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

Let us suppose that every Friday evening at nine o’clock you stage a Shakespeare performance in the basement of St. Leo’s Church in your hometown of Marrowbone, Tenn. You set up a camera and live stream your Friday presentations to audiences in Topeka, Tuscany, and Tulsa. This may sound ridiculous, but no one would complain about your strange plan to distribute your little production.

However, if you decide to charge a small fee to folks receiving the feed of your performance, a new player called commerce enters the stage. Monetary transactions change the scene. Moreover, if you or the folks in Topeka decide to take wagers on whether Titus Andronicus makes it to scene three, or if Romeo and Juliet get out alive, we have a much, much different story.

The governing body of Marrowbone, Tenn., might ask for a few dollars. The state of Tennessee might ask for a few dollars. Uncle Sam might want a cut. The thespian union might ask for a few farthings.

Money, especially gambling money, changes everything; and the gambling world, including our little corner of harness racing, is on the cusp of a transformation.

When money is involved, all along the revenue stream parties will crawl out of the woodwork and fight like badgers in a bag to grab a piece of the revenue. For a century, others have chipped away at every dollar gambled on harness racing.

In the old world, while the federal government has the standing to oversee gambling, for the most part they have allowed states to control the ability of racing (or any gambling entity) to exist. State entities could pull the plug on legislation and could demand payment. The old world is disappearing.

Look into the future and answer this question: In a loosely regulated internet world, how will any state government or federal government prevent you from pulling a device out of your pocket and wagering on a cricket match in Pakistan as you fly from Detroit to Honolulu?

Efforts to keep the lid on the status quo of gambling will be like trying to lasso the ocean. People will gamble. The digital universe will find a way to make this occur. Good or bad, who knows? How fast the existing walls fall, who knows? They may have fallen already and our product is being pilfered in the underground commerce world.

The gambling world is changing. We all desperately desire that harness racing be a part of this world.

“He which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made.” – William Shakespeare (Henry V)

There are battles ahead in the new world of cyberspace, battles that will test the walls that have stood for so long. Uber, medical insurance, Lyft, and Airbnb are the early warriors battling to escape state boundaries and regulations. These legal wars are brutal legal battles of life and death to businesses.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” – William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

The story of who will get rich and who will go broke in a cloud-based gambling universe is in the first act. However, there are plenty of very big players entering the stage. When the dust settles, true, unfettered online gambling could lead to true self-sufficiency for our beloved sport — or doom.

We need warriors and war rooms to fight skirmishes that may free us from state regulations, certainly from over-regulation. These battles were not imaginable until the world shifted to the cloud, where you can view virtually any event in the palm of your hand.

The reformation will take courage, forward-thinking, and money. Attempting an innovative business model is not for the faint of heart. Entrepreneurs need guiding philosophies before they harvest investors, but the basic philosophical pillars of a revolutionary harness racing business might look something like this.

• Customers will gravitate to improved gambling products at a low price point
• A direct route from the producer to the consumer is more efficient
• The internet will continue to expand

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

We do not need to dominate online gambling; the pie will be so large that we could get healthy with a tiny slice. However, to entice gamblers to swallow our slice we must be a competitive wager. To be a completive wager we must chop off excess baggage. For example, why do we pay a percentage to others to take our wagers and broadcast our show? Why don’t racetracks handle this and keep the money for themselves and their participants?

“Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.” – Quintilian

This could be the time for someone who loves this sport to break away and find a new niche, a new way of doing business. The innovator does not even need to love harness racing; they just need to see opportunity using our real-time gambling sport. The window can close quickly in the modern business world. If we wait to see how this global online gambling thing shakes out, it may be too late for our sport.

The concept of harnessing the internet in radical ways seems like science fiction to our tired little sport. A self-sustaining sport, with self-sustaining racetracks, using new technology to find new markets with a new revenue structure, seems miles away from a sport that struggles to implement small changes. Breaking the bondage of archaic structures is not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, what an experiment it would be.

Oh, and those Shakespeare plays that you stage in your backyard, where folks in Topeka pay you to watch and wager on your neighbor Elmer emote Othello. In the cloud, this can happen.

Bet on it.

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.” – William Shakespeare (Hamlet)