Horse racing is having a moment. Thanks to a special horse named American Pharoah that finally broke the 37-year Triple Crown winner drought, horse racing is enjoying a rise in national profile not seen in years. That Belmont win produced a Sports Illustrated cover and the third highest TV ratings of the last twenty-eight years. Problems remain both large and small but if horse racing is ever going to address them, now is the time.
Jonathan Horowitz has one of those problems. It’s between the first and second race at Arapahoe Park—a horse track located east of Denver where the suburbs give way to the great plains—and Horowitz, the 30-year-old track announcer, has just received a text.
Horowitz has been announcing races since he was 14 and is always looking for ways to engage the crowd. A track tradition has begun where the winning jockey’s choice of song is played after a race. “Like a batter’s walk up song in baseball,” Horowitz says.
The text Horowitz receives is from a jockey requesting that “Pony” by Ginuwine accompany his next win. Horowitz tracks down a radio edit of the song but is concerned about some of the lyrics—in particular, the line “If you’re horny let’s do it / ride it, my pony.” Perched high above the track in his tiny announcing booth and unsure of whether to approve the jockey’s request, he calls the track’s general manager and explains his dilemma. Upon reciting the line in question, the GM nixes the song.
Just in time, it turns out. The jockey wins the second race and as he heads to the winner’s circle, his previous choice—Jamie Foxx’s “Winner”—floats out of the speakers into the hazy afternoon sky.
Given the year that Arapahoe Park is having, it’s possible that this judgment call over a song choice qualifies as the biggest problem Horowitz has faced so far in 2015.
Arapahoe Park’s betting handle is up 12 percent over last season while average daily attendance is up 4.5 percent versus last year and 35 percent compared to 2013. “Winner” isn’t just a song about a single horse at Arapahoe Park these days.
Nationally, the problems horse racing faces are a little bigger. Bloodhorse.com reported that betting handle was flat in June against last year. That is over a smaller number of races so it represents an 8.3 percent increase on a per race basis. This includes the Belmont, the third leg of the Triple Crown, which actually showed a 10 percent year over year decline. (California Chrome’s failed bid out-paced American Pharoah by at least a length in gambling dollars.) Year to date shows a national betting handle similar to June—essentially flat but on a smaller number of races. This in comparison to 2014, which was the seventh year of the previous eight to show a decline.
While the numbers show some positive indicators, the question remains whether horse racing can use American Pharoah’s momentum to turn around a nearly decade long slide in national interest.
And if so, how?
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“I don’t think anyone could have felt what it was going to be like after it was over. I was at Belmont, I was excited to see it happen in my head beforehand,” says Peter Rotondo, Vice President of Media & Entertainment at the Breeder’s Cup. “And then, it happened, and it was way bigger than I ever imagined.”
Rotondo occupies a unique position in the horse racing world. Working for the Breeder’s Cup, his day job is to coordinate with television networks in promoting and distributing both the signature year-end horse racing event as well as the summer-long Challenger series that sets the Breeder’s Cup field. But he is also a face of the other side of betting window. As a cast member of the 2014 Esquire reality show, Horseplayers, he is one of the most recognizable handicappers at the track. It is this dual hat that colors his view on how horse racing can leverage American Pharoah’s triumph into a revitalization of the sport.
Rotondo recognizes the impact of American Pharoah’s special qualities. “I think the way American Pharoah is as a horse … like as an animal … he is just so cool,” Rotondo says. “People could come and pet him. The way (Bob) Baffert has let him become America’s pet, I think is a big boost.” This special attachment gives the Breeder’s Cup a unique opportunity this fall when American Pharoah races his final race—the first ever chance for a horse to win a horse racing ‘Grand Slam.’ As Rotondo points out: “There has never been a chance for a Triple Crown winner to run in the Breeder’s Cup since the first Breeder’s Cup was in 1984 and the last Triple Crown winner was 1978.”
All of this comes at the perfect time. While betting handle has been declining, NBC’s commitment to becoming the home of horse racing is driving efforts to grow the sport. With the various Triple Crown and Breeder’s Cup races spread across a number of networks, there was no coordinated effort to keep horse racing top of mind year round. Now, NBC has all the major races from spring to fall.
As part of his day job, Rotondo sees the impact. “In the past, it was splintered,” he says. “All the pieces have fallen into place … now that finally the whole sport is on one network, it is only going to help. All the stars are aligned with NBC and horse racing.” In the second year of the Challenger series, he says, “The ratings and the promotion have been way up, year over year. I mean by hundreds of a percent.”
But an entire sport can’t be predicated on a single horse who will run his last race in four months. So, the goal is to take the added interest in American Pharoah and turn one-time horse race viewers into dedicated fans.
“Some people haven’t watched or been to the races in a long time and I think he can help expose that experience back to the masses,” Rotondo says of American Pharoah, echoing a similar thought that Horowitz, the Arapahoe Park announcer, describes as the ‘romanticism’ of horse racing. “If you like racing and, you know, a day at Saratoga, a day at Del Mar or Keeneland, Oaklawn or Belmont … these are kind of the most fun you can have. A generation might have forgotten about it or hadn’t been in a long time so it brings it back to top of mind. I think you will see a big bounce in the positive because of [American Pharoah].”
Horowitz describes a perfect example of this: Arapahoe Park saw a huge crowd on Father’s Day. Coming just a couple weeks after the Belmont, Horowitz notes it seems families were taken in by American Pharoah and when it was dad’s turn to pick a day’s activities they decided to come to the track.
There are horse races occurring nearly every day at tracks around the country, but interest spreads from the top down. Start with the major events and let it trickle down to the local tracks and daily races. As Rotondo says, “I think we need to keep promoting these big event and big weekends because that is when people have time. When people actually live their lives.
“Let’s promote the big events, they keep getting bigger and then hopefully you get folks interested in the event itself but the gambling as well. Then they will wind up betting the other races.”
It is the other fortuitous thing about American Pharoah coming along at this moment; it coincides with an explosion in gambling’s mainstream acceptance. Shifting to his handicapper hat, Rotondo sees the opportunity from the gambling perspective as well. “Gambling is no longer a bad word,” he says. “Everyone is doing it. It is out there, I think we can take advantage of that as well.”
With poker regularly on television and point spreads shown nightly on SportsCenter, Rotondo says that it’s easy to forget one simple fact about horse racing. Outside of fantasy sports, “Technically, we are the only form of legalized gambling on the internet.”
While that is true, for novices, horse race betting can be intimidating. “Trifecta,” “quinella,” “pick-six,” the sport has its own language and unlike ball-sport betting, the casual fan isn’t watching horses on a weekly basis. Regardless of gambling experience, one can develop a perspective on how well the Broncos and Peyton Manning will do on a given weekend. The casual fan will never have that perspective on the No. 6 horse in the fifth race at Saratoga.
“We need to make it easy for newcomers,” Horowitz says. “Make it a better attraction to those who don’t want to read a racing form.”
Over the last couple decades, the horse tracks that have seen the most growth have been those that have also incorporated non-race gambling like slot machines or tables. These tracks—or “racinos,” using a horrid name that makes them sound like the Brangelina of gambling—are showing that people will come when they can gamble on things beyond horses. As an academic report from Robert Morris University noted:
In the United States, non-racino states, those states not integrating horse racing and casinos, experienced a decline of nearly 38% in live handle at racetracks between 1995 and 1999, while racino (combination of race track and casino) states reported a 7% increase. (Plume, 2002).
So, it is on the industry to merge these concepts—find more user-friendly ways to bet on the horses themselves and bridge the divide between “interactive” (handicapping) and “passive” (slot machines) gambling, as Horowitz puts it. He points to the website derbyjackpot.com which turns betting on races into online games, or even a lotto. It takes no understanding of a speed number to put a few cents on a horse and hope for a winner at infinitely better odds than the real lotto.
The other avenue is to look at other sports for inspiration. The Super Bowl is now the biggest gambling event in the country but wasn’t always so. It wasn’t until casinos embraced prop bets that Super Bowl betting exploded. Taking handicapping out of it—“will an even or odd numbered horse win?”; “will a grey horse win today?”—eases the steep learning curve and expands the horse race gambling tent.
A dedicated television partner committed to growing the sport. Widespread acceptance of gambling. The most popular horse in two generations. Now is the moment when horse racing has the opportunity to return to a prominent place among American sports. But it’s on the industry to embrace the future rather than lament the past.
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You would think everyone that loves horse racing would be enthusiastic about horse racing’s increased popularity this summer. But you would be wrong.
On July 5, Mary Porcella sits at her table in the concourse at the top of the Arapahoe Park grandstand. In this case, “her table” is literal—a nameplate engraved “PORCELLA” adorns the simulcast television in front of her. Porcella has short, curly salt and pepper hair and a faded silk-screen shirt with a horse on it. Two tote bags and a scarf hang from the chairs surrounding her. Three different drinks and today’s racing program, tattooed with her handicapping notes in bright blue ink, are spread across the table. “The last of the big bettors” as she describes herself with a smirk—she has already hit a $2 Place bet for a $4.20 win today.
Porcella first attended a horse race on “July 4, 1976 … or 1977 … no, 1976” with her husband at a track down in Littleton, long ago turned into a Home Depot and housing sub-division. They were both hooked and over the years became regulars at tracks all across the Midwest. Her husband passed away five years ago, but she still comes to Arapahoe Park nearly every day, and has even started racing her own horses. One of her horses, a filly, finished third yesterday—“but she tried hard,” Procella says.
She has also noted the increased attendance at Arapahoe Park this season. However, unlike everyone else, thinking of the mass of people at the betting windows the day before, she isn’t quite as enthusiastic.
“Eighty-year olds don’t like standing in lines,” she says.
David McIntire (@PFBSuperDave) lives in Denver. His book on a season spent betting on football in Las Vegas, Swimming with the Sharps, is available now.