It is not much different with a website, even in racing.

Case in point – The Paulick Report.

The Paulick Report engages its readers better than any racing site out there, considering its late start into the fray. At postrank.com, their labs page shows just how much engagement a website has and they have built a metric to describe it – an engagement score.

An engagement score is simply the number of mentions, links, forwards via social media, comments and other interactive measures a story or blog post has. Post Rank weights it based on importance, and voila, we have a score.

Here are three racing websites and their engagement scores for the past 30 days (click to enlarge).

As we can see, drf.com and equibase.com are information sites who fill their niche:  The visitors are racing people, or fans who know about them. There is little engagement of their readers, and in turn, a great deal of their content is static content – published, and nothing else. Paulick on the other hand has a huge engagement score. His stories are responded to, and forwarded via news readers, social media and blogs.

Why is this important? Because when you have engagement you have people doing online public relations for you, and your sport. A link or headline from a Paulick story on Facebook or Digg is seen by non-racing fans. If a non-racing fan sees and clicks a link and comes to the report, chances are they see comments – there is someone home in our stadium. It’s good for us.

This does not, of course, mean that the drf or Equibase are doing nothing for racing. They do what they do best. However, with other sports like football and its NFL.com, world cup soccer, MLB.com for baseball and many others all engaging their fans and making it a priority, it is very important for us to have a site like the Paulick Report doing the same. (the Bloodhorse.com also does a good job with this, after their restructuring).

This is especially important for us because we do not have a league office in racing.  If we could turn back the clock I am sure (well, in racing maybe not) we would have a www.horseracing.com doing what MLB.com and NFL.com are doing. But we can not turn back the clock of course. In the meantime, Paulick is acting in large part like our league site, by filtering news and opinion to non-traditional racing demographics.

I had a chance to speak with a colleague for a good deal of time about branding, and how all of your marketing today has to be structured and tailored to your goal. This might sound rudimentary, however with social media, ad buys/banner ads and pay per click marketing all mixed with traditional, this is easier said than done.

I got an email a few days ago from him titled “Katy Perry”. He said “have a look at her latest video to see branding, and video branding at work.” We went on to discuss the premise that her ‘people’ know what they are doing. They are not producing a video, or scheduling a concert; everything they do involves the Katy Perry brand.

In the video he forwarded me to, “California Gurls”, they have stuck to this branding message, perfectly. The video, in my opinion (although I am not the audience), is ridiculous. But its ridiculousness builds the Katy Perry brand. It is risque (she is barely clothed). It is completely over-the-top (unless cupcake and cherry bras are mild-tempered). But it is also extremely buzzable; especially to her demo. They have also included a 1990 rapper, as part of the song and video; in my opinion for a reason. On the surface this is just a video, but it is more than that.

The video, the song, the guest singer; everything has a purpose.

After the video is done, the branding and buzz does not stop. Long ago the music industry shied away from using Youtube for their videos. Now we see this video uploaded by Perry’s people themselves, in HD, as are all her videos. They have also promoted videos about making the video itself. The page is promoted via viral marketing and social media and this media promotes Ms. Perry as it empirically does.

For a glimpse at the power of viral marketing, I did a search for feedback on this video and it was all over the net – embedded in story after story, blog post after blog post. Yes it was in the usual places, but it was in many others. Snoop Dogg’s fans were screaming about a sell out on rap and hip-hop sites (more buzz). I saw it on a marijuana board being discussed, with someone saying ‘I’m glad I was not high when watching those gummy bears. It would freak me out.’

In addition, the Katy Perry branding does not stop there. When they direct millions of people to this video they get data from Youtube insights on who, what and where their fans are. As well, with it flying around and promoted on Facebook the metrics gleaned about her customers is front and center via their system.

As my colleague noted – pure, calculated, modern, 2010 marketing.

It got me thinking about racing. If everything that I allude to is done for a Katy Perry video, right from song choice, to directing, to distribution and buzz and post click metrics, because that’s the way it is done, what exactly is racings video strategy? Is there a plan? Do we have a structured way to show our races on the web, archive them, group races together for viral videos? Anything?

I think we all know the answer, but I ended up giving it a shot. I went searching for horse names, famous race names and assorted racing searches for video. What I found was a complete mess – there was zero structure, there was no plan. There was virtually nothing that we could use for any branding or marketing purpose.

However, it gets worse than that.

Searching for “Zenyatta” on youtube brings us to some videos, one of which is a compilation of her races. Let’s leave for a moment that this video was not an industry produced one, that is SEO and search friendly, with a plan; it is done by a young girl. It has almost 1000 views in a short period of time, and it is a nice commercial for racing. If 100 newbies found this video by searching Zenyatta, and we had a 5% conversion rate for getting them to look for more information and races with her, they would not find much. In the search business this is called a dead click, or bounce out. We would not even know, however, because we don’t even have access to any post click metrics, because we did not produce the video.

Unfortunately it does not end there. This same girl also likes Rachel Alexandra, so she produced her races for youtube. Great, another free commercial for racing, right? Not so fast. She tried to upload it to youtube, but since the Kentucky Oaks win is Churchill Downs property, it is a copyright infringement and her Rachel video was removed.

She had to upload it to Vimeo. So if you’d like to watch it, you still can. I hope they don’t take it down.

I truly believe that social media marketing, video marketing and anything else that we do in racing can not be a ‘throw it against the wall and hope it works’ exercise. Video’s like Katy Perry’s California Gurls are not getting 4M+ views in a week by accident.  She is not the hottest star around because she is lucky or super-talented. It is planned. I think we need a whole lot more planning, especially with video in our sport.

Creating a Facebook page for a three word message seems ridiculous, however the ridiculous sometimes works – “I’m with Coco’s” avatar FB page has 318,000 fans, in about a week.

I remember thinking of starting an “I’m With Frankie” Facebook page when Magna was going through some trouble, but I was cautioned by many that it would probably have fewer followers than a Bernie Madoff Fan Club page. Upon further reflection, I think they were right.

I read recently that CDI has secured a deal to get Kentucky Derby prep races shown on NBC; they will be paying a couple of million for the prep-race infomercials. It’s no surprise I think this is a poor use of funds, as I believe that selling to the masses, or preaching to the choir will not help us in the long-run. I know many do not agree, and that is fine, however some of my reading this morning makes me think I might be on the right track:

Online television station Revision3 offers the aforementioned Conan O’Brien a job. Online stations are gaining more and more market share, specialty stations are as well. I personally liked the CDI deal with Bravo as it speaks to a newer market and racing can be shown in a different way – that is fine. But hammering old-network TV and having to pay for it? Not fine, in my opinion.

Second, Michael Learmouth at Adage has a feature on web tv and the possible loss of cable’s/network’s market share. He believes that within a few years cable companies, and the way we watch TV in general will be forever changed.

Some quotes: “At the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, cable operators got a look at a device that could start to eat into another core business: TVs with built-in Skype access. LG and Panasonic announced partnerships to start shipping the sets later this year.”

“….. customers are cutting back on cable bills: while rates go up every year, the average amount consumers are paying for digital cable dropped from $79 a month in the third quarter of 2008 to $70 in the third quarter of 2009 as they drop additional channels and services,”

“Parks Associates estimates that the consumer electronics industry will sell 80 million net-connected TVs by 2013, and there are already 20 million net-connected Xbox consoles in circulation.”

I think spending a couple of million on what we will be doing tomorrow, is better than spending that same amount on what we will not be doing tomorrow.

Then again, that opinion is what it is. Remember, I did want to start a “I’m with Frankie” Facebook page. :)

Bing wants partners

If you are like us, getting race results, historical data, replays or pretty much anything else to do with racing is a maze. Equibase is the central de facto source, but DRF has results, as do ADWs. Sometimes YouTube has race replays, sometimes ADWs do, and sometimes track web sites do. One stop shopping? Hardly. Half the time I do not even know where to go, whether on my desktop, netbook or BlackBerry. In harness racing it is as bad or worse, with several data publishers moving in seemingly different directions.

Search engines can fix much of it. And for other sports, they have done just that.

In the UK, Google has partnered with soccer to give flash results, stats and more. If you search for a soccer team — in this case Arsenal — you immediately see the past results and the next game. In addition, you can drill down to see stats, historical results and so on:

This has not gone unnoticed across the pond. Google has done the same for many major sports in North America.

Microsoft’s search engine has joined the fray of late, trying to be a player. They are fighting for market share from search giant Google and they have spent oodles of cash on web marketing, partnerships and scores of television commercials. Slowly but surely they are increasing search market share. Just this past week they announced their excellent real-time NBA search algorithm. Others are doing this, like Google, but Microsoft plans to go one better.

Here is a screen shot when you search the LA Lakers, courtesy the Bing Blog:

How about searching for a player like Lamar Odom?

I hope this has piqued your interest, because it sure piqued mine.

R2 contributor Jules Boven, Marketing manager of harnesslink.com, wrote an article about this concept, creating a mock-up of what this would look like in Google for a harness horse named Arch Madness, the 2007 Breeders Crown Champion trotter. All you have to do is type in “pp” and the horse’s name, and voila!

So, whether you are at a restaurant or at the track, and you want to look at the trip notes for a horse coming up in the sixth, or maybe you want an easy link to a race replay without logging into your ADW and waiting and waiting with slow bandwidth, or maybe you want a horse’s last running line because you see something on the simulcast channel that catches your eye, you would type your query into a search engine, get the results, and then maybe make a play.

In addition, this could revolutionize the way data is stored for racing. We have not done well at all storing our history. This might be a way to start such a project.

If I were racing, or if racing had a central authority, I think I would be looking into a partnership not with Google, but with Bing. Working historical results, video replays, blogs and more into the search engine, just like other sports have done, would have to help us. Bing could be the search engine of choice for racing — and racing would give back by promoting it as such. And we do have a lot going for us in this regard. Racing is a data-rich game; making Bing the official search partner would surely bring them a whole lot of eyeballs, which is exactly what they are searching for.

Is it a win-win? I think so. Is it doable? I do not know, but if other sports can do it, I think we should be looking at partnerships like this in racing to help brand us for 2010 and beyond.

In 2000 two men who liked to play card games and make a bet or two created the Ebay of betting – an exchange where players could bet with each other. This relatively simple concept revolutionized betting – especially horse race betting – and it is the number one innovation of the decade as chosen by our panel.

Back in 1908 pari-mutuel betting (beautifully highlighted by Kevin at Colin’s Ghost ) came to Kentucky. This ushered in a whole new way to bet. The betting of the crowd dictated the odds, and those odds could change to post time. In addition, because of the anticipatory increase in betting volumes, the takeout was set at a very low 5% and racing flourished over the next several decades.  This system is ostensibly the same system we use in North America today.

In the mid 1990′s, the way we lived our everyday lives changed forever. Internet access began to sweep across the globe. No longer did we buy a stock by calling our broker and paying a $300 fee, we now did this ourselves for $6.95 a trade.  Pay phones -  long ago banned at the racetracks – were beginning to be obsolete, replaced by cell phones. Email alone changed the way we communicated. People began to demand convenience, ease of use, interactivity, control, along with lower prices for virtually everything they did or bought.

By the turn of the century, many of these features were offered in the gambling market, by a start-up called Betfair. What was once a shell company, scoffed at by bookmakers as a fad, is now the fourth largest internet start-up in the world, trailing only Wikipedia, Facebook and Craigslist in size. In 2010, the firm will handle over GBP20 billion  in turnover, and process more bets than the European stock exchanges combined do stock trades.

How did that happen? According to Nissan Gabbay at Sierra Ventures, they targeted a niche and expanded in primarily two main ways. 1) They targeted not the mainstream consumer, but the sophisticated gambler and 2) They offered a chance for bettors to win, by offering them a competitive price (most bets at the peer to peer exchange have less than a 5% takeout; ironically about what takeout was for horse racing over 100 years ago).

Nowadays it is not uncommon to see over $4M or more traded on a single horse race from the UK on the peer to peer exchange. Sophisticated gamblers, the general public and a new type of bettor – the stock trader, all play racing in their own way, on their own terms. Attracting a new market that has never given a horse race a look, has been an unexpected bonus. The evidence shows that Betfair considers horse racing their number one sport, and has put their money where their mouth is, sponsoring races, racetracks and expanding worldwide.

They have also advertised this new way to bet. In 2008, they released their first commercial, and this advertisement was not only for the UK market.

If you have never seen a Bulgarian TV commercial, well now you have.

This type of betting becoming is becoming more and more mainstream. For example, for the first time deals have been struck between the company,  several racetracks and even the Breeders Cup. Also, they have expanded into Australia and other countries. Betfair’s 2.5 million customers can bet racing, through the tote, and on the exchange.

Web 2.0 has become a buzz phrase for companies that took advantage of their customer base to grow for them, through API’s, community marketing and real time feedback. Peer to peer betting exchanges are built for this. There are literally hundreds of software packages and tools created by developers to use the betfair exchange. many of them advertise, and increase word-of-mouth. Here is one example, from a software package to bet horse races. This looks quite a bit different than anything we have ever seen before in horse race wagering, and it does (especially when looked at in the aggregate) create buzz.

Also this past year, the peer to peer betting leader has moved into the US market (although not officially), through Betfair’s purchase of TVG. This purchase has been looked at like a blessing by some and a curse by others. To some, Betfair will weed away margins for racing. To others it is chance to decrease prices, and expand horse racing to a willing audience, giving it a shot to survive.

Whatever the case, this form of wagering, with its aggressive marketing and expansion, built on web 2.0 principles is certainly an innovation that racing will remember forever, and a well-deserved winner of our panel poll. Will it lead racing from the abyss? Will it erode margins, making it more and more difficult for racing to survive? Those might be questions we’ll see answered in the upcoming decade.

One thing is for sure, this type of betting is here to stay and it should shape the landscape for many decades to come, just like pari-mutuel wagering did 101 years ago.

Panelist Comments

“Hard to not envy those across the pond who are legitimately *winning* over long periods of time becuase of this. With the rake so high and the game so hard to begin with, wagering stateside remains a hobby for all but a very, very few whales and syndicates with big bank rolls. If the powers that be ever open up to this form of wagering here then we can begin to steal some of poker’s thunder, youth and, most importantly, dumb money!” – o_crunk

Where would we be without easy to access race replays? I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I can easily spend hours at YouTube watching replays just for fun. But they’re not all fun and games, they’re a vital handicapping tool and have the potential to help market the game.

Since I only came on the scene in 2007, I queried my fellow r2-ers for their insights. Dean had this to share:

Replays are interesting to me, since I used them as a kid and growing up: 1990′s standing at the track watching the replay center races and waiting for a race you wanted to watch, or having to get there early to watch yesterdays races – hilarious. When the racing channels came aboard we would tape the races and that was our replay center.

I can only remember RaceReplays.com as the main source of replays when I first started playing and fellow r2-er Jessica confirms that she had an account as early as 2004. NYRA also used to embed their stakes races from RaceReplays.com into their site (now they have a direct log in which seems less useful).

As far as ADWs are concerned, I had a BrisBet account and don’t recall their replays however Jessica confirmed that they existed but were a pain to use. I’m happy to note that over the past 2-3 years that replays have exploded down the stretch, if you will.

Replays are standard fare for ADWs, and I can only assume some do it better than others.

Twinspires has two ways access them:

1) via track/date/horse search using the incredible TwinSpires TV:

2) via the race card’s program:

Youbet also has an extensive replay library as does TVG and Xpressbet.

While filed under Handicapping Software for the purposes of our countdown, DRF’s Formulator also has embedded replays which makes for some incredible ease of use.

Recent interesting and welcome additions to the replay arena are Thoroughbred Times and Blood Horse. Thoroughbred Times focuses on stakes but Blood Horse has an excellent extensive archive that also includes Non-Graded Stakes, Allowance/Optional Claiming, Maiden Special Weights and Maiden Claiming.

The replays are only one component of the archive that also features order of finish, payouts and pedigree information. They get extra points for having a dedicated Twitter feed (@BH_RaceResults) that automatically kicks out results.

The proliferation of race replays has not only been crucial for a handicappers, it’s also an excellent way for potential and/or new fans to connect with racing. Folks like Partymanners and CF1970, who have digitized their own personal replay collections, are squarely responsible for part of my racing self-education!

Tracks and such have followed suit with Churchill leading the way by adding what seems like all of their race replays from 2006 to the present. Hollywood Park has their stakes races both current and historical while NYRA, NTRA and Breeders’ Cup all make great use YouTube.

Easily accessed AND embeddable race replays have allowed for radically increased exposure to racing. Bloggers post races on their sites and fans post races on their profile pages at social media sites such as Facebook. For every racing fan who posts a race on their Facebook profile, N more people are more likely to see that race (where N is equal to the number of their contacts)… that’s some nice visibility.

And lastly, as a fervent iPhone user, I also enjoy NTRA & Breeders’ Cup replays as podcasts. Podcasts may seem pointless with a web enabled phone but they’re much higher quality than YouTube.

Not only are they useful as racing Prozac, they come in handy as a one-on-one gorilla marketing tool. I’ve been able to easily show friends and potential fans such thrilling races as Rachel Alexandra’s Preakness as we stand on a street corner or are grabbing a bite. Now if someone would just get Zenyatta’s Classic uploaded I would have all the high points of the year in my pocket, and if that’s not innovative I don’t know what is.

Panelists Comments

“When YouTube hit the web around mid-decade, everyone knew the web would never be the same. Video sharing was impossible (slow & clunky) to deal with before YouTube and the proliferation of Flash players. Sure HD is great but to get that souped up race car we had to start with the Model T. Having replays on the web, at the push of a button, changed *everything*.” – o_crunk

Reading a racing form to prepare for a day of racing can take hours. In harness racing where horses race week to week, having your pulse on each horse is a full time job.

But computers have changed everything.

During this decade, software, spreadsheets/databases and myriad other tools have exploded with horseplayers. We have all seen the ads, or heard a friend speak of a new handicapping tool he/she might be using. What took some players hours upon hours, might now take only seconds. This has arguably helped handles. With wall to wall racing (on some Saturday’s we can play over 30 tracks) how can one possibly handicap all of them manually.

“I can play every track if I want to with software,” said professional player James Erickson at a recently concluded conference at the Meadowlands. “It gives me information in a manner that makes it easy for me to have an opinion on the race. I still have to use my brain to decipher the numbers that it gives, but it gives me a quick, precise summary on what I have to look for. When I go to the track without my software I might only play $20 or $30 for fun.”

To contrast handicapping by hand, and with software, take this scenario, where the two players land on the same horse. Let’s assume the players have never played this racetrack. Also, let’s make the winning horse lone speed, dropping in class, the track bias is heavy to speed and the trainer of the horse is shipping him in and has a hit rate of over 50% with dropping shippers.

With a program, the pen and paper handicapper will see the lone speed, after some study. She will then go through all the charts and see the track bias of the past several cards. She will find, either in the form or elsewhere, trainer numbers, but maybe not a subset of them. Regardless, she lands on the lone speed and believes that the trainer is pretty decent in this situation. It takes some time, and skill.

Conversely, with the computer capper, he downloads the file and uploads it to his handicapping software. Immediately he is alerted to lone speed – he does not even see the form, it is there for him. He then checks the track bias “bot” in the software and sees that the track is heavily speed friendly. He then runs over to Formulator, or uses his own software and sees a model on the trainer signaling a green light shipper. He also has a minimum odds or probability line he will take on this horse, that he has used with this model through thousands of races. Poof, in seconds he has come to the same conclusion.

If you read chat boards, or follow racing closely with ADW players, you get to see just how important software is this decade. It is not uncommon to see talk and arguments on software packages and/or the inner workings of them, that a laymen might find difficult to understand. In fact, some packages have what many would describe as a cult status.

In a society that is busier and busier, where we are bombarded with numerous gambling and entertainment options and have many races to choose from on any given day, the speed and accuracy of software is a big part of the handle picture, and certainly one of the top innovations of the decade.

Trakus, in action

Developed by Massachusetts-based TKS, Inc., Trakus was initially used by the New England Patriots, the NHL, NASCAR, and the PGA for real-time data collection before the parent company switched their focus to horse racing. Now implemented at several tracks, including Woodbine, Keeneland, and Del Mar, Trakus has become an integral part of those track’s simulcast and in-house productions.

Using a wireless radio frequency system with small radio antennas positioned around the racetrack and corresponding ultra-lightweight radio tags located within a horse’s saddle-cloth, Trakus provides real-time data that the track can display. This is done with either the chicklets, which Woodbine uses to display the horse’s position on the racetrack, or as part of an automatically updating full-field rundown, which is used by both Keeneland and Del Mar. Following the completion of a race, Trakus can also be used to generate a three-dimensional replay or a race chart.

Digital Replays

Furthermore, after tracking each horse during the race, Trakus also stores information in a database about the horse. This information includes how many feet the horse ran during the race, how much ground it covered in comparison to other horses, how fast it ran during the race, and the horse’s final quarter. Trakus is also useful because no matter what kind of weather the track may be experiencing (fog, rain, snow, etc.) or what kind of camera angle the track uses, the Trakus system is always available to display the exact location of the horse.

Trakus is taking a multi-pronged approach to the future. First, they are making races available via mobile phone through their website, trakus.com. After signing up for the service, a fan or bettor can access a Trakus feed of any race at their participating tracks. Trakus has also moved overseas this year, debuting at racetracks in France and Turkey. Finally, with their Trakus Network or T-Net, which is available at trakus.com, industry professionals, fans, handicappers, trainers, owners, etc. can get access to a myriad of features including full-field results databases and replays, discussion forums, and industry expert analysis.

With all the features Trakus has — its ability to display automatic full-field rundowns, its ability to chart and store information about horses for future use, and its ability to let fans and bettors know exactly where their horse is on the track at all times, it will be exciting to see where this technology goes and if it will be available at all tracks in the near future.

Panel Comments

“It will never change the way I watch races but it certainly could revolutionize the gathering of data. Jury is still out here but I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a lot more to this than chicklets and real-time position.” – o_crunk

This article was written by Greg Reinhart, a web reporter for The Harness Edge. Prior to joining the Standardbred publication in 2007, Reinhart developed LucOuellette.com, the first web site used by a harness racing catch-driver.

The panel (in no particular order):

Jeff Platt – Jeff is the creator of Jcapper software and President of the Horseplayers Association of North America

Seth Merrow – Seth is the well-known owner and operator of Equidaily.com

Sid Fernando – When Sid isn’t busy as a pedigree consultant for eMatings, he can be found  blogging and  tweeting, especially about international racing.

John Pricci – A long time race fan, bettor and journalist, John is chief editor at Horseraceinsider.com

Kevin Martin – Kevin blogs about the history of racing, among other things at Colinsghost.org

Craig Milikowski – Craig is the creator of Pacefigures.com, a popular software/figure package. He is also a moderator at Paceadvantage.com

Lisa Grimm – Lisa is an archivist, homebrewer and lifelong racing fan who writes about the sport at Superfectablog.com

‘o_crunk’ – This racing tweeter extraordinaire can be found on Twitter at @o_crunk and  @HRFattheTrack

The top five:

12/21/09 – #5 Trakus
12/22/09 – #4 Conditional Wagering
12/23/09 – #3 Handicapping Software
12/25/09 – #2 Race Replays
12/27/09 – #1 Peer-to-Peer Wagering

Read more:

Innovations drag racing into new millennium: John Pricci reviews his top five.

Jay Graziani of majorwager.com looked into some gambling apps recently on his website. Let’s have a look at what gambling firms are offering their players.

The Card Counter App – This one made the most headlines. Yes, you can use your phone to count cards at a casino. Useful, you betcha. Banned, yep.

Fangraphs Baseball Betting App – Scores on your phone, so yesterday. D/l the neat Fangraphs app and you are on your way to making bets on the game with cutting edge stats, probabilities and more. Want to know how that single with one out in the 7th increases the teams chance to win? Want to know fair odds if you are playing the game at a Vegas casino, or betting the game in-running at betfair for our UK friends? This app tells you. it has built-in stats for every play, every team and every player from 2006 onwards. On your phone.

Poker Cruncher App – Calculate odds, random hand odds, all sorts of neat stuff to make you (or give you a chance to be) a winner? Yes you can.

There are several others, like IbetNFL,  Sportsbook and more. In addition, almost all online gambling sites offer a seamless transition to IPhones to help their business for those who can play such places legally (a good deal of the world outside North America)

Being a blackberry user I have never tested these apps, but being a bettor and a marketing geek I can  say that the proposition is not lost on me.

What these companies doing is simple:  they are providing betting value for their clients (for a betting game) by taking a whole pile of data (odds changes, probabilities, hand history’s, baseball and football historical stats), crunching it, and delivering them in alert form, or real time information form, right on your PDA to willing bettors.

The key point in this : data. These app makers and software makers are using free historical data and adding value to it, to help their business and grow whichever sport they are pushing. Try to do that in racing – fat chance. Data is locked up and costs serious money. Real time betting info is even licensed. To offer something like this in racing an enterprising software maker, or racing fan would have to pay money to do it (and not a tiny amount). And with a dwindling market for this, it simply does not get done. If one of the big cats who control the data wanted to offer it, they would charge an arm and a leg to horse bettors for the service, and it would probably not be very good anyway. Apps work because enterprising entrepreneurs offer a service, perfected by trial and error and otherwise to serve a market and survive. In other words – so not 2009 racing.

Right now the gambling world is rounding third while we are stuck in the dugout.

An IPhone app showing neat racing video or results sounds really great, but it provides little value, and almost zero viral growth. To provide value and something different that catches on and helps people make money at betting we need data. With it so protected, expect racing to be passed by with other enterprising gambling games taking the lead, and racings market share. With archaic data deals made for the pre-internet days in an internet world, we made our bed, and unless things change, it appears we are going to have to lie in it.

Rule 1 – Hook Your Customers on the Media

“…… retailers could let customers know at point of sale that if they become a fan of your business on Facebook, they’ll receive exclusive offers for discounts on future purchases. Or customers could be given instructions to tweet out a special hashtag with a message about your store after they follow your Twitter account”

When we provide value, we get back value. It is why this is so very important for customer relationship management. I have yet to see an ad on a track feed saying: “Join us on Facebook. Tell us what you think we need to do better, we want your input. Join the conversation!” Maybe there is one, but I have not seen it.

Racings customers are screaming to be part of the conversation, and we should be doing a better job giving them a voice.

Rule 2 – Concentrate on Building Your Community

As O_Crunk and others below have commented – being a part of something and ditching the hard sales come-on’s is paramount for this.

“…….. the trick to retaining them as customers is to keep them wanting to come back. That means constantly engaging them with new content, exclusive offers and information they can’t get elsewhere. The best way to grow your community is to consistently offer them quality content. That means forgoing the sales pitch most of the time.”

In a word – respect and listening, which we tend to not do enough of in racing, in my opinion. Others do, and they are winning the fight.

Jet Blue is an airline – one with 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Why? Community building. Just yesterday for example, a customer tweeted to Jet Blue that his mom got him an ornament for his tree this year. The kicker is, it is a Jet Blue plane ornament. The customer went so far to post the tree ornament’s picture on the web for everyone to see. Jet Blue read it and they replied. This type of interaction has done them wonders.

For racing: What if youbet.com used Facebook to have a wall of pictures on “near misses” – i.e. screenshots supplied by some of their customers of tickets that just missed. Everyone loves to share bad beat stories. Maybe he missed the last leg of a pick 6, or she got nosed out of a $5000 superfecta in a really bad luck way. What if once a week youbet refunded the price of the ticket and sent the bad beat customer a hat or a shirt, for winning the bad bet of the week? I bet they will tell people, as well as feel appreciated, knowing that the company they are a part of wants to see them do well. I think things like that are a vital part of building a strong community.

Rule 3 – Play Favorites

I don’t think this  means bet the Levine horse off the claim this week at 1-5. But it does mean something important: “Social media is a great place to promote your general sales and events, but you should also consider offering your social media fans exclusive deals that cannot be had elsewhere.”

For racing? I dunno, how about a special coupon for Churchill under the lights? How about a unique, time limited extra points offer for Youbet Rewards exclusive to social media followers? Using your customers to be mavens, and work for you to help other customers is simple WOM marketing which works both on and offline.Value is provided for both of you.

I recently saw a post at Paceadvantage.com where a Youbet customer received some free stuff at Keeneland. He was floored because he does not bet too much. He told the world.

“[Youbet] did something nice for their customers yesterday at Keeneland. Since I’m guessing I am one of their least significant accounts and still was invited I must assume the offer was open to all account holders. My wife and I were planning to be at KEE anyway so this was an unexpected bonus.

At a minimum they gave each who attended free admission, good grandstand seats at the finish line, $10 food voucher, $20 wager voucher, track program, and entry to a drawing for a TV. The couple of YouBet reps I had conversations with were very nice to deal with. All in all, it left a good impression.”

These building blocks are not complex. It is simple business using a new medium, but one which spreads WOM faster than the old days. Without a plan it is doomed to fail, but with one it can succeed and help us help racing.

I am sure anyone reading has their own ideas on how to use the medium, what offers to offer, what way is best to engage bettors. The above are a few examples off the top of my head. If anyone has any to offer, fire away.

Notes – The Twitter chat has been enlightening and fun below. A news item today  – Dell rings up $6.5M in sales, attributable to Twitter, or so they tell us.

Also via Twitter, Colonial Downs offers something to only their Facebook fans. Interesting days indeed!

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.

Search Volume and News Mentions via Google. Rachel (red), Z (blue)

What we see here is what we already tended to believe – early in the year Rachel blew away her west coast foe, but by the end it was all Z all the time. For the Preakness there was not a more popular horse in racing, and that spike is huge, even when we look at Barbaro’s fateful day. That carried on throughout the summer until, of course, the Breeders Cup. That stirring race spurred a furious amount of Zenyatta searches.

It is pretty apparent that our branded races win out when looking to the general public. Besides the Preakness, the Rachel bumps for her other wins are tiny. Point “c” represents her Monmouth win. I would think that people searching for Wally’s best friend for a Leave it to Beaver reunion show could have beaten the news mentions and searches for that. Ditto for the Woodward. For Zenyatta this is equally apparent. Her win at Del Mar (Point “d”) registered but a ripple. No matter what Jess Jackson says, the Breeders Cup Classic is a huge race. But of course, props to Mr. Jackson for realizing that serving up Rachel for the Preakness helped out the sport, too.

Here are the top three cities who searched for Rachel the most throughout the year (as compared to Zenyatta; this is standardized data, not gross searches):

New York

Atlanta

Washington

For the darling of the Breeders Cup:

San Diego

Irvine

Los Angeles

Who said the left and east coast biases are a myth?

It is also important to know that searches for horse racing are primarily east coast dominant to begin with. It seems to be firmly entrenched in the culture.

As for the rest of the world, if you live in Japan, or Italy, you love to search for news on the Moss mare.

If you live in the UK or Australia, you like Jess Jackson’s vintage filly.

Who will win? We have no idea. But for pure interest in terms of searches, Rachel looks to have a firm grasp on the year end award.

At a search engine conference in 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmitt uttered a very significant statement that gave insight into Google’s underlying strategy – “Don’t bet against the internet”.

Google has repeatedly supported measures and introduced products that don’t have direct financial benefits for them, but push the online world towards openness and greater internet adoption.

Specifically they have:

• Promoted an open applications and open devices model that says that consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire, on any device, with any network they prefer.

• Bid 4.6 Billion to ensure that the 700MHz wireless spectrum was auctioned off in the United States to encourage greater broadband competition.
• Released thousands of useful products, even when projected revenue didn’t justify the cost.

Of course, while noble causes Google’s obviously not doing all this for philanthropic reasons. They’ve realized that their business model intersects perfectly with the interests of consumers. An open, accessible and useful internet results in more users – which equates to more advertising revenue for Google.

When asked about the sprawl of seemingly unprofitable products Google releases regularly, Amit Singhal, head of search quality replied:

“The right way to look at it is not the money. Is there value to the users? If you bring value to the users, I think we will succeed in the long run. Some things make more money than others, but as long as we keep bringing value to the world, we will be successful.”

Now how does this relate to horse racing? The Internet opened up markets in every industry’s all over the world. Amazon took books, blogs and news sites like the Huffington Post crippled newspapers, P2P networks and torrent sites scared the bejeezus out of the entertainment industry.

But more generally (and more importantly in my opinion) with just a click of the mouse customers could walk out on long standing relationships with companies they didn’t like.

For nearly a century racing had a virtual monopoly on the gambling dollar – the customer had no choice. In New Zealand (where I’m from) the only place you could drink after 6pm was a racetrack – how do you think that effected turnout? But nowadays the internet has massively accelerated consumers ability to walk away.

Although the search industry has huge barriers to entry (Google has so many servers that they try to build their infrastructure near power stations) they know that if they start to piss of their customers they may never see them again. They spend weeks trying to get users to click on links faster in their search results, and measure the results in the thousandth of a second.

Racing seems to go the other way; raising takeout, controlling signals, fighting over handle, and regulating who can bet and where.

It would be an embarrassment if the general public hadn’t already clicked away.

Jules Boven is the Marketing Manager for Harnesslink and also runs a search engine marketing firm

Betfair's Mobile Trader

But it appears the rest of the world is not like me, and maybe you.

According to Emarketer, mobile search is expanding rapidly. In 2009, searching via internet ads on mobile phones and PDA’s, is forecast to result in US$260M in revenue for search providers. In 2012, this is supposed to rise to almost US$3 billion. More and more people are using their handheld devices as their home computer.

And when we think of it, why wouldn’t we? Fast upload speeds and increased processing speed have resulted in some awesome cyber and storage firepower. Five years ago an ipod could hold several thousand songs. In a few years a similar sized device will be able to hold every song ever published. A few years after that, every piece of video ever made – every movie, every television show – will be held in the palm of your hand.  Each year mobile speeds get faster. In Korea, a huge portion of the country is covered by fast, effective speeds, due to their mobile initiative.

“Imagine riding the subway at 60 mph under the streets of Seoul streaming ESPN sports highlights to a netbook at 4mbps. I don’t have to imagine it, because I did it, using a WiMax connection from Korea Telecom and a Samsung WiBro-powered (WiMax Broadband) netbook.” says this blogger.

So how does racing take advantage of this? Will it?

Racing has been called many things over the years, but “forward-thinking” is not a moniker normally given to the game.  However, let me try something out on you.

I am a bit of a geek when it comes to watching and playing the sport. Back in the late 1990’s I got my first betting account and was watching racing via my home office on my computer. The grainy 56kbps feed was fun, yet looking back, tremendously annoying. I would get a shot of the horses at the eighth, sometimes the quarter, the far turn and the finish. But I loved the concept.

Less than ten years later we can watch multiple streams on Twinspires in almost HD quality, we can bet with lightening speed, we can watch the “chicklets” via trackus for Woodbine and Kenneland, we can pop up a race replay while we are handicapping, we can have BRIS figs and stats at our fingertips, we can use Formulator to find out what trainer did what, when.

And we can do it in seconds, with a click of a mouse.

The funny thing is, that despite those innovations, they happened at a snails pace when looked at in terms of what other businesses were doing. Race replays and chicklets? That is so 2002.

Bwin's Mobile Poker App has 15,000 players - already

Here is what I would like to do five or ten years from now when betting and watching racing. I would like to be able to do everything I do on my computer on my phone, and I want to do more. I want a customizable “app” where I can program my preferences based on my handicapping. I want my “app” able to include Formulator stats and signals, or Jcapper software alerts, or Horse Street Handicapper alerts. I want to be on a patio in Chicago having a pint of Michelob and a slice of deep dish enjoying the summer sun and have my phone beep, signaling me that my minimum odds threshold for a play at Arlington Park is hit at two minutes to post, and it wants to confirm if I want my usual $20 to win. I want to press “send” and I want my bet locked in at those odds, because the ancient tote system in racing has been upgraded. I want my phone to beep when the gate opens, and I want to watch the race live. I want the video to show me (via a highlighted arrow) where my horse is at all points of the race.  If he crosses the wire first, I want to see my winnings in my account in seconds. I want to then put my phone in my pocket and wait for the next signal. Who knows, maybe I will get pinged while on the subway ride back to my hotel that my 5-2 fair odds horse in the seventh is 4-1. And away I go again. $20 on the nose? Sure, and I can watch it while dodging commuters on the platform.

Asking too much? I do not think so. Poker sites, gambling sites and other sports are working on such things right now to prepare for the future, and making headway. If a chip the size of a penny is able to hold and process every piece of video ever made by 2020 like we are told, this should be child’s play.

MLBTV? Right on your phone

A few racing ADW’s already have mobile. But they tend to be clunky and slow. Clunky and slow is 2002, not 2009.

The wrench in the plans of forwarding a mobile vision of course, is that in racing there is a hodge-podge of organizations and racetracks ruling the roost. I personally think that getting something like the above done will take effort, cash, organization and a new type of thinking – just like it  has been done at Betfair, MLBTV and PGA TOUR mobile. It’s a tough sell in our game.

Earlier this year the six billionth song was downloaded on Itunes. Some time in the future, a six billionth bet will be made on a race, on a mobile phone. With some work, some money, and a plan, I think we can make that number come sooner than we think. And the way the world is moving with other sports and games constantly beating us to the punch, isn’t it time to get cracking?