Innovations Epilogue

Our top innovations of the decade are complete. We would like to give everyone on the panel our thanks.

It was probably no surprise what was number one. Peer to peer wagering has not only changed horse racing, it has changed the face of gambling.

In this summary post, let’s have a look at a few innovations that did not make the cut, as well as a few “write-in” responses from the panel.

Seth from Equidaily had one thought: “[I think the] growth of broadband internet access — which made some of these other innovations possible,” was important this decade. No doubt a good point. Remember watching race video on a 56 or 28k modem? That was painful. I would imagine I would travel to the track replay center if I had to handicap races at that speed. Ditto for peer to peer wagering – “in-running” betting would be next to impossible. It might be faster to match bets by carrier pigeon.

“O_Crunk” and Seth believed that the blogosphere, chat boards and similar interactive social media made a big impact this decade for racing. The “ease-of-use gives a voice to race fans and places where they can come together and exchange ideas” said Seth. The Crunkster added: “10 years ago blogs were all but a small, geeky slice of the internet.  Now everyone has one and I’m glad that horse players have taken to web.  Sometimes the greatest changes don’t come from the industry, they come from the industry having to listen to their customers.”

Dana really liked Youbet’s MYROI feature and we should give that some props. E*Trade and other online stock trading sites, as well as fantasy football sites (anything stat related, really) have long been at the cutting edge of ROI based, or player based statistics. Making one a better player, or trader, makes one enjoy the activity more and is a major reason word-of-mouth happens. Racing, no doubt scared because so few players win at high takeouts (not to mention a very hard gambling game), have been reticent to embrace ROI-based tools. Youbet’s MYROI is a step in the right direction.

Lisa from Superfecta liked this too, and let us know in her own unique way: “Data is good – data is your friend.” She does not mince words. I think she likes data!

Lisa and Dana might be big fans of data, but I am not generally a fan of racing’s favorite whipping boy (they were second favorite whipping boy before Frank left, I guess) Churchill.  But I have to give credit where credit is due:  Twinspires TV is flat-out awesome. They sunk some serious coin into that system and it is paying off, as the word-of-mouth is pretty prevalent. The picture is wonderful, the ability to go from track to track in a flash is superb, and of course, the feed is almost real time. Add a little bit of HD from Keeneland, and you are in horseplayer heaven. The scary thing to me, is that they probably have barely scratched the surface with this innovation.

A few other items that did not make the final list? HD pictures, which was chosen by a couple of our panelists, was a pretty good choice. There are only a few tracks offering them present day, but that is sure to grow as customers demand better pictures. As well, news aggregators for racing, taking their cues from places like Drudge, have changed the way we get our racing news.

We’d like to thank everyone for participating (and reading) this fun little project and we hope you enjoyed it.

To read articles on the top five innovations of the decade, just scroll below.