In the original article we hinted we might be surprised to see too many racetracks on the list (and quite honestly Foursquare was so new then we were not even sure it would fly). However, it seems some of the younger foursquare set are visiting racetracks, and they are telling their friends.

I did a quick scan today on Bing, trying out their new social search tool. I typed in Monmouth Park and found a link to Foursquare, which shows its visits, who has been there, a map to the track, and tips about the venue.

That is 215 visits from Foursquare folks, which is not too bad at all.  147 uniques and 215 visits shows a fairly good repeat visit rate, as well. Congrats are in order to John F, who seems to be a horseplayer. He’s the “Mayor” of Monmouth.

I decided to check a few other tracks. Since Belmont is more accessible to a larger population, I assumed we might see more action than its Jersey cousin. However…..

Only 142 visits. But the Mayor of Belmont? It is some guy named Joe M. I don’t know about you, but I think this guy oozes racetrack.

There are some promotional opportunities for businesses who embrace this medium. I wonder what might work for racing, or if anyone has begun to brainstorm about it.

If you would like to check more racetracks to see if the younger demo is visiting your favorite, you can at Foursquare.com.

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.

In another part of the barn a trainer has brought his horse back from a 9^th by 22 finish. Exactly as planned and he is all smiles. He is going to cash next time. Tell Martha to grab the kids and get ready for a paid vacation.

That is the perception out there in some quarters; we all know that.  When a horse races bad it can be explained by the shady side of racing. When a rider or a harness driver is getting instructions, that secret is protected like Fort Knox. The public should not know, because we are racing, and we keep things quiet.

To anyone who hot walks, trains, grooms, drives or rides, or owns a racehorse in today’s world it is nonsense, or so small a faction of this industry it is not worth mentioning.  Now, thanks to the Internet and racetracks who are actually trying to promote integrity, there is a medium for them to get their voices heard.

Welcome the world of harness racing to Twitter.

Last month, star harness driver and $56M career winner Mark MacDonald started to use twitter to tweet before his drives what he thought of his chances.  “Expect an aggressive drive in the 4^th”, “poor drive in the 5^th, apologies” or “with the rail this horse should be good. I was boxed and had traffic trouble last time” are some examples of what Mark tweets to his horseplaying followers and does so in real time. He does it with 100% transparency, right from the paddock.

So much for the dark side of racing, huh?

Fast forward to Mike Hamilton. Mike is a TV guy who works for Woodbine.  He is finally on twitter and he is tweeting his thoughts throughout the race card. Mike is a handicapper, so a good many of posts are handicapping in real time, but sometimes we get more.

In one part of the harness paddock there is the veritable “scope vet”. Here, horse owners and trainers find out why their horse raced so poorly. Some nights, especially in allergy season, or when a sickness is going around the barns, she is a busy person. Before Twitter the results of such a scope were kept quiet and no one knew why a horse raced so bad. If in three weeks this same horse won horseplayers would scratch their head and wonder if some funny business took place.  Now, thanks to Mike, and his venture into micro-blogs, we have a person who is reporting on such things.

Last week, a mare by the name of AP’s Money Maker came dead last at 3-2. She raced quite bad. Mike was there with this:

“Just watched them scoping APs Money Maker who raced poorly in race 3. Will have more to report mid-week.” 8:21 PM May 1st via web

The trainer was a stumped as we were as bettors, so was the owner and everyone associated with the horse. But this time, the bettor knew. It was not a sinister plot; the horse was probably badly sick.

Harness racing has fallen on hard times; handles are off even more than the thoroughbreds. What they have done more quickly than the thoroughbred game is realize that the game will not last forever unless change occurs  Embracing technology to attack questions of integrity like this might tell us that the people who work in it will not let it go down without a fight.

Personally, we’ll start with football and build up to a multi-sport widget. We’ll also develop casino games. Our ambition is to have an appropriate subset of the full sweep of a gambling portfolio available on television. It’s not practical to have 250 different slot selections on a television, it’ll be a subset of that. Televisions have the advantage of being 42 inches, or 50 inches or so; whatever size screen it is, it’s usually the biggest and best quality screen in the house. The exciting thing is, if this platform is as successful as we think it might be, we can then bring real drama to the way that we present casino games. Putting the level of animation and video quality already seen online into a television widget will make it that much more of an invigorating experience.

More here.

To watch the TV in action, check the Reuters news story on Youtube here.

Where do visitors of the Paulick Report go to most after visiting his site? Answer below.

Ustream has been pretty popular, and growing. Today they had close to 700,000 viewers for the Tiger Woods press conference.  There should be more horse racing on this site, in my opinion, but either our customer base does not fit the user demographic, or there simply are not enough horse fans out there playing the races. I would guess it’s a little of both. There is some Latin-American racing on there, which I find a little odd. Who did I find that out from? Who else, Sid Fernando. If an obscure race, with obscure horses, with obscure pedigrees are racing, chances are Sid knows about it.

Speaking of Latin-America, the CEO of Sportingbet says watch out for this area of the world to be the next betting market. Is racing prepared for that?

Where do visitors of Equidaily.com go after visiting that site? Answer below.

Anyone watching the Olympics online? I have been at Vancouver2010.com. For virtually any event, you can get split times, scoring and more all in real time. It is a fabulous experience, and I often keep it going while I am watching anything with judging on the television. It amazes me how we can get such awesome data-power for the olympics, but we can not seem to get anything close for racing, with data and data innovation being vital to the sports existence.

Equibase did add weather and track condition via an RSS with mobile capability to their scratches page this week. That’s a good thing. I hear through the grapevine they are getting many hits a day for this service.

Answer: According to Hitwise, the leading website for downstream visits from the Paulick Report is……… bloodhorse.com. Interesting, considering. As for our friend Seth, they read his site, then its off to drf.com.

One may think it is a malaise about something gambling related, rather than just the pure sport of racing. So I tried poker, just to see what would happen, in a cross category test:

Then I tried a bet seller, instead of a betting game.

And last, a sports related fan game:

There is growth out there, but racing is clearly having a tough time grabbing a slice of it.

As most know he is more than likely being dumped from the Tonight Show sometime in the coming weeks.  In reading the demographic ratings for his show, I see that his median viewer age is 45 and he wins the 18-34 demo, while David  Letterman’s median viewer age is 57. I do not think it is by accident. O’Brien speaks to the younger set quite well.

Case in point? This week O’Brien’s team has been placing this ad on Craigslist (beware it is being taken off at times, and is off and on):

It says:

4 SALE: BARELY-USED LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW – MAKE ME AN OFFER!!! (UNIVERSAL STUDIOS)

Information for potential buyers:

- Measures 100′ x 100′ x 32′ — plenty of room for a futon!

- Designed for 11:35 but can be easily moved

- Band can be sold separately

- Buyer must honor Barry Manilow booking next Thursday

MAKE ME YOUR BEST OFFER! (Also willing to trade for Coldplay tickets.)

Posting on the skewed young Craigslist, making fun of himself and the multi-million dollar corporate jungle of late night tv at the same time. “Willing to trade for Coldplay tickets.” Brilliant marketing, in my opinion, and it will be a huge reason why his viewers will follow him where ever he goes next.

It is well known that the demo’s for racing are skewed towards the over 55 set. I think we speak to them fairly well. But we don’t do a very good job speaking to people under the age of 50.

Maybe we should hire Team O’Brien as marketing guru’s. They clearly know what they are doing.

Hat tip to Gawker.com.

As most know there is a dispute that has halted the very popular YouTube race replay channel “Partymanners.” This has spawned serious discussion about how some racing entities have distributed (and in some cases blocked) replays via the web. Some tracks use their own websites, some use racereplays.com, others have their own ideas. We are happy to shed an opinion on this via a guest post from Raleigh. He is a 30-something racing enthusiast and tech industry professional in Northern California.

Recently a YouTube user that had been acting on his own accord as a kind of digital historian for racing ran into an unfortunate circumstance whereby all of his 1500-odd videos of races from the last 30 years were taken down over a copyright dispute.  It was not as the result of any industry action, I’m happy to report, but the loss of these videos to the general public and the outcry that followed from fans does bring up I think a useful and actionable lesson for the industry.

Websites vs. Platforms

Web 1.0 was very much a web site oriented model, where data was locked up in proprietary formats on proprietary sites.  The key development of Web 2.0 was the introduction of flexible, easy to use APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allowed data to flow freely across the internet.  Sites were no longer mere sites, a place to visit to read something, they became web platforms, and web services that interacted with the larger web.  We can see this most strongly with the dramatic growth and increasing ubiquity of services such as YouTube, Paypal, Google Maps, Facebook, and Twitter.

I want to talk specifically about YouTube as a service, what sorts of things it enables, and why it is a better platform for serving up race replays than the sorts of proprietary, lock-down, site based approaches most of racing currently uses.

The approach to race replays that most of the industry uses is to use a web site based approach, that is very unfriendly when it comes to interacting with the web at large.  Users may watch videos, at some designated web site (often for a fee), but they can do nothing else.  It is very much still centered on the legacy approach, the Web 1.0 implementation. A user cannot generally share the video with anyone via email, as their is no specific url to link to.  A blogger cannot embed a video on their site to show their visitors a specific race that they are discussing. A user cannot leave a comment on the race video so there is zero social interaction, no sense of community. And since whatever site that is streaming the video is probably working on an extreme budget, the video is often of a very low quality.

Let’s examine the benefits of transitioning to a Web 2.0 model, and instead of paying for a proprietary website solution –  i.e. what is possible using YouTube as the platform instead (on which CDI is the notable leader).  What becomes available?

Each racing video has an explicit url and can be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Each racing video can be embedded easily in a wide variety of third party web sites, further extending the reach.

Viewers can comment on races. How much more interesting would it be to view the day’s replays if there were a few trip handicappers leaving comments each day?  It opens up the possibility for user-generated value add.

YouTube streams in up to 1080p, meaning the video quality is realistically only limited by whatever the track uploads.  Since using the platform is free, that is a strong incentive to use as high quality streaming as possible.

These are the most obvious advantages, but there are others.  YouTube has a rich API that can be accessed programmatically. A track that hosts its videos on YouTube need not let YoTtube be the only way of accessing those videos.  Any track could quite easily have a very structured interface on their site, consisting of pull-downs menus, calendar widgets, etc — similar to how most racing replays interfaces are done now — except they access the YouTube API and pull videos from YouTube.  One need not rely on visitors going to YouTube at all — but using them as a platform allows for a better on-site experience than visitors get now, at no recurring cost.

Although I should say the YouTube interface is not bad, it is just not what people are used to.  We’ll use CDI as the example.  They use a consistent naming convention for their replays, of TrackName, Date, Race #, for instance FAIR GROUNDS, 2010-01-10, Race 1.   If I type Fair Grounds 2010-01-10 into the YouTube search box, I get all the races from that day as results.  Not a bad way to go.  I have a YouTube widget on my homepage, so accessing racing replays for CDI tracks could not be easier, all I need to do is enter what I want and I’m watching a video 2 seconds later.  This is much faster than any other proprietary site based approach used anywhere else in racing, if a bit more free form.

YouTube is also increasingly ubiquitous.  Already, many can access YouTube on their televisions.  YouTube works on all major smartphones.  I have no idea if I can access any of racing’s proprietary replay sites on my phone, or on my TV, but I know I can access YouTube.  What’s more I know that YouTube will see to it that in five years everyone will be able to access YouTube, from any TV.  I know if racing used YouTube as a platform, and uploaded high def video I could watch replays on my smartphone, and on my 55″ flat screen in full blown 1080p.

Is that not just the sort of thing we should all be excited about, and falling all over ourselves to use?  Did I mention it’s free?  Racing has opportunities to do better with their use of APIs in other areas, such as tote odds, and hopefully, someday even charts and the like, but for now moving race replays over to a web platform that plays nicely with the rest of the web is an overdue development.

This is a guest post written by Raleigh, a  tech industry professional in Northern California.

Screenshot from equidaily.com

Those, and many other acronyms and buzz words, now dominate the new media and marketing landscape, in racing, and out of it, much of the time to the scratch of a head or a shrug of the shoulders.

The r2 collective is here to help make sense of it all.

It has been stated many times that racing must catch up to the times. That we must target new, younger demographics to survive competition. That we must change.

We agree and we have some ideas.

Over the coming months we plan to learn about new technologies, new media and new marketing, and at the same time, educate our colleagues within the racing industry. You will see news and discussion on some of the most cutting-edge ideas out there, and get tomorrow’s ideas today as they pertain to racing.

How does a UK company grow from 36 members to 2 million in seven years and trail only Facebook, Wikipedia and Craigslist in start-up valuations, by offering horse racing as their number one sport? How does an “old” game like poker attract millions of young players? How does a traditional game like baseball become the darling of the online world through MLBTV, while other sports struggle?

If you find those questions interesting and want some answers, you have come to the right place.

Welcome to the r2 collective.