Archive for the ‘National Thoroughbred Racing Association’ Category

By Ray Paulick
Jess Jackson could have waited until Friday night at 9 o’clock or so to send out a press release anouncing his regrets for not pointing Rachel Alexandra to the April 3 Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park. Oaklawn owner Charles Cella had proposed increasing the Apple Blossom’s purse to $5 million if Jackson’s 2009 Horse of the Year and the unbeaten two-time champion mare Zenyatta were both in the starting lineup for the race.

That’s what the president of Toyota did—schedule a press conference for 9 p.m. on a Friday night–to respond to mounting public outrage over safety problems with cars produced by the world’s leading automotive manufacturer. Spin doctors always advise their clients to put bad news out late on a Friday to get the lowest possible publicity and media coverage.

But not Jess Jackson. He had the courage to send out a press release at the end of the business day on a Wednesday, when most racetracks East of the Mississippi were closed due to blizzard conditions. His press release was very clever, too, utilizing an old-fashioned smokescreen—a grand proposal for a three-race series between the two distaffers—to obscure the fact Rachel Alexandra would skip the Apple Blossom. To make matters worse, he made trainer Steve Asmussen the fall guy who had to deliver the bad news: ““Out of respect for the level of competition and the importance of this race, I have told Mr. Jackson it was not in the best interest of the horse to race on April 3,” Asmussen was quoted as saying in the press release. “Getting to this level of fitness after a six-month layoff takes time.  If all goes according to schedule, and we do not have any further weather delays, the earliest we could have a prep race would be the middle of March. It is then not fair to Rachel to ask her to race again three weeks later.”

I could be wrong, but I think that’s the most Jackson has allowed Asmussen to say since the California winemaker bought Rachel Alexandra after her victory in the Kentucky Oaks last spring.

But the confusing part of the release was Jackson’s statement that the proposed racing series between Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta has been “in the works for several weeks.” If that’s the case, why did Jackson indicate even the slightest bit of interest when Cella proposed the Apple Blossom purse increase?

Also, why is Jackson suddenly relying on the National Thoroughbred Racing Association to put something together? The NTRA owns no racetracks, has no authority over tracks, stakes schedules or race conditions, and doesn’t even have any juice left with television networks.

If anything, Jackson should be asking the Breeders’ Cup—not the NTRA–for assistance in putting the series together and promoting it, since racing fans hope the two fillies will remain sound throughout 2010 and eventually go head-to-head in either the Breeders’ Cup Classic or Ladies’ Classic this fall at Churchill Downs. A series of races betweem the two leading up to the Breeders’ Cup would be in that organization’s best interests, and the Breeders’ Cup does have stronger ties to ESPN for broadcast opportunities.
 
Finally, if the proposal by Jackson was genuine, why on earth were Jerry and Ann Moss not even mentioned in the press release. As Zenyatta’s owners, I think they might want to have some say in this proposed series.

Sorry, Jess, but I’m calling your bluff.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
Ten years ago many of the grand poobahs of American racing gathered in Tucson, Ariz., for the University of Arizona Racetrack Industry Program’s 25th annual Symposium on Racing. There was great anticipation of the event, in large part to get an update on the fledgling National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s efforts to organize a “league office” and provide national leadership for an industry that had none in areas like marketing and television. The NTRA had commenced operations a year earlier, in 1998.

There’s something about this game that brings out the knockers (no, Tiger, not that kind), and the NTRA was under intense criticism at the outset in many different quarters from people who thought a) their chief executives didn’t know enough about horse racing; b) they were paid too much money; c) the “Go Baby Go” catchphrase developed by New York advertising agency Merkley Newman Harty was mindless; d) their first-year marketing campaign featuring Lori Petty (aka “Tank Girl”) was horrible; and e) horse racing’s television ratings and the economics of the industry weren’t getting any better and the NTRA had already been in a business a whole year!

Oh, for the good old days!

Pari-mutuel handle in North America during the NTRA’s first year in 1998 hit an all-time record, of $13.8 billion, and it increased for the next five years, peaking at $15.9 billion in 2003. At the end of 2009, total handle in North America will be less than what was generated in 1998.

In 1999, when chief executive Tim Smith delivered a state of the NTRA address at the Symposium on Racing he spoke about increased television exposure, including a new series, NTRA Champions on Fox, and additional programming on the ESPN family of companies that would bring the total number of hours of televised racing on network and cable (excluding TVG) to 137, an increase in 40% over two years.

Nearly $30 million was spent on national and local advertising using NTRA-branded material in 1999. Inserts promoting major racing events were placed in Sports Illustrated and USA Today. There were NTRA “fan guides,” racetrack customer service training coordinated by NTRA, new events like the NTRA All-Star Jockeys Challenge, in-depth market research and increased lobbying in Washington, D.C.

Thoroughbred racing, for a brief period, was playing offense, an unfamiliar strategy for this industry. Sure, a few years earlier, the Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America (a trade association of tracks, not to be confused with the NTRA) hired an outsider, sports marketing executive Brian McGrath, to come in and play the role of “commissioner,” but his tenure was over almost as soon as it began.

Why is it this industry so often says it needs outside expertise, then bludgeons whoever is brought in under that guise because “he doesn’t understand racing”?

Today, while its top executives are back at the Arizona Symposium on Racing, all the NTRA can do is play defense, a glorified game of whack-a-mole. There’s no talk about growing the sport and its business anymore but of how to stop the bleeding. Racehorse injuries and fatalities here. Tote credibility problems there. Threats from Washington, D.C.  There is no such thing as NTRA marketing or television anymore. The organization’s skeleton staff in Kentucky and New York is stretched to the bone, and its budget has been continuously reduced, now standing at about $10 million, a fraction of what it was 10 years ago.

What happened?

The organization’s fate was sealed when Frank Stronach, not long after he started buying racetracks, declared he didn’t need the NTRA for his Magna Entertainment to succeed (how’s that working out?). Stronach petulantly threatened to drop out of the NTRA and joined with other short-sighted track-owning malcontents that forced NTRA executives to spend most of their energy keeping the coalition from crumbling. That’s not a formula for success.

Any chance of building the NTRA into some semblance of a “league office” finally ended when the Breeders’ Cup, which signed a joint operating agreement with the NTRA in 2001, ended its relationship five years later.

I’m not even sure why we have an NTRA any more. Its area of interest almost completely overlaps with the aforementioned TRA, with the lone exception of lobbying federal politicians to maintain tax breaks for horse owners (something, incidentally, the racetrack organization TRA should care about, since it needs horse owners to race at their tracks).

At that 1999 Arizona racing symposium, Smith introduced the NTRA’s second-year ad campaign, one that featured the actor Rip Torn talking to chunks of turf and statues of jockeys like a crazy person. Torn hasn’t had the best of times since then (witness his two arrests for suspicion of drunk driving), and neither has the original Go Baby Go girl, Lori Petty (she had some driving problems, too).

But both Torn and Petty have survived the ups and downs of life, something I can relate to as well. I’m not sure we’ll be saying the same thing of the NTRA, which could be Gone Baby Gone before we know it.

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What’s that old expression: When the cat’s away the mice will play? Well, while Ray Paulick is en route to Cape Town, South Africa, for an international Thoroughbred breeders conference, Patrick Patten was asked to put his keyboard and mouse to good use and look back at the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s 2008 marketing summit, during which a group of bloggers and racing fans presented a marketing proposal they were solicited to create and submit to the organization.

Patten has been writing Handride for five years and is an original member of the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance. He does have a real job in the natural gas industry, and, contrary to the stereotype given many bloggers, does not live in his mother’s basement. He in fact lives in Monmouth County, N.J.,  20 minutes north of beautiful Monmouth Park where he has spent many summer weekends over the last 25 years.—Ray Paulick

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By Patrick Patten
One year ago I was part of a group given the task to create and propose a new marketing plan for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. It was about six weeks of hard negotiating, yelling, and writing with a group of other bloggers and passionate fans.  In the end I think we produced a professional document many consultants would be proud of, and the price for the financially-challenged NTRA was right: free. I think this guy charged $500,000 for pretty much the same thing. The document we created is still online (pdf warning) and more importantly still waiting for someone to implement it.

Getting up on stage at the NTRA’s marketing summit in Las Vegas was a dream come true. I had started my blog in hopes that someone, anyone, would say, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea” and that’s exactly what happened. It was the culmination of four years of writing and thinking. And, while it would be easy to label any blogger as a tinfoil-hat-wearing-mama’s-basement-living-crazy-person who thought after one presentation the world of racing would bow down at his or her feet… I knew change wouldn’t come fast, my expectations were decidedly low. However, a year later I thought there would be somewhere that the group could claim “That’s our idea.” This has not been the case.

I won’t rehash the ideas, I can’t really blame anyone directly, but I sure can be disappointed with everything involved. First, I’ll give credit where credit is due. Race-day medication laws in this country are a mess and give the sport a black eye; the work here (NTRA Safety & Integrity Alliance and the new Breeders’ Cup race day rules) should be commended. However, you have to think, what horse has to die in order to get the overall house of ours in order? And, you have to wonder why banning drugs and getting tracks to adhere to common sense practices are MARKETING successes in the first place. How screwed are we?

The largest complaint I have is with the lack of cooperation at the highest level; this was one of the main points of the report. The NTRA and the Breeders’ Cup share the common goal of expanding the brand of our sport, and yet they compete with each other. Our marketing report was about sharing information, and putting in place ideas where common ground could lead to growth. Allow me to cite the perfect example of how this is NOT happening. It should also be noted that I was part of a BC advisory committee recently convened to talk about and have ideas bounced off of about the BC, and I definitely advised on this glaring problem.

On July 25 the Eddie Read Handicap was held at Del Mar. The race was shown on ESPN2. It is a Grade 1 race and has major implications when it comes to the Breeders Cup Mile. Its field included Artiste Royale and Thorn Song and was won with an upset by Global Hunter; all well known horses to regular players; a great race to put on TV to say the least. However, to the casual fan it’s a bit confusing. The week before, two races were held, the Greenwood Cup Handicap and the Delaware Handicap, and neither was shown on TV.  However, their winners were guaranteed a spot in the Breeders Cup. So, are the races not shown on TV more important? Why is this race on TV if it doesn’t lead to anything important? This was a Grade 1 race, but the previous week’s Grade 2 was more important to get into the Breeders’ Cup. I think I’ll go back to watching Dancing With The Stars.

The rallying cry of our marketing plan was “Take Back Saturday” and to do this the BC and the NTRA have to work together. The solution we proposed was to have all graded stakes (and some non graded races for the newer BC categories) count toward standings with the top horses awarded gate choice. We saw it as a home-field advantage, a small change that would have a large impact. Everything in the report after that was based on this “Take Back Saturday” mantra. A little cooperation would be a small hurdle to jump over, and we’d be on our way to relevancy in the sports world.

We were wrong. There is no cooperation in this sport when it comes to marketing. When a horse dies and millions of people are yelling everyone is on their best behavior: Pumping water out of a sinking ship. When do we fix the ship?

The people in charge are still getting rich, and everyone else is still willing to give them even more money and power, so no changes will occur. What really hammered this home recently was Headless Horsemen, the new book by Jim Squires. If a man that well known can point a finger at everyone and have nothing happen, not even a discussion on whether he’s right or wrong, what could a bunch of bloggers do?

It’s disappointing because of the hard work put into that report. The goal of that project was marketing, and I made sure we stuck to that cause. We didn’t tackle the high level of take-out, or drugs, or security–it was only marketing. And, I think we did a fantastic job at keeping the report realistic. We did this because we knew we were up against the perception of what a blogger is, and we didn’t want to come off as asking for the moon or for being too broad or for being tinfoil hat wearing crazy people. We didn’t.  We hit that report out of the park  Was it too good? I wonder now, after being on an advisory board that supposedly had a hand in the Breeders’ Cup saddle cloth color change, what is expected of these panels and groups. I mean seriously, they need a bunch of outsiders to tell them that saddle cloths were a big issue? Meanwhile all that was talked about last year was the renamed Ladies’ Classic (not the saddle cloths) which I’m sure will take another group to fix next year so they can put out a press release saying, “Look we listen to our fans! Have fun at the Filly & Mare Classic” I digress.

I was told directly to hold Alex Waldrop’s feet to the fire. Here it is:

Alex, the NTRA has done a good job of putting out the fires that seem to come up so frequently for this industry. But, how long can this industry be reactive instead of proactive?  How long can tracks sit idly by protecting their own “turf” at the cost of cooperation and getting real reform? How long can the industry get by on contracts written decades ago because no one has any faith in real negotiation and cooperation? How long will you allow yourself to be pushed and pulled in a myriad of directions when I believe you want to move forward?

The marketing report, for me, was hope that someone was looking forward. Are you?

 

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Immediately after the regulations on toe grabs went into effect in April, stewards at Delaware Park noticed an increase in the number of horses stumbling coming out of the starting gate and began to track the statistics at Wayne’s request. “They noticed two, three or four horses a day were stumbling, and riders were coming off horses." Wayne also said track maintenance crews and the starting gate crew tried different things to alleviate the increase in stumbles at the start, to no avail.

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By Ray Paulick
While Thursday’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Magna Entertainment (MEC) leaves a multitude of unanswered questions about the future of the racetracks the Frank Stronach-controlled company owns, there was a positive reaction from the investment community concerning MI Developments — another Stronach company spun off from the auto parts mothership Magna International – which is the majority shareholder in MEC.

Shortly after news of the bankruptcy filing was released in the afternoon, the share price of MI Developments (MIM) shot upward, jumping over $1 from 3.50 to 4.55 on heavy trading. Thursday’s closing price remained relatively steady after the market opened Friday morning.

Nevertheless, MIM is far off its 52-week high of 30.26. Like many stocks, it began a steep descent in mid-September when the global financial crisis first hit, but MIM has underperformed against the markets. Institutional shareholders Greenlight Capital and Farallon Capital Management have protested moves by the company to keep Magna Entertainment out of bankruptcy by extending loan deadlines and infusing cash into the company’s operational budget. Its principals have not publicly weighed in on the bankruptcy filing.

It’s too early to tell how MIM’s move to bid on some of the Magna racetrack properties (Golden Gate Fields, Gulfstream Park and the surrounding shopping mall, Palm Meadows training Center, Lone Star Park, and AmTote) will play out. The "stalking horse bid" of $195 million includes $44 million in cash, $15 million in an assumed capital lease, and $136 million in existing debt) may be topped by other interested parties. The other properties, including Santa Anita Park, Pimlico and Laurel, Thistledown, Remington Park have purportedly been on the market for some time now, but there have been complaints from shareholders and some interested outside parties that Stronach and his key executives have not been earnest in their efforts to sell.

Who might be interested in some of the properties that Stronach bought in Magna’s name in a buying frenzy from 1998-2002? Halsey Minor, the internet entrepreneur who previously attempted to buy Hialeah Park from John Brunetti and offered to pucrhase one of the loans MIM extended to Magna Entertainment, could still be a player. So might Churchill Downs, the publicly traded company that has little debt and a strong balance sheet. However, Churchill already exited the California market in 2005 when it sold Hollywood Park to a real estate development company, so it’s questionable whether or not it would have any interest in Santa Anita or Golden Gate. There have been reports in Florida that Churchill-owned Calder race course could be the site of either a baseball stadium or convention center at some point, although that seems less likely now that the track is being converted to a racetrack/slots casino. So its interest in Gulfstream Park is in doubt.

It is not inconceivable that some wealthy individuals involved in owning racehorses – among them Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed — could step forward to make a bid, either individually or in partnership, particularly on Santa Anita, which many see as a critical lifeline for horse racing in California. It’s expected that Hollywood Park will be closed for development in the next few years, as it is owned by the same company that shut down Bay Meadows with the intention of developing it (though development of the property is said to be at a standstill).

In the meantime, there have been assurances that all of the Magna tracks will continue to operate, just as United Airlines planes continued to fly after that company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002. In the case of United, there were serious cuts made in operations and employee benefits. The company emerged from bankruptcy a little more than three years after originally filing.

And Stronach has not indicated that he wants to get out of the business of owning and operating racetracks. He may do everything within his power to retain the tracks under one of the Magna umbrellas.

“The fact that MEC’s day-to-day operations will continue uninterrupted throughout the Chapter 11 process is good news to industry participants, including thousands of horsemen and employees, as well as customers," said Alex Waldrop, president and CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

Magna and its tracks remain members of the NTRA, though it isn’t known if or when their $400,000 in annual dues (which are billed quarterly) will be paid. The NTRA went through a similar situation when the New York Racing Association filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2006. NTRA senior vice president Keith Chamblin said NYRA made good on all of its dues when it emerged from bankruptcy.

Greg Avioli, president and CEO of the Breeders’ Cup, said the filing by Magna should have no bearing on plans to return to Santa Anita this fall with the two-day championships, which are being hosted by the Oak Tree Racing Association. Oak Tree, which hosted the 2008 championships, leases the facility and staff from Santa Anita for its fall meeting.

“Our agreement is with Oak Tree, so at this time based on the information available to us, we fully expect to have the event there,” Avioli said. In the meantime, the Breeders’ Cup has retained the same bankruptcy counsel used when NYRA’s looming bankruptcy threatened the 2005 Breeders’ Cup at Belmont Park. It is expected that Churchill Downs would serve as a potential backup site if developments threaten Santa Anita or Oak Tree.

Perhaps Avioli’s key phrase is "based on the information available." No one really knows how this bankruptcy will proceed at this stage — not even Stronach.. We’ll learn more when the legal proceedings begin.

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By Ray Paulick
The National Turf Writers Association has released its list of how individual members of the organization voted in 2008 Eclipse Award balloting, helping solve such mysteries as who voted against 2-year-old filly champion Stardom Bound or 3-year-old male champion Big Brown. The NTWA is the only one of the three voting organizations that discloses how its members vote, the other groups being editorial and handicapping staff members of Daily Racing Form and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. Racing secretaries at member tracks and Equibase chartcallers make up the NTRA vote.

Three individuals voted against Stardom Bound: Bill Doolittle voted for Rachel Alexandra, Paula Rodenas chose Sky Diva, and Rick Snider voted for Springside. In the 3-year-old male category, there were eight votes against Big Brown.

Click here to see the list of NTWA voters.

Steven Crist, publisher of Daily Racing Form, said in an email to the Paulick Report he doesn’t see any benefit to disclosing how individuals vote. “I think all of our people take the process seriously,” he said, “and publishing their votes would not serve any particular purpose, though our writers are free to (and often do, as do I) choose to do so in columns and notebooks.

“As for publication making people accountable,” Crist added, “that hardly seems to work, given the incomprehensible published votes of NTWA members who voted for Sky Diva or Tale of Ekati as Eclipse champs.”

Crist said when he was part of the group that bought the Form about 10 years ago, there were over 100 voters at the publication, including secretaries and advertising sales people. “We immediately cut the number of our voters in half and now only give ballots to people actively engaged in writing, editing and handicapping,” he said.

“Personally, I think the NTWA has way too many voting members, some of them admitted with very skimpy credentials,” Crist said. “When I suggested this to the organization more than a decade ago, I was denounced as an elitist if not a eugenecist.”

Keith Chamblin, senior vice president of NTRA, said he intends to poll NTRA voters to “gain an understanding of their views on making their votes public.”

“Generally, I am in favor of transparency and we do expect racing secretaries to take their vote seriously,” he said. “We will not disclose the votes from this past year due to the fact that we did not inform voters in advance that their ballots would be made public.”

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