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

Gamblers are concerned about gambling. Owners are concerned about purses. Breeding farms are concerned about markets. Racetracks are concerned about casinos (coming and/or going). Trainers are concerned about racing their horses and everybody has concerns about the future. No matter what your niche in the trotting and pacing sport, we all are somewhat egocentric. The big picture blurs.

Let’s take two worlds that seem close but in reality are worlds apart — serious gambling and frivolous entertainment. If you run a harness track, with finite time and money, where do you put your energy? If you are a realist you follow the money. In horse racing, the money flows from gambling. Money is the engine that drives the harness racing bus; without gambling, we are dressage or billiards. The smart money should be on hustling to find gamblers anywhere and everywhere who are willing and able to choose harness racing.

Chasing gamblers leaves a shortage of time or attention for the grandstands. Promoting attendance at entertainment and sporting events is extremely demanding work. Unless some teenager calls for a flash mob in the grandstands of a harness track, they will remain dismally empty. The grandstands will not get much love until they are economically viable. And they can be.

Autumn Ryan graphic

Working in the baseball field has exposed me to some intriguing concepts in the attendance game, a game where there are plenty of competitors for customers. The last couple of years have found business owners entering the game using more targeted models than ever before. They realize that when searching for an evening out of the house, the public chooses carefully where they spend their money. The factors that lead these customers to your door are multiple and complex. Any and all marketing plans for existing facilities evolve around critical items; geography (your world will be within a 40 minute drive of your facility) and demographics.

After businesses study and target a potential audience, the real work begins. In baseball, a good team helps attendance, but whether the team is good or bad, with very few exceptions, big events (fireworks, giveaways, and celebrities) will bring in the largest crowds. Statistics show that people enjoy a well promoted “big event.” Franchises know that they can’t stage too many “big events” or they wear out their welcome. Attendance in many sports is often a cycle of drip, drip, drip, then a big splash. Harness racing can skip the drips.

Using some baseball principles and attempting to apply them to the somewhat schizophrenic nature of harness racing, allow me to make an unorthodox pitch. We should close our grandstands. We should only open on rare occasions. We should make a live harness racing program a scarce commodity.

Harness racing should become primarily a studio sport (the exceptions could be a small, live, studio audience for presentation purposes and a special owner’s box). We put our resources into daily video presentations. We only open the doors for our customers on a couple of big nights, special nights, nights we have carefully promoted and orchestrated to give our fans, and potential new fans, a real treat. These rare nights will offer a great product and presentation. We will not hesitate to cancel the show due to inclement weather.

Thirty years ago this proposal would have been madness. This is not 30 years ago. The world has changed. Horse racing has evolved into a very unique situation. We no longer require fans in the grandstands because we are propelled by revenue (gambling) that does not take place on the premises. This strange state of affairs in horse racing can be used to our advantage.

Other sports, like Minor League Baseball, have to open the doors for a cold, rainy Tuesday for 26 hardcore fans. Many sports suffer through a treadmill of these dreadful contests while they patiently wait for the big Saturday extravaganza. They wait all month for the second Saturday where the cast of American Idol will perform a song between each inning, and after each song there will be a drawing for an I-pad. The evening will conclude with a fireworks show. The production will bring 17,000 fans and they will have a good time.

Many low level baseball teams make their money on a mere handful of the 70 home games — the rest are a drain on resources. Think how much easier and how much more cost effective it would be if a sport could shed all but the “big events.” And think how easy it would be for horse racing to actually set up this model.

Advantages for this proposal lurk everywhere; there is a psychological boost for customers when every time they show up the joint is rocking. A big crowd is a self-fulfilling motivation for the attendees; a massive crowd validates the choice that the customer has made. This helps future promotions.

Let’s play with some additional numbers. How many times have you attended a live harness race surrounded by a “crowd” of less than 100 people. A single “real crowd” of 8,000 would bring more fans than an entire season of small gatherings of the flock. This “Big Bang Theory” allows for a great profit margin because you only need to staff (with temporary workers) when the racetrack is open. Another consideration is that, in any sport, fans rarely will visit in person more than a couple of times each year.

A handful of live programs forces the customer to plan ahead. This is important because counting down until the “big event” is a motivator. When customers know that you are open every day there is not a sense of urgency to attend. “I have to be there or I will miss it,” is another big motivator. Enthusiastic crowds are contagious.

What does a racetrack have to lose in setting up an experiment that offers live racing a select few times each year? Why not set up a prototype? The track can still race 200 programs a year if it is fiscally feasible. You do not have to mess with the racing product — but when you open the doors, make each race program a rare feast instead of a truck stop buffet. From now on, let’s not open the doors for six guys in dirty sweatshirts and untied shoes whose voices echo through an empty grandstand.

In the future, if you show up for the rare live program at the harness track it will be a slam, bam, big bang.