JAMES L. GAGLIANO: Thank you, Stuart. The Jockey Club has been committed to the improvement of Thoroughbred breeding and racing since 1894, and while it’s been a challenging year, the last year has been no exception.

The Jockey Club, Breeders’ Cup, and several others funded a national advertising campaign in 2020 titled “Still. Running. Strong.” designed to support the greatly expanded hours of national television coverage on NBC Sports and FOX Sports, both of which are supported by The Jockey Club’s America’s Best Racing.

This year, ABR is again the co-presenting title sponsor of NYRA/FOX Sports’ America’s Day at the Races and the presenting title sponsor of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge series through the NBC Sports Group.

The oft-quoted report by McKinsey & Company from the 2011 Round Table Conference found that there were 43 hours of horse racing on national television at that time. Ten years later, combined coverage from FOX Sports and NBC has brought the total to nearly 900 hours.

In addition to broadcast coverage, ABR has been the main driver of second-screen racing coverage. Second-screen coverage refers to live-streaming horse racing shows created specifically for consumption on secondary devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Over the past 18 months, ABR has produced several popular recurring weekly live-stream shows that focus on the lifestyle of the sport and wagering, including a series of shows in Spanish. Through the first half of 2021, ABR second-screen programs have attracted more than 400,000 viewers.

ABR has also expanded its partnerships with racetracks, ADWs and other industry organizations with an emphasis on live streaming and social media engagement, specifically targeting fans between the ages of 21 and 45. ABR has coordinated with tracks on special-offer ticket promos, wagering, and other geo-targeted marketing campaigns around major race days.

It is clear that ABR has become the go-to website for dynamic, entertaining, and educational horse racing content for new fans. All of this helps increase race viewership, grow racing’s social media fan base, and get more people to the tracks now that they’re opening back up.

At the end of last year, The Jockey Club registry attached Thoroughbred Connect information to digital certificates of foal registration. Thoroughbred Connect is a resource for horse owners who are looking to re-home a Thoroughbred when its racing or breeding career comes to an end. With this update, contact information for anyone who would like to help a specific Thoroughbred is displayed to the Certificate Manager on a horse’s digital papers, so the information is easily accessed and available with the digital certificate.

Because of uncertainties with the pandemic, the Thoroughbred Owner Conference has been held as a virtual conference series the first Tuesday of each month since March and will continue through December.

Now that we are getting back to normal, we plan to host a one-day, in-person conference on November 3 in Del Mar, just ahead of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships. The conference will include several panels of expert speakers and social events for networking. Anyone interested can find more information at ownerview.com.

This past April we debuted the first monthly edition of BloodHorse magazine since 1929 and also introduced BloodHorse+. The monthly magazine format has been well-received by readers and advertisers, while BloodHorse+ provides premium, exclusive content to subscribers, such as multimedia videos and a weekly FOX Sports/BloodHorse show produced by the New York Racing Association.

In May, The Jockey Club announced that we would take over production of The American Racing Manual from the Daily Racing Form, which has produced the publication for well over 100 years. The manual is now available as a PDF on our website, and for the first time, it’s free of charge.

In early June, InCompass announced the introduction of the Exceptional Performance Reference Tool, a free feature in Track Manager developed in collaboration with McKinsey & Company.

The tool combines McKinsey’s analytical and statistical experience in major sports data analysis with the wealth of information available through InCompass’ Track Manager. It was developed as an aid to racetracks and regulators to help identify significant performance changes that might merit closer examination.

I’d especially like to thank Jerry Brown of Thoro-Graph for providing data for the exceptional performance software.

Also in June, Equibase hired a new president and chief operating officer, Sal Sinatra, to succeed Jason Wilson. Sal has spent his entire career in the Thoroughbred industry and is well positioned to meet the challenges affecting the sport. He is currently focused on improvements to the accuracy of GPS timing of races, a subject that Will Duff Gordon and Will Bradley will speak more about later.

Finally, this year we welcomed three interns this summer who were chosen as part of the inaugural class of our formal summer internship program to support young people who are interested in entering the Thoroughbred industry. The internship program is in addition to the five scholarships offered by The Jockey Club, three of which were new this year and are meant to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion in the industry.

So, a lot has happened since the last Round Table Conference. But to us, the most important achievement was the passage of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020, which was signed into law on December 27. Later in this program, Dr. Tessa Muir and Charlie Scheeler will go into more detail about the new authority.

To assist in the implementation of HISA, The Jockey Club will provide what data we can from our databases, being mindful of our confidentiality and privacy obligations. This is all possible because The Jockey Club and its affiliates are devoted to building products for and providing services to the industry.

Combined with its commercial subsidiaries, The Jockey Club is the only organization with full end-to-end data capture on Thoroughbreds, from birth, through the sales ring, during training, while racing, and into retirement.

One of these services is the Equine Injury Database, which now contains more than a decade of information from approximately 5 million race starts.

Other products and services we can specifically resource include the Pre-Race Vet Exam module, the Electronic Treatment Records database, the Exceptional Performance Tool that I mentioned earlier, the Management Quality System of the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, the Thoroughbred Regulatory Rulings database, and the Jockey Health Information System.

All of this data will create the first-ever comprehensive database to best inform HISA with facts as it develops and enforces rules and standards that will improve the integrity of the sport and make it a lot safer.

In short, under HISA, the amalgamation of these databases will truly be transformative for the sport and will be keys to ensuring the sustainability and growth of Thoroughbred racing.

Thank you for your time today, and enjoy the rest of the program.

STUART S. JANNEY III: Thank you, Jim, and thank you to The Jockey Club employees for their commitment to The Jockey Club and to horse racing.