by Jane Murray, Director of Services, Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America

Elkton, MD — Mike Trager will head an all-star panel of experts discussing the need to drastically improve racing’s television exposure in the closing session of the 19th annual Simulcast Conference on Wednesday morning (Oct. 5) in Scottsdale, Ariz.

He will be joined by Amy Zimmerman, executive producer and senior vice president of production and programming at HRTV; Tony Allevato, senior vice president and executive producer at TVG; and Ed Seigenfeld, former Triple Crown Productions executive vice president.

Trager was a partner in Sports Marketing & Television International, the Greenwich, Conn., firm that convinced Arthur Watson, the late president of NBC Sports and a horse racing fan himself, to give the new $10 million Breeders’ Cup four hours of coverage. SMTI was the television and sponsorship agency of the Breeders’ Cup through 2001. Currently the chairman of The Trager Group, which specializes in television consulting, rights and production, Trager has been involved with Major League Baseball, the NFL, the Moscow Olympics, the NCAA Final Four, tennis, football and auto racing. He has also been responsible for the production of various films and award-winning television shows related to sports during his more than 40 years in the advertising, sports and television industries.

Zimmerman, who has worked in racing since joining the Santa Anita staff in 1986 and has been in charge of HRTV production since its inception in 2002, has worked with all four major networks as a horse racing producer. She has been a producer in 13 Eclipse Award-winning television shows, including HRTV’s winner last year in the Feature Programming category.

Allevato has managed the television production of TVG since the ground-breaking launch of the network in 1999.

Seigenfeld joined the New York Racing Association in 1981 as vice president of marketing before becoming the executive vice president of Triple Crown Productions in 1990 and working on the negotiation of television contracts with ABC and later NBC.

The McKinsey Study, commissioned by the The Jockey Club to drive sustainable growth in the Thoroughbred industry, cited television exposure as the key component of any plan. The panel for this year’s International Simulcast Conference was assembled to provide a broad spectrum of expertise in television production and programming and to assess the racing industry’s strengths and weaknesses regarding development opportunities, as well as offering their own suggestions.

Rooms are still available at the host hotel, the Scottsdale Plaza Resort. For more information, please call the hotel directly at (800) 832-2025 and indicate you are with the International Simulcast Conference.

The Thoroughbred Racing Associations and the Harness Tracks of America, in conjunction with the American Greyhound Track Operators Association, co-sponsor the annual conference.