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.

“All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.” — Jeff Bezos

Bob Carson

Jeff Bezos is a busy guy. He has plenty of irons in his bonfire; running Amazon, buying The Washington Post, working on Blue Origin (his privately funded aerospace company targeting space travel), and building clocks that run for 10,000 years in the desert. Last month, he bought Twitch, a gaming startup devoted to live streaming of people playing video games; the price tag was over a billion dollars.

Too bad Jeff is so preoccupied. Ever since I saw him on The Charlie Rose Show about ten years ago, I felt Jeff could take our wonderful little sport to greener pastures on his lunch hour. Due to expansion in the internet and gambling universe, a visionary like Jeff could make another fortune in our sport.

Although Jeff spent his early years working on a farm, it is very possible he has never seen a harness race. He is a tad secretive, so it is difficult to know. That’s okay. He does not need to be a harness horse racing lifer, he could learn enough about our sport in a few hours.

Pushing open new niches is nothing new for Bezos; he was not an author or publisher but he revolutionized the book world. He is not a typical salesman, but now rules the ecommerce world. He is not an astronaut, but he is looking to the stars.

Autumn Ryan graphic

Reading about Bezos and his companies, one theme that leaped off the pages (well, off the Kindle) was his fanaticism in creating a streamlined experience between the customer and the product. Friction and controversy are taboo in his markets. Middlemen are not embraced. Lately, to streamline the process even more, he is providing the product in the form of publishing and media content.

Because of this aversion to friction, our old sport would have held little interest for a forward-looking player like Jeff Bezos. He is not interested in survival or symbiosis with casinos; he is interested in growth, big growth. Growth that now may be possible in a digital environment. Emerging dynamics hold the possibility that the salvation of our beloved sport may come from an outsider like Jeff.

Put yourself in the shoes of a businessman or investor in the pari-mutuel structure in which harness racing has operated for the past half century.

Opening and operating a racetrack was a minefield of obstacles. The gauntlet of entities that stood in your way; national, state and local restrictions, politicos pandering to lobbyists, opposing constituents, taxes to be levied, red tape, regulatory bodies, secondary transmission companies, horse organizations, enforcement, product pirates, testing, etc. etc. — so many hands between the people who put on the show and the people who want to wager on the race.

The power and the subtle nature of cyberspace will continue to tear down these walls. Traditional gatekeepers will be less and less relevant in the new world. Bezos, or someone of his ilk, may see possibilities in the fledgling world of internet gambling; they may see a new product in our old sport. They may see us as live content in a universe that vociferously demands feeding.

When someone in the Bezos mold looks at harness racing today and tomorrow, they may see a promising internet gambling product; an exciting sport with a history, beautiful horses, tons of data available in an ever-digital information world and, more importantly, a method of making money. They think they can make a great product with our odd little sport if they can bypass previous friction and factions.

Imagine a scenario like this — Jeff’s people spitball details and then decide to set up shop in North Carolina, maybe at Pinehurst for historical panache, and because North Carolina does not have pari-mutuel gambling. A state without gambling impediments, with few gatekeepers in place offers opportunities to move fast and be frictionless.

North Carolina quickly opens the doors. And why wouldn’t they? Jeff is not asking for new legislation. If North Carolina wants to cash in on gambling, fine. If not, fine. His goal is a less restrictive environment. There is a long line of businesses starting or relocating operations to friendly fields. The upsides for North Carolina are many; they get farms, tourists and jobs. They get money from real estate and employment taxes.

What law is Bezos breaking if he decides to open a nice facility and pay big money out of his own pocket to horsemen who are invited to have harness horses circle his racetrack? Not a dime is gambled on the premises, not a dime has to be wagered in the state, and scant regulation is needed if a private citizen tosses his own money on this odd project.

With internet gambling, a businessman like Bezos could create a great product and then look for revenue, a model that worked very well in the past few decades. His world is not in states, not in board rooms, not in lobbies, not on traditional paths. Guys like Bezos operate in the cloud.

Jeff would be betting (and relatively speaking it is not a huge gamble of dollars) that he can find ways to monetize this sport. Who knows how this would play out?

People like Bezos see the big picture; harness racing is a terrific sport where the horses put on an intriguing show on a regular basis; he can produce a great gambling product at the exact moment that wagering from anywhere explodes. He can demand real time attention. Harness racing could explode exponentially.

Although the horses circling his oval will probably follow traditional paths at first, if he decides drivers do not carry whips, they don’t. If he decided to test blood levels before, after and during the contest, he does. If he decides to abandon the pari-mutuel model, he will. If he wants to market in Asia, he does. If he sends his encrypted signal to a hub in Spain, that’s his choice. If he can duplicate the model of Amazon, a wager could be seamless and the gambling customer may get a great deal while our sport gets rejuvenation.

Legislation regarding pari-mutuel wagering or archaic anti-gambling statutes will face new paradigms. The taxation model becomes somewhat passé when money bounces around the cloud. State lines become irrelevant to the sports gambler. The gate keepers are losing ground, not just in gambling but in music, movies, politics and everything that flows in a digital world.

Jeff, this might be a good time to give us a look. Harness racing could be much more fun than a clock in the desert.