TV Ratings Triple with Format Change

Hosts at Woodbine Live

We do not see television ratings for racing increase much anymore, although this year we saw some nice bumps for the Derby, which was welcomed. In general any rise will be small and seemingly not sustainable. North of the border, this is not the case, but it is also not your average, every day horse racing telecast.

Race Night on the Score was a long running weekly two hour racing show, pumped into Canadian homes via a cable sports network. The program was paid for by Woodbine Entertainment, as they tried to get people to watch both standardbred and thoroughbred racing, and become customers. The format was simple : show races, handicap them, show human interest stories about trainers and owners, and so on. In effect, it was the “formula” that we have seen for many years.

It is not impolite to say that it was a failure. The ratings were microscopic.

This season they made a change. They rebranded the show and called it “Bet Night Live”. Yes, a show on racing using that nasty word that we seem to want to hide every moment of every day – betting. In the new format they go after the tight market of people who want to play a game, or learn a game, while offering them a chance to win prizes, and win money. They do this in conjunction with their ADW – Horseplayerinteractive.com – and meld that into the show itself. They also have kept their handicapping expert in the mix, so serious players still get a chance to hear some handicapping, and newer ones will learn. Gone are the human interest stories that we have all seen since the medium was invented.

Laura and Sandy Hawley

The show adds the in-studio sports updates, and has a contestant picking races in studio as well. They have also nicely weaved education, for bettors and fans, old and new (tonight they have a feature on what to look for in a post parade, for example). They are selling a game and are selling a chance to make some money. They have even batted around an idea on a “pick all” where one fan has the chance to pick all the winners and walk away with $1M in cash. In a nutshell, the show is fresh, fast and nothing like we’ve seen before in our sport.

What is the result?

The ratings are up 300%.

In addition, according to Greg Blanchard at Woodbine, sign-ups to their ADW are in “the triple digit range each show”.

In Studio

We wrote about going after a targeted small slice of the game playing market like this in our piece “Positioning Racing”: “For those who would say concentrating on one type of customer pigeonholes us, I would say that is unimportant and in fact the antithesis of what successful companies are doing in this century. ” Customers of countless products or services are simply a slice of a bigger market. We cannot be all things to all people. Trying to grab a slice of a market is better than no market at all and catering to every whim and wish of what customers we would like to have is 1960 thinking – and completely wrong. It has no place in present day marketing. The team at Woodbine seems to be embracing this new philosophy, and it seems to be working. They are no longer sitting in a production meeting trying to be all things to all people or worrying about what faction of the industry they will or will not offend, they are focused on getting one slice of this market, and using the medium to achieve that goal.

Not surprisingly, the existing market – the one who likes human interest stories, stories on the horses, or on the sport itself – are upset. On a thread at an industry website where the show was being discussed, some of these insider comments, after the initial show, were:

“Not enough interviews with horsemen and their thoughts”

“I agree with Brian…it was silly, childish and amateurish.”

“I too watched this show, I was very disappointed with the new format. I had to turn it off after 30 minutes of watching.”

“Please bring back the old format. The only people who want to watch the show are real Racing fans. The new show is painful to watch and will lose more viewers than it will gain.”

Woodbine Track Handicapper Jim Bannon

Seth Godin, a marketing writer who concentrates on new marketing and the changing world wrote this about the existing market in his book Free Prize Inside:

“Satisfied customers are not likely to increase your sales. Satisfied customers are not likely to push you and your colleagues to stay ahead of the competition. One day, in fact, the competition will pass you and the satisfied customers will quietly leave.

The problem is that management really likes those satisfied customers. The first question they’ll ask about any innovation is “Will our satisfied customers like it?” Of course, this is a silly question, because satisfied customers already like what you’ve got. The question you ought to ask first is, “Will people dissatisfied with what they are doing now embrace this, and, even better, will they tell the large number of unsatisfied people to go get it right away?”

We hope this provides a lesson for us in racing. We need to concentrate on selling the game to people who are not watching, instead of those who are. The people that are already fans are already watching, on computers, racing channels, or at the track. They do not have to be sold to with mass media, the people who are not watching and are pre-qualified to play a game are. In reality, we must do a complete 180 on what we have been doing.  If we do, perhaps we have a chance to grow.