this case study some time ago and found it insightful.
One of the more interesting ideas was to target a “niche” vs. mainstream market. This seemed counter-intuitive at first but makes sense. For a truly revolutionary product (technology or service), the mainstream market doesn’t really exist so much as it needs to be created.
For instance, I recall a quote attributed to Henry Ford that goes something like, “if i asked my customers what they wanted, they’d say a faster horse.” Therefore, to create a market for a new product you must go after the “niche” of early adopters then and expand. This makes more sense than trying to sell to the masses who aren’t interested in the new product . . . yet.