by Bob Carson

Editor’s Note: The USTA website is pleased to present freelance writer Bob Carson and his popular “Outside the Box” features. This monthly series is a menu of outlandish proposals presented with a wink — but the purpose behind them is serious. The views contained in this column are that of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of the United States Trotting Association.

Bob Carson

Once upon a time I was a middleman. I owned a very nice business in the world of professional baseball. My business niche of collating schedules, stories and information on the fascinating world of the minor leagues was popular, profitable and fun for two decades. Then it began losing steam for one simple reason: all that we offered to our customers became available on the internet for free. Free is a difficult price point to combat.

On the device you are using, you can watch harness races for free. This is awesome and somewhat amazing. Anybody can view these races if they open an account. This might be a problem.

Most of us are preoccupied with putting one foot in front of the next, besieged with daily minutiae and major problems. We often fail to step back and look at the big changes around us, changes driven by new technologies.

As I consider my annual trek to the Lexington horse sale this fall, holding me back are the hassles and expenses of the long trip; an hour to the airport, security lines, baggage, transportation on each end, and a middle seat between two snoring sumo wrestlers.

My daughter tossed out a suggestion to my travel dilemma — flytenow, an app that connects local small plane owners with a person needing a ride who would be willing to share the fuel expenses. We have several small airports near our home; I could download the app and hitch a ride to Kentucky. And if I do, I can call Uber to pick me up at the small airport and take me to my lodgings at an airbnb.

New businesses, like the trio I am considering for my horse shopping excursion, exist in the cloud. My next trip to Lexington, I may not deal with a commercial airline, a taxi company, or a hotel chain. At each juncture I can cut out the middlemen and deal person to person. Youngish people refer to this as a “sharing economy,” existing businesses that are struggling to stay afloat refer to these interlopers as a “stealing economy.”

Certainly, we can make the leap that this concept of marginalizing middlemen will spill over to gambling operations in the future. It may be happening already. To this point, harness racing does not appear to have a problem with piracy as much as with obscurity. However, our sport must be wary of allowing free access to our product.

Always follow the money.

When gamblers find richer gambling experiences with fewer middlemen on their devices, they will choose a better deal. The perils that face the retail stores on Main Street, The Yellow Cab Company and Hilton Hotels will visit casinos, racinos and racetracks.

Racing makes money by putting on a show and then taking wagers, paying winners, and skimming off a slice of the transaction, much like bookies. Bookies are the ultimate middlemen. Digital pirates are stealth experts at using their sabers to cut out middlemen. They victimize perfectly nice people and respectable companies that are minding their own businesses and doing what they have always done.

Cyberspace is a crazy, slippery world where enforcement is problematic. Some cyber pirates are legal, some are flat out thieves; the difference is a fine point if they attack your business. Sticking our heads in the sand brings to mind the words of Michael Montague — Ignorance is the softest pillow on which man can rest his head.

Racing must be vigilant and guard our ships; the feeds of horse races and the flow of horse commerce. This cloud based scenario where cyber thieves rip open our pockets and pilfer our product is frightening.

But we have an ace up our sleeve, an insurance policy as we battle the inevitable pirates. We are a real time sport; this is a huge asset. Losing their product to pirates is a phenomenon that keeps many operators awake. For $50 of hardware and software, anyone with the desire can make a network and join the hordes that illegally stream content for redistribution and a tiny profit.

While customers are likely to pay a pirate a small stipend to binge watch House of Thrones outside of normal channels, they demand that their sports be live and not time shifted. While pirates may set up a VPN (virtual private network) to download content to be streamed later, it is very unlikely they will pirate the Kentucky Derby, a real time event which loses its drama the moment the horses cross the finish line. This protection that racing and sporting events have is colossal — ask the music and film businesses.

Should harness racing allow their product to be available for free? The protection in having our content somewhat safe due to real time is helpful, but is free the best model, the safest model? Do horse races streaming unfettered open the barn door for pirates to directly steal our money? Innovators in a cloud- based world are, and will continue to be, extremely deft at offering a better deal on a simple to use platform.

Cloud-based thieves could just pirate our product (show the races), skim off small profits from wagered money in a closed loop and silently sail away. Who knows how many are pulling off nefarious, stealth, cloud-based robbery of horse races at this very moment. Who knows how much horse racing money is dark? Who doubts this problem will get worse in the shadowy world of cyberspace?

We have a very valuable gambling product in horse races, a real-time wager based on logic. These are our assets as we head into the clouds. Proprietary protection and solid encryption from pirates will be important in the future.

Just ask other middlemen who have been shanghaied.