POPE TO OWNERS: ‘IT’S YOUR GAME’
Fred Pope just won’t give up.
For more than 16 years, since he first used advertising space in Bloodhorse magazine to publish an article entitled “Whose Game Is it?” Pope has been trying to convince Thoroughbred owners that they can control their own destiny in racing.
Pope is a Lexington, Ky., advertising agent who for many years was closely associated with Gainesway Farm and its founding owner, John Gaines. Both men loved the power of ideas and both wanted to see Thoroughbred racing grow out of a parochial, tradition-steeped existence that encouraged inertia over creativity. Gaines started the Breeders’ Cup, which he had hoped would become a vehicle to market the sport to a wide audience that currently does not participate in racing. He went to his grave disappointed that his big dream was not fulfilled, even though the Breeders’ Cup has been widely hailed as racing’s best innovation of the 20th century.
Pope saw the power of the event, which at the very least gave racing the championship day it never had. The Breeders’ Cup has evolved from a one-day on-track experience with a relatively large television viewing audience to a two-day event in which racing fans throughout the country can participate through simulcast betting at their local track, OTB or via account wagering. The television audience has plunged in numbers over the 25-year history of the Breeders’ Cup, even as handle has grown substantially.
The bottom line is that the Breeders’ Cup may capture the attention of most racing fans for a weekend, but it isn’t creating very many new enthusiasts for the sport.
Pope believed racing needed more than just one big weekend in the fall to help the sport grow, so he began trying to find ways to define a “major leagues” for racing. He kept going back to the fact that the racehorse owners, the people who own the “talent,” should be in control of the game. “Control” means licensing, scheduling of major races, marketing regulations, contractual agreements over distribution and revenue. It’s the kind of control defined by the most successful major league sports, including the National Football League (controlled by the team owners) or the PGA Tour (controlled by the players).
After studying various sports and how the team owners or players exert control, Pope formed the National Thoroughbred Association, which would create a major league for horse racing by, among other things, reversing what he called the upside-down revenue model currently in place for simulcasting, which now accounts for nearly 90% of wagering. The upside-down model, in brief, pays five times more to the business handling a wager (the simulcast outlet or account wagering company where a bet is made) than it pays to the track and horsemen who puts on the race on which the wager is made.
One of the first people Pope convinced that his idea would work was John Gaines, who along with Pope started convincing some of the most powerful owners in the business to get on-board. Eventually more than 100 owners signed up, each contributing $50,000 to the NTA as seed money, and the NTA was off and running in the summer of 1996. A board of directors was formed and Robert Clay was elected president of the NTA.
In early 1997, as the NTA’s plans continued to be formulated, Jockey Club chairman Dinny Phipps got involved and called Clay and a few others to a private meeting in Palm Beach, Fla. Neither Phipps nor William S Farish, the Jockey Club’s vice chairman, supported the NTA. Farish was also the chairman of the board of publicly traded Churchill Downs and a major consignor of yearlings at Keeneland. The latter role led Farish to have ambivalent feelings about the NTA, he told Gaines privately, because “I have to sell yearlings” to many of the people who had signed up in support of the NTA or who sat on its board of directors.
Clay was almost breathless in his enthusiasm for the “all hands together” approach that Phipps proposed during the Palm Beach meeting, that called for the Jockey Club, Breeders’ Cup and Keeneland to get involved. Other groups eventually were also brought in, including racetracks, and what had been an owner-driven initiative was now, for lack of a better term, a fustercluck of industry organizations which, by their nature, could never paddle in the same direction.
As Pope said during a talk he gave to a group of equine attorneys last year, “The NTRA looked like the NTA, sounded like the NTA, and promoted itself with the terms such as ‘Commissioner’ and ‘league office’ but without the basic elements of a Major League. It was a fake major league.
“The NTRA could not package, price, or distribute the sport. It did not have the rights from the racehorse owners, it did not have rights from the racetracks, nor did it seek to change simulcast pricing. Instead of the proven Major League sports structure, the NTRA tried to include not just all of Thoroughbred racing, but also included all of the Thoroughbred industry, as well as other horse breeds and dog racing industries.
“Instead of a real Major League structure, the NTRA presented a fantasy structure selling the premise that if everyone would close their eyes, join hands and sing Koombaya, then Thoroughbred racing would be restored The political operators had everyone drinking the NTRA Kool-aid.
“If Mr. Phipps thought stopping the major league NTA, to start another trade association, then in my opinion he is incompetent. If he did it only to stop the NTA, then he and people who helped him are guilty of something more sinister and owe the industry an apology. Although Mr. Phipps is the acknowledged head of the industry, I have never read about his vision for Thoroughbred racing. Every time someone else has put forward an idea, he has moved to stop it. To the point now, no one has offered anything new in the last ten years.”
Pope made those comments in May 2007. Since then, the industry’s prognosis has gone from bad to worse. This year alone we’ve we had the death of Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby, the admission by trainer Rick Dutrow that Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown raced on anabolic steroids, medication positives for the trainers of the Horse of the Year, the Kentucky Derby winner and the Kentucky Oaks winner, the possible implosion of Magna Entertainment (the largest racetrack owner in the country), ongoing disputes over simulcasting and account wagering, and Congressional hearings that made the industry’s leaders look incompetent.
I think we are right next to a calamity,” Pope told the Paulick Report.
For that reason, he’s not giving up on the same basic premise that started in 1992 with the question “Whose Game Is It?”
Last month, Pope published an op-ed piece in the Thoroughbred Daily News discussing racing’s upside-down distribution model and the need for owners to get involved. That article got a lot of horse owners talking about the need for change.
I’m afraid we are seeing the total collapse of the economic model that’s in place right now,” Pope told the Paulick Report. “The objective of the NTA was to change from a simulcast buyer’s market to a seller’s market. It’s finally coming to fruition in some very bad ways, and it’s only a matter of how much damage has been done.
In the Aug. 16 issue of Bloodhorse magazine, Pope has repeated that message and has called for Congress to change one word in the Interstate Horseracing Act that will empower owners across the nation.
We have a long list of national organizations, but not a national racehorse owners association,” Pope wrote in a magazine that, coincidentally, is owned by the national Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. Several organizations say they speak for racehorse owners; however, they are actually controlled by breeders, tracks, or trainers. It seems everyone wants to speak for racehorse owners, except racehorse owners.
Currently, the Interstate Horseracing Act gives simulcast approval to what it calls “horsemen,” which has been defined as owners and trainers. Pope wants the word “horsemen” to be changed to “racehorse owners,” mandating that the owners step and get involved in key decisions relating to simulcasting contracts.
One problem is that horse owners, to paraphrase what Robert Clay said many years ago, didn’t join the country club to cut the grass. They joined so they could play golf
Jess Jackson is one owner who believes in Pope’s idea, and that can be viewed as a blessing or as a curse. Jackson is a powerful individual whose written testimony before the Congressional hearing in June included a lengthy article written by Pope. He has access to members of Congress that many others might not have. He is respected and appreciated by some in the industry for what he has done in the area of auction reform, but there are others who may automatically get on the other side of the fence from Jackson on any given issue because they don’t like his tactics.
That shouldn’t be the case. This issue is too important. Racing is in far worse shape than it was in 1996 when Pope and more than 100 owners stepped up to make a difference, only to be shot down by Dinny Phipps and his sycophantic followers.
The idea then was to grow the business by having owners take control of the sport and create a new business model for simulcast distribution. The reality today is that the various parties are fighting over scraps. The focus needs to return to growth, and there is only way for that to occur.
Racehorse owners must support change to the status quo.
Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report
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Tags: Dinny Phipps, fred pope, Horse Racing, interstate horseracing act, John Gaines, national thoroughbred association, National Thoroughbred Racing Association, nta, NTRA, Ogden Mills Phipps, Paulick Report, Ray Paulick, Robert Clay, Simulcasting, Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, TOBA, william farish
August 14th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Are Dinny Phipps and Will Farish really responsible for all the ills of Thoroughbred racing? The destruction of the NTA and the subsequent failure of the NTRA to reach its league office potential? Check. The Jockey Club being imperious and ineffective? Check. The backwards economic system of simulcast pricing? Check. NYRA’s decline in on-track attendance and handle over the last three decades? Check. The growth of the Breeders’ Cup wagering and purses and its decline in television ratings? Check.
They must be two very busy guys to have done this all on their own over the last 25 years.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Pope’s ideas are dead right. The problem is that, just as the industry’s learned from attempts to enact gaming in KY, it’s alot easier to upend an initiative than it is to make it happen. Maybe Dinny can focus his considerable girth and arrogance (and the few brain cells he has rattling aroung in his head) to do something constructive for everyone in the industry for a change. The problem is, he’s too worried he’d lose his boxes on the finish line at Belmont and Saratoga if he ever let anyone else run something in our industry, let alone NYRA.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Fred Pope is an amazing man to persevere for 16 years with fresh ideas and a broad, yet practical perspective, despite the bogs and obstacles placed in his way by largely self-serving clubbies (or as Ray likes to say, poobahs). Only one man, over all this time, has had a consistent and creative vision designed to raise all of our boats. It is time for change, and it is time to listen to Fred. His points are on the money about the importance of having racehorse owners at the center of the industry (where they belong). In particular, his call for changing the term “horsemen” to “racehorse owners” seems especially important.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
If the racehorse owners and trainers want the sport to survive, they need to listen to Fred Pope and his ideas. So many tracks are reporting they are suffering due to the decline in attendance. If something is not done soon, HorseRacing could become a thing of the past. Unfortunately, there are people like Dinny Phipps who care more about their image than to risk “rocking the boat”. Mr. Ogden Phipps, Dinny’s father, would be ashamed if he were still alive. Shug McGaughey once said, “I was not only blessed to have trained for Mr. Ogden Phipps, but I was also blessed to have known him as a person. He was not only an icon in this sport, but in this country as well. There are not many people like him left in our world. He was a great man.”
So, once again we ask the Racehorse Owners, Whose Game is it ??
August 14th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
With all due respect to owners who spend more on horses and their care and feeding than they can hope to recoup, where are you going to run? You don’t own anything but the animals. You don’t own the venues or the wagering rights or the simulcast distribution rights or the simulcast distribution channels or the commercial media and television rights, whatever small value those have in this day and age. I recall Ed Friendly or someone like him making an impassioned speech at (coincidentally) the Jockey Club Round Table years ago threatening to run the horses in fields off the backs of vans. Good luck. Let me know how much you handle.
Fred Pope didn’t like it when he lost control of the NTA to the NTRA a decade ago but let’s not engage in revisionist history. The best chance the game had was everyone pulling in the same direction. The NTA wasn’t going to hold a gun to the tracks heads then and its not going to now.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
The tracks have nothing without the stars of the show. Most horse owners can do something else for profit, or can indeed run in hunt meets in the fields and enjoy the fascination of the pure sport. However, race track owners have no business without our horses. PERIOD. So who has the power? Congrats Fred Pope for proving you still care. A conversation we had a couple of years ago led me to believe that you were “tired” of fighting. Something has rejuvenated your entusiasm and hope? This is good. Farish and Phipps have contributed to the industry for generations, but they have now lost their way. I know Will Farish and have fatih in him as a keen man with good judgment, so my bet is he whispers into Dinny’s ear and the establishment cedes control without losing the best box seats at Saratoga and Keenland. I would respect and embrace them while proving there is a better way.
August 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Like so many others, I was about to quit this business in despair. Now, through Ray Paulick’s revealing journalism, there is a feint glimmer of hope horseracing here may survive.
Leadership is critical to any reform movement. I believe Fred Pope is the leader we need. He recently had an Op/Ed article in Thoroughbred Daily News. I wrote TDN in support of Pope’s idea and making the same recommendation in hope others might voice the same support. It went into the “round file”. Why? Surely because TDN is now dependent on advertising. It will not bite the hand that feeds.
Last year, I wrote TDN about the Breeders’ Cup refusal to publish the actual vote tallies in it’s “election”. Barry Oppenheimer called me to ask if parts might be modified, so as not to be too tough on some individuals. His Editor sent me a rewrite. I agreed to his watered -down version. It was not published. Why? Cowardice.
Fact is, any segment of the media which is dependent on advertising by the establishment is not going to help reformists. Moreover, Barry Oppenheimer is now on the inside at Breeders’ Cup, so don’t expect any reform suggestions from the quarter.
Fact is, the Paulick Report is our best hope for the kind of journalism we sorely need. Support it: send a subscription today.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
My apologies to anyone reading my earlier comment. In reference to Thoroughbred Daily News I wrote that Barry Oppenheimer called me; I intended to say Barry WEISBORD. The same correction applies to my comment on the Breeders’ Cup. Barry Weisbord is now on the inside there. Coincidentally, Bill Oppenheim (who writes frequently for TDN) is also a BC Trustee.
By the way, it is not easy to find on it’s website who is a BC Trustee or Board member. It appears under what I believe is an unlikely heading.
August 16th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Seems like Mr. Paulick can dish it out but can’t take it. Why is it that time and again posts that are critical of him, or disagree with his point of view, are removed from this site? Why is it that when Indian Charlie started calling attention to Mr. Paulick’s hypocrisy (along with other failings) that he removed the link to Indian Charlie from his home page?
This site is nothing more than the one sided rantings of a bitter man who has no one to blame but himself for destroying his life. What a shame, because at one time Mr. Paulick was a talented journalist.
August 16th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Dear “Jeff”‘ -
“Time and again posts that are critical….or disagree with his point of view are removed from the site?”
You mean posts like yours….which is still here?
Ray
P.S. — By the way, what is it exactly you disagree with?
P.P.S — I attempted contacting you by email to discuss your comments and to assure you that I am doing just fine these days, but it appears that you have given a “fake” email address. Yet I still allow your anonymous rant to be published on the site. I think there are some racing trade publication Web sites that have a far more restrictive policy (i.e., bloodhorse.com) on publishing comments.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Another great history lesson. Owners’ money trickles down to support trainers, grooms, hotwalkers, exercise and pony riders, farriers, vets, feed companies, transport companies, insurance companies, and also trickles back to breeders and farm owners. Owners support the meat and potatoes of our industry. Certainly they should be calling the shots with regard to revenue, and they should be treated like kings when they come to watch their horses run. Instead we make them jump through hoops to get licensed in every state where they run a horse. How about a national VIP pass to the races wherever an owner’s horse runs?
And jeff p: it appears that Mr. Paulick is indeed one of our most talented, and hopefully influential journalists - a sorely needed asset to our industry.
August 16th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Ray you did deleted my comment yesterday even tho i was giving you congrats for your work and pointing out what a complete stooge Eddie Musslemen is. Everone hear in Louisville knows he is the original Big Brown, a nickname he deserves because [deleted] Phipps and Farish and their cronys. Little Eddie is their puppet and as long as he keeps going after you, you got them guys scared.
August 16th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Dear “Louisville Larry” - Yes, I deleted your comment yesterday and deleted a portion of today’s because your comments about Mr. Musselman were personal in nature. That’s not the intention of this site.
Ray Paulick
August 16th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
In response to edmund’s comments, (see post 1.), he’s right, Dinny & Will haven’t been two very busy guys over the last 25 years. Just read the other two articles in Mr. Paulick’s trilogy on the subject and you’ll start to realize the damage to the sport & industry they’ve managed to accomplish entirely through their inaction while in control of so many important organizations. Therein lies their crime…