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

We are all pirates. Always have been, always will be.

A century ago it was a young urchin jumping onto the back of a trolley car or a tycoon gloating over monopolizing the railroad industry. Today, the internet has made piracy de rigor; we hulu, YouTube, TiVo, surf and e-read with little thought to the creator. Few will pay if they can ride for free — this is both the blessing and the curse of the digital era.

Think about the last 20 albums you downloaded onto your I-pod, the last dozen books you read, the last five movies you watched. If your tally looks like mine, I paid the people that created the product, the people who produced the product, or the people who presented the product, somewhere between a pittance and zero. At some level we feel bad about this, but not bad enough to reach into our wallets and pay the various people that are getting ripped off.

As if horse racing does not have enough problems, piracy of our product will be a plague. Consider this. Horse races can be viewed on several internet feeds. Since a small percent of the wagered money flows through the racetrack betting window these days, each horse race is a product that is vulnerable to underground or offshore or illegal operators that will take bets that undercut the legal wagering outlets.

Let’s not tiptoe around this predicament — right now most of us wager on a legal wagering platform where the racetracks and horsemen receive a sliver of the money from putting on the show. But the internet is relentless. The viewers that surf and the sharpies that sell will eventually squeeze the sliver that the racing community receives down to sawdust.

Autumn Ryan graphic

Take our neighbors in the entertainment business, they have been devastated. It is estimated that 96 percent of music is pirated; movies are on a similar trajectory, a serious problem for the trail of people who work to make the films and the music.

Even a mathematically challenged dolt like me can figure out how much of a winning ticket flows back into my account. When an entity, even a somewhat shady entity, offers me a much sweeter deal, it will be very hard to reject. Patrolling the internet has proved as difficult as trying to lasso earthworms. Hearts will bleed for the racetracks that do not see a penny and regulators will promise clampdowns — but money talks while justice walks.

Piracy used to be a nuisance. Today it is a threat. Want to own a newspaper or magazine today? People will not pay to read online, they loathe advertising cluttering up the computer screen; and if you do publish a Pulitzer worthy article it can be rewritten, forwarded and aggregated. The internet has changed market dynamics. The transmission of digital data enables others to evade responsibility and has created a broken market. Horse racing has no immunity.

How can we control our product? How can we best monetize our sport? These are very difficult questions, questions that get more difficult every day because technology becomes ever more sophisticated and the wagering field becomes ever more crowded.

To defeat the pirates you need to keep your ship safe. We need to patrol our ports. Ultimately, the only way for horse racing to remain safe from pirates is to make the feed of races a private affair open only to those who pay for the product. This goes counter to the original cyber-concept of a free, unfettered marketplace — but a free internet has not been a financial friend to entertainment.

To make horse racing a product worth paying for we need to offer the customer an awesome product. In the horse racing game that means a significantly better deal (takeout) and a jaw dropping presentation. Once we have those two in place, racetracks will be able to demand that the user pay for access.

And to brighten the digital picture — in the challenging game of cyber-commerce — horse racing has a couple of significant assets. We have wagering. In the long run, it would seem to be an excellent idea for the entity that creates the product to control the purse. Also, and this is huge, a horse race is a time sensitive product. The instant the horses cross the finish line, the value of the product is gone and piracy has no value. Music, books and films do not have the luxuries of gambling and time.

The embattled landscape of horse racing has plenty of problems, but we have potential saviors in the internet. The internet will allow us access to world-wide markets. The internet can be our friend. However, if we make that access free, the value of our product will be eroded by pirates.

“Fairly warned be ye,” says I.