STUART S. JANNEY III: Thank you, Mike. I want to thank all our speakers today for being with us and sharing their experiences.
The Jockey Club has been hosting this each summer for more than 70 years. We try to pack into the two-plus hours a balance of topics we believe interesting and informative.
We spent time discussing some hard truths about the pari-mutuel revenue sources that have always sustained us.
We heard from a seasoned sports journalist that there is much more of our sport to promote.
We must be ready to build upon the foundation presented by HISA.
We witnessed a valuable dialog among the regulators and those who are regulated proving that even in this era of hard and fast ideologies, there is nothing better than respectful discourse to solve problems and make progress.
Finally, Mike Lopez, by way of Skidmore and the NFL, gave us his insights into how data can inform decisions on integrity, safety, and promotion.
I would like to take the final few minutes of today’s program to talk a little bit about the future of the sport and what we firmly believe it can be.
After a decade-long effort, and there were times when it felt much longer, HISA is the law of the land, and it’s something we can build upon. Four years ago at this program the great Australian breeder, owner, John Massera, speaking about the proposed Federal legislation, said, “You’ve got everything to unleash a monster of economic rewards if you were to join the rest of the world in this harmonization in terms of the drug rules.”
John was right, and we are here today. It’s now time to capture that future.
I have two suggestions: First, we have to embrace the international aspect of the sport. Racing is global. Thankfully in many parts of the world the sport is thriving. The Breeders’ Cup, one of the pioneers of international racing now regularly hosts wagering from all over the globe, including the world leading markets of Hong Kong and Japan.
Breeders’ Cup includes about 40 international challenge races, and over the past three years, 120 horses from overseas have competed, winning 17 of those races.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club, in partnership with five other racing nations, in 2019 created the World Pool, a co-mingling pool that boasts deep liquidity. Growth in the World Pool has been impressive with turnover increasing significantly each year.
In Australia in 2018 there were just 28 races worth a million or greater in Australian dollars. This year there will be 89, and returns to owners have grown 92% in the last decade.
Even the small country of Bahrain just announced a purse increase to their $1 million Behran International Trophy and its recently attained Grade 2 status.
Our domestic broadcast partners, TVG, NBC Sports, and FOX Sports, have increasingly featured major international race meets and carnivals. There is no doubt that the U.S. bloodstock has a presence overseas. Europe’s leading 2-year-old colt and filly are by a U.S. stallion, and that also happens to be Australia’s leading freshman sire.
This is really the tip of the iceberg because we are now in line with the rest of the world with harmonizing medication rules. U.S. racing is poised to unleash that monster of economic rewards.
One needs to look no further than the NFL, NBA, Major League baseball, which now regularly stage league games in Europe and Central America.
Soccer and Formula 1 racing are also highly international with competitions spanning continents.
According to some researchers there is a case to be made that horse racing is the third-most global sport behind soccer and basketball. The top horse racing events around the world are just as glamorous as any event in sports. To thrive, U.S. racing needs to embrace those international markets.
The second of my suggestions involves marketing of our sport. We need to get past the concerns that we are constantly in turmoil, rocking from one crisis to the next. Another roundtable speaker from the past, David Fuscus, discussed crisis management. He said, “If we come together as an industry, negative perception can be turned. There is hope we can come through these dark days, but to do so the public needs to understand what we’re doing and believe we are on a path to success.”
With HISA firmly established, we are on that path, and we need to aggressively begin to market to a new and younger audience and defeat the extremist voices that threaten horse racing.
Our best weapon is a fan base who trusts our sport. The Jockey Club’s America’s Best Racing has been hard at work building a fan base for more than a decade, and now has a regular social media audience of 400,000, 80% of which is under the age of 44. That is the demographic we need to influence the most.
America’s Best Racing has a proven formula, but it needs more resources beyond those underwritten by The Jockey Club. Today we are calling on all corners of the sport to come together to fund a sustained campaign that uses digital media to convey the attractiveness of our sport to a trusting new generation of fans.
More than a decade ago when we first began to plan for what became HISA, not all the organizations on the screen would’ve been with us. Now things have changed. We need to capitalize on that unity.
Over the coming months, the team at America’s Best Racing will be meeting with many of the leading organizations and individuals involved in the sport. It’s time to come together and take the bold steps necessary to ensure our great sport’s future.
Thank you, again, for joining us here today, and we hope this has been a productive event for all of you.
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