Jim Gagliano:

Good morning and thank you, Stuart. I’d like to begin by sharing some important background about The Jockey Club and its current strategies. In 2011, the Board of Stewards of The Jockey Club commissioned a report on the current status of the sport and steps to make it more sustainable. That report first published at that year’s Roundtable conference and conducted by McKinsey & Company recommended a very specific set of initiatives. Refocus on the best racing, retain the core better, enhance ownership, reinvest in new fans.

And The Jockey Club immediately committed to the plan and made substantial investments in areas including television, aftercare, improvements to the integrity and safety of the sport, generating new owners, and we launched a first in the generation new fan development program, America’s Best Racing, or as we call it, ABR.

For the past decade, ABR has increasingly used influencers to endorse, promote, and create content for the sport. More recently, ABR developed Stake in Stardom, a program in which influencers actually own a share in a Thoroughbred. Thanks to our marketing partners, West Point Thoroughbreds, Final Furlong Racing and others, Stake in Stardom has really taken off. For 2024, ABR has seen a 221% increase year-over-year increase in engagement and a 717% increase in video views. Here’s a clip highlighting ABR’s influencers.

[VIDEO]

Griffin Johnson:

What is up ABR team? This is Griffin Johnson here. Today we are at Churchill Downs. It is Sandman’s very first race, actually an amazing program called Steak and Stardom.

Speaker 2:

Really, really awesome. I’m excited, man. I’m really excited.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I have a secret announcement. I’ve teamed up with America’s Best Racing and West Point Thoroughbreds and now I’m your horse girl. I always dreamed to be a horse girl growing up.

Speaker 3:

This is just like you said, it’s so amazing.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely the best.

Speaker 3:

I mean, this is incredible. Look at all these people.

[END VIDEO]

Jim Gagliano:

In 2018, we updated our strategic plan to include a grant fund for tracks to upgrade their television production to high definition, we recommended an embrace of sports betting and recommended a more efficient scheduling of races. To better inform our public about our investments to improve the sport, in February of this year, we published for the first time our Industry Impact Report, which highlighted now more than a hundred million dollars in investments that The Jockey Club has made in the sport since 2010. I’d encourage you all to read the report if you haven’t already, and we plan to publish it every year.

So where do we go from here? What’s next? To start, all organizations rise or fall with the talent and dedication of its human capital. The Jockey Club has been advantaged by having many talented and devoted people work for us over the years. Our team has modernized the organization from its initial role as a breed registry into a technical and data-driven organization whose products and services have been essential to the growth of interstate and international trade.

Recently, we announced the promotion of several members of our team into leadership roles to improve our service to the industry. Going forward, The Jockey Club and our related companies are now embarking on a series of new projects and services. As first discussed at this conference last year, The Jockey Club has launched a traceability initiative to better understand where Thoroughbreds go after their racing or breeding careers.

Here’s how it works. The certificate manager for any Thoroughbred that has not raced or been bred in the last two years will receive an email from the Registry. That email will direct them to the traceability portal of Interactive Registration. The system will ask the manager to provide information on the horse’s status and depending on the response received, the manager would get one of several prompts: transfer the certificate to a new owner, file an appropriate report with the Registry, or the manager would be presented with aftercare resources for their consideration. Unresponsive managers will receive follow-up communications from the Registry, including phone calls. Data collected through this service will help The Jockey Club and other organizations to better target aftercare resources and improve outcomes for retiring Thoroughbreds.

Another new project we have undertaken uses artificial intelligence to name Thoroughbreds. In this case, a customer can input their preference for a name, perhaps a prominent name and a category, add a few other words to include with the name, and the system will generate a series of suggestions that follow The Jockey Club’s naming rules and policies. I expect to launch this new application in the coming months.

Yesterday, we announced a rebranding of several of our commercial companies into one: TJC Innovations. TJC Innovations enables us to meet the evolving demands of customers seeking larger, more robust data sets to fuel new technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. TJC Innovations will give our customers now a one-stop solution for technology needs, large and small.

As part of this rebranding, we purchased TLore, the leading provider of data services and products to trainers in North America. Working with Tracy Attfield, owner of TLore and the founder, we’ll expand those services to other segments of the industry, including an app for owners to manage their equine investments. Tracy has built an incredible customer base with a practical set of tools and best-in-class services. We’re very lucky to have her join our team.

Tracy, I’m going to ask you to please stand and be recognized and we welcome you to The Jockey Club team. Thank you.

Moving further to the future, TJC Innovations has entered into an agreement with Halo AI to supply North American data to fuel their artificial intelligence platforms to facilitate breeding, sales, and racing decisions, and we look forward to working with other entrepreneurs using new technologies to unlock value in our data.

Today, we’re also pleased to share our plans for a new value-added service for every breeder of a registered Thoroughbred: free lifetime past performances. Under this program, a breeder will receive an email listing all the horses that raced the previous day with a link to our Equineline lifetime starts product. We expect this feature will be available ahead of the next breeding season and we believe that our customers will appreciate it.

Equibase Company, our partnership with the racetracks of the TRA, is also making substantial changes that are tied back to our strategic plan. Earlier this year, Equibase announced a program to make available a free full-year dataset of entries, results, charts, and GPS data. We’ve had more than 900 requests for access to that data from developers, handicappers, academics and researchers. We believe this is a very important first step to driving new product development for the sport.

Equibase recently invested in a next-generation tracking technology called Real Time Kinematics or RTK. First debuted for the industry at the 2024 Belmont Racing Festival at Saratoga, this technology has dramatically improved the accuracy and collection of racing data, in most cases down to the centimeter. We’ve now installed RTK at Delmar and we’ll be expanding its use in the coming months.

At this conference in 2020, Thoroughbred Industry executive Sal Sinatra presented how a rating system would enhance equine safety, make ownership more sustainable, and make races more competitive. We agreed with Sal, and Equibase is working on a pilot ratings and handicap system that would be made available to racing offices at no cost. It’s noteworthy that frequent changing of trainers, claiming races, is one of the risk factors identified by Dr. Tim Park in his address at the Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit last June.

Improving the safety of Thoroughbred horse racing remains a longtime priority for The Jockey Club. Along with our steadfast support for HISA, the Board of Stewards yesterday authorized funding for research through the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory to develop new moisture sensing technology for the equipment used on our racing surfaces. We look forward to updating you on this multi-year research that’s being developed by Dr. Mick Peterson and his colleagues at the lab, which brings me to my final topic.

I’m pleased to share two new recommendations from The Jockey Club Thoroughbred Safety Committee, which for more than 15 years has produced 41 recommendations to improve the safety and conduct of racing in North America, many of which have become bedrock to the regulation of our sport.

The first recommendation calls for racetracks, beginning with those under the regulation of HISA, to fully participate in the Maintenance Quality System that is managed by the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory. That information has proven to be gold for those tracks that have achieved the nation’s best safety records. Second recommendation calls for all racing-related necropsies to be performed using the AAEP Guidelines for the Necropsy of Racehorses as a minimum standard.

I hope the foregoing has better informed you about The Jockey Club’s strategic plan, our dedication to the improvement of Thoroughbred breeding and racing. Please enjoy the balance of today’s program and we thank you for your time, your attention, and your support.