Posts Tagged ‘tapeta footings’

After 48 hours of being told horse racing needs newer and younger and more female fans, Ray Paulick is mad as hell and he isn’t going to take it anymore. He wants to know, among other things: Why does racing hate us old men? Ray’s gavel to snooze button coverage of the 32^nd Asian Racing Conference takes a diversion today as he offers stream of consciousness (when conscious) coverage of the final programs from Tokyo, which touch on television, wagering, and the dreaded S.S. (synthetic surfaces).

CONFESSION: I’M AN OLD (55) MAN and am feeling a bit lonely. Racing doesn’t want me anymore. It seems more interested in younger people, men with fulls heads of hair, and women who giggle and love horses but have never bet more than $2 to show on a race.  What have I done, to borrow from the Aussies, to hack you off? All I and my fellow old men do is go to your tracks, buy your lousy food, bet till our pockets are empty, and fall asleep on the train on the way home. Yet you would rather cater to people who don’t even like your product. Where’s the love, racing?

It’s not just an American problem, this fixation racing has on replacing the dead with people with a heartbeat. It’s going on in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan. Everywhere horses race, the marketers hate us old men.

Just yesterday, a producer from Fuji television, which broadcasts into 90% of Japanese homes, was lamenting that his Sunday racing telecasts have a demographic that is so old that he can only sell advertising time to rocking chair and walking stick manufacturers. Actually, it isn’t quite that bad, but old men were making up such an increasing percentage of the Sunday racing programs’ audience over the past 10 years  (from 47% to 63%) to the point that producers decided to shake up the broadcast and bring in people who knew nothing about racing but had some connection with celebrity. There’s hope for David Hasselhoff over here in Japan!

Worse yet, Fuji’s racing telecast ratings declined over those 10 years, from 7.7 (about 3 million households) to 5.0 (about 2 million). Fuji’s metrics people are very clever, measuring their audience segments into eight categories (two youth, and three each by age group for male and female). The "old man" portion of the audience remained the same over those 10 years, with losses coming in the younger and female segment. So Fuji decided to take it out on the old men by providing programming that was irrelevant or irritating to them.

But wait.  The Fuji TV producer, Masanari Funaki, said the younger generation is watching all of television less, not just racing telecasts. They have discovered the Internet, video games and mobile phone networking. Nevertheless, Fuji opted to ignore the old men and provide less information about handicapping and gambling (which us old guys like) and show more personality features, make the program more entertaining and focus more on "the sporting aspects of horse racing."

His reason? "We wanted to catch some of those sports fans who might be channel surfing," Funaki said. "We think it’s very important for viewers to see horse racing programs in the same way they see other sports programs, so we don’t overpromote the gambling aspect and get viewers to see the human element. We show more about jockeys, their histories and their background."

What a fool, I thought.

Not so fast, my friend. "This year’s racing telecast ratings are up," Funaki said.

Fuji TV also developed a Saturday night midnight racing telecast that focuses on handicapping the Sunday race, using well-known handicappers from six Tokyo newspapers who scream at each other about how stupid they are.Kind of like the three talking heads on TVG. "Those programs are very popular with younger men," Funaki said. 

In my country, Mr. Funaki, old men are asleep by midnight.

SOMEONE ELSE ON THE TELEVISION PANEL SET UP A HORSEY PINATA representing the American racing industry and people took turns whacking it and reminding us of how stupid we are in the United States.

Those guys from the United Kingdom and Australia are so smart, just because they know how to tell time. Smug. They have a 3 o’clock race at Ascot and a 3;15 at Lingfield in the UK, and in Australia (where the clocks are upside down), they manage to televise about 12,000 horse races every day without having any post times overlapping with one another. The reason? Apparently, they can maximize wagering by coordinating post times for the races.

In America, experience has shown that it’s much better to have three races from major tracks all start at exactly the same time, so that simulcast or account wagering customers have to choose between races rather than bet on all three. It’s called maximizing stupidity, or something like that. "America’s most famous racetracks have races going off right on top of each other," said Brendan Parnell, chief operating officer for Australia’s Tabcorp. "They are cannibalizing or eating each other’s lunch and missing great opportunities. People are getting shut out." 

Whack! Take that, you damned Yankees.

OLD MEN AREN’T THE ONLY ENEMIES OF RACING. So are governments, who set and enforce ominous hurdles that keep the sport from seizing on some great opportunities, such as a "global bet." (Aren’t most governments and racing regulatory bodies run by old men? Yes!) 

John Stuart, who carries the creative title "director of international marketing and operations" for the make-believe Phumelela Gaming and Leisure Co. (what, there really is a place called Phumelela?), presented a science fiction video about a global horse bet called the "Universal," where fans in any country pick the first eight finishers of a big international race like the Japan Cup and create a betting pool in excess of a billion dollars. "Had Barack Obama been watching that," Stuart said, "he’d be shouting ‘yes, we can,’ ‘yes, we can.’ So should we be."

Of course, that will never happen because too many governments have protectionist laws prohibiting commingling of betting pools from one country to another. Plus, the American totalizator companies would still be accepting bets after the race is over.

A SERIES OF PRESENTATIONS ON MEDICATION featuring dreadfully boring attorneys and veterinarians has just about everyone in the room nodding off until a snappy Q&A segment near the end when the moderator directed a question about illegal drugs to Brian Stewart, head of veterinary regulation and international liaison to the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Specifically, Stewart was asked by Australian turf editor Bart Sinclair whether blood-doping agents like EPO, which have plagued cycling and some other sports, are being used in racing. Stewart nodded to the affirmative. "How big a problem is EPO?" Sinclair asked. "I’d say it’s widepread," Stewart said. That sent many Asian Racing Federation delegates straight to the bar for a stiff one.

THERE ALSO WAS MUCH DISCUSSION ABOUT HANDICAPPING INFORMATION. What should be given to these young fans who don’t exist yet? How should we deliver information to them? Gift wrapped with local currency, I think.

Howard Wright, senior editor for England’s Racing Post and one of the people in the media who "gets it," had me going there for a minute when he said the racing industry in Great Britain actually wants to make money from newspapers for providing information about horse racing to fans. Good one, Howard. They can’t be that arrogant over there, can they? Seems like the industry should be paying newspapers to promote the sport, not the other way around.

Howard, like me, is a slightly grumpy old man who does see the need for racing to replace those of us who will soon be pushing daisies. He also understands these young kids today don’t know how to read a newspaper, but doesn’t think the traditional ways of providing handicapping information (Racing Post, Daily Racing Form) should be abandoned. "One size fits all no longer applies," he said. "The media has to find ways of satisfying its traditional horse racing audience while also accommodating the PlayStation generation, who want their involvement presented in small pieces and want it now." It’s time for "Racing Form Lite" he said. Tastes great, less filling!

Howard also mentioned the budget cutbacks in most daily newspapers (e.g., they are dying faster than us old men), and suggested that racing isn’t alone in having its editorial space reduced. "Racing will never beat football," he reminded. Someone got out the Pinata again and started talking about how American newspapers have stopped covering horse racing altogether. Whack, whack, whack!

SOMEONE SUGGESTED THIS NEW THING CALLED THE INTERNET might be a good way to deliver information to these newbies. That’s where the kids are hanging out these days, aren’t they? To strategerize about this, the Asian Racing Federation found a really smart kid, Koichi Yamamoto, who must be the youngest senior research director the Dentsu Institute has ever had. (He got his MBA from Columbia University when he was, like, 12 years old.) 

Yamamoto outlined how blogs and social networking have changed things and talked about  how businsses need to reach "new influencers," people who are constantly communicating online by networking and commenting on blogs and never breathing fresh air. These "new influencers" might not be as informed as us old guys or as opinioned; in fact, they are more easy to influence than us stick in the mud types, Yamamoto said. But don’t inundate these "new influencers" with gibberish, he said, because they are adept at  filtering out useless crap. "Only the most attractive and relevant information gets through," he said. 

If the message gets through, however, Katy bar the door. Word of mouth is the new king, he said. Social trends spread at lightning speed. "People want to tell friends about things that at least some people know, but not too many people know," Yamamoto said. "The topicality window opens faster and closes faster."

Yamamoto said the newbs are hip to the trick of marketing people. "Increasingly sophisticated consumers can easily see through marketing schemes," he said.  "Relationships with these consumers is more important than ever. Strong relationships turn information-filtering consumers into information-hungry consumers."

Can I get a translator please?

"WHAT IF STEVE JOBS WERE TO ENTER THE RACING INDUSTRY? How would Apple innovate the customer experience?" Those questions were  asked by Edward Tse, a McKinsey and Co. consultant to the Hong Kong Jockey Club who encouraged racing associations to think more innovatively than they have done in the past. Tse reviewed the depressing statistics that show pari-mutuel handle losing altitude and asked if it is sufficient to simply launch new bet types, which many racing associations have tried. "Or," he asked, "do we need a new approach?"

He then listed six building blocks needed for innovation: 1) tax reform and product pricing; 2) customer segment expansion; 3) channel innovation and expansion; 4) product and service innovation; 5) image or brand building; 6) customer relationship management/loyalty.

Savvy guys like Tse do all sorts of analytics, and he said the most valuable ones are predictive in nature: in other words, get a swami to crunch your numbers. Short of that, he said, try and get predictive analytics that answer the following questions: What’s the best thing that can happen? What will happen next? If these trends continue, why?

Tse said companies that do this well include Capital One, the annoying credit card company that fills your mailbox with junk every day, the consumer electronics store Best Buy (news of their current problems hadn’t reached Tse yet), and the Harrah’s casino company, which he said "revolutionized the casino industry by adopting highly analytic customer focused innovation." 

Harrah’s, he said, separates all of its customers into segments by profit potential, drives those customers to aspire to a higher level, optimizes placement of its slot machines in the best locations, and uses customer satisfaction measurements to shape their business plan. The whole point of this is to separate the customers from their money, and Harrah’s is extremely good at that.

Back to racing. Tse insisted that new approaches to the customer experience are required to modernize the industry. Following Harrah’s lead, racing associations must use deep customer segmentation and analytics as the foundation for innovation. "For most racing organizations," Tse said, "this will require a different mindset and new skills."

Unfortunately, many people with those skills end up working at a company like Apple.

DO LOWER PRICES INCREASE SALES? The Hong Kong Jockey Club was curious to see if the cost of a bet could affect how much is wagered, so they tried something foreign to most horseplayers: they lowered prices. Specifically, the HKJC offered rebates for losing bets made by some of their highest-rolling customers. The net result: players who received rebates, thereby effectively lowering their takeout, wagered more.

It wasn’t that easy, though. To give rebates, the HKJC had to cut a deal with government that gave them the flexibility to offer innovative programs like rebates. The agreement worked both ways, with the HKJC guaranteeing HK$8 billion in annual revenue to the government, more than they’d gotten the previous year. The HKJC wanted to expand the number of race days from 78 a year and the number of commingled simulcasts from 10. The government didn’t budge on those requests.

The rebates were for losing bets of HK$10,000 and up (about US$1,200) on win, place, quinella and quinella place wagers. To coincide with the introduction of the bets, the HKJC convinced 500 bettors from different wagering segments (frequent, occasional, big bettors, small bettors) to allow their betting to be tracked for analytical purposes. Not surprisingly, big, frequent players took advantage of the rebates the most, effectively lowering takeout from 18.7% to 16.9% and increasing the volume of their bets by having more money to churn. For the occasional and smaller players, the rebate and lure of lower takeout made little or no difference.

The rebates were funded by the HKJC, which looked at them as a marketing investment in their future. Handle increased, but not to the extent that it paid for itself. Bill Nader, the former New York Racing Association chief operating officer who is now executive director of the HKJC, said the organization hopes it will pay dividends in the long run.

MR. SEKIGUCHI, WHERE ARE YOU? Fusaro Sekiguchi, the flamboyant Japanese businessman who raced Fusaichi Sekuguchi to victory in the 2000 Kentucky Derby and has been a major buyer at foal and yearling sales around the world over the last decade, has been keeping a very low profile in his native Japan recently. 

Some Japanese racing insiders have said he has sold most of his horses and others have suggested the global credit crunch may have dealt him a severe blow. Last time I saw him was in the paddock of the Tokyo Race Course at the Japan Cup a couple of year ago, where he was nattily dressed as usual. Sekiguchi has had some ups and downs in his racing and business career (famously failing to pay Keeneland on some yearling purchases prior to buying FuPeg for $4 million, and later getting fired by the company he started), and he always seems to land on his feet.

Here’s hoping we see him in the winner’s circle again real soon.

DARLEY JAPAN FARM EXPANDING: Darley Japan Farm, the Japanese breeding entity on Hokkaido owned by Ken Mishima, has expanded with the purchase of Nishiyama Farm, whose previous owner raced Paradise Creek, winner of the Eclipse Award as outstanding turf male in 1994. Though it’s a bit confusing, Darley Japan Farm and Darley Japan  (which stands stallions) are separate entities, in part because of the licensing peculiarities of the JRA that require Japanese owners of breeding farms.

FINALLY, THE GRAND FINALE THAT WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO…the "cage match" discussion arguing the merits of synthetic surfaces. 

Ian Pearse of Pro-Ride surfaces of Australia, bragged on the results of the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita while Michael Dickinson, waiting for his turn to speak about his creation, Tapeta Footings, sat patiently onstage sticking pins into a voodoo doll that resembled Ron Charles, who chose Pro-Ride over Tapeta for Santa Anita, host of the 2008 and 2009 world championships.

Raji Jayaraju then sang the praises of the synthetic surface installed at the Singapore Turf Club track where he is senior manager. Singapore’s new track has been very useful because of the heavy rain they get in Singapore that often leaves  the turf course extremely soggy. Jockeys and trainers said in a video that the synthetic track was terrific (under threat of a caning?).

Dr. Toshiyushi Takahashi, a representative of the JRA, presented some scientific research that showed why synthetic tracks might be safer than Japanese dirt tracks. The JRA installed synthetic material on one of its training tracks and compared hoof impact between dirt and synthetic tracks, measuring the velocity of impact and time of hoof stabilization at impact. Dr. Takahashi summarized by saying that synthetic tracks are more stable and provide more traction than dirt or wood chip tracks, and are more constant at the time of hoof landing.

But that science is meaningless in the face of comments from turf writers and horse players who are more concerned with tradition and form than the safety of horses. 

"To those of you who train, for those of you who’ve got sand and dirt tracks, please switch to synthetics," Dickinson said. when asked about safety. "Whether you go with Tapeta, Pro-Ride or my good friend Martin Collins’ Polytrack, please change. It’s much safer for the horses." Apparently, someone "got to" the panelists and said no name calling. Cage match cancelled.

That’s it from the Asian Racing Conference. I’ll summarize what I’ve learned over these last few days in a forthcoming commentary.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

Visit the Paulick Report for all the latest news throughout the racing world.  

Sign up for our Email Flashes to get the latest news, analysis and commentary from Ray Paulick

I knew I wasn’t in Kentucky anymore when I went out for an early morning walk and came across a group of about 20 people standing at a nearby intersection. It was only a two-lane road, and there wasn’t a car in sight in any direction, yet everyone stood patiently for what seemed an eternity, waiting for the crosswalk light to change from red to green.

I resisted the temptation that any American who’s ever jaywalked across a city street surely would have had.

When the light changed, everyone broke into a brisk walk, as if, all of a sudden, they were in a hurry. It is one of the strange idiosyncrasies of the people of Japan, this nation of talking elevators, American fast-food, on-time trains and silly television commercials. Its natives honor Japanese laws, yet many of them complain privately about the nature of their traditions.

I’ve come to Tokyo ostensibly to cover the 32^nd Asian Racing Conference, which began on Sunday with a trip to the Tokyo Race Course and runs through Thursday. (The time frame of some of my reports may seem a bit odd since I’ll be writing in the past tense about days that haven’t yet arrived in most of the U.S., since Tokyo is plus 14 hours from Eastern Standard Time.)

In truth, however, I’ve decided to cash in some frequent flier miles and come to Japan to meet and hear from officials representing racing countries that have faced challenges, worked cooperatively and developed strategies they hope will succeed and help them grow and prosper.  I’ve come for a shot of optimism after nearly drowning in the sea of pessimism that saturates American racing these days, where the efforts seem to focus on stopping the bleeding and the only strategy relies on subsidies from other forms of gambling. Most American tracks have given up on the idea that they can be competitive anymore.

One example: In Hong Kong, where the stock market has fallen by nearly 50% in the current financial crisis, betting is off by about 6%. But the Hong Kong Jockey Club, instead of wringing their hands over the dreadful economy, has developed a new program to give bettors a 10% rebate on individual losing bets that exceed a certain amount.

Another story: When on-track business peaked at Japan Racing Association tracks in the mid 1990s, the JRA looked at its aging flagship track, Tokyo Race Course, and rebuilt the main grandstand, giving it a much more inviting design, one that in some ways resembles the Forum Shops of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. When they began losing fans, their strategy was fixed on giving on-track customers a better experience.

There are more than 600 delegates here from at least 30 countries. The Asian Racing Federation, which presents the conference, consists of racing nations from Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Africa and the Persian Gulf. These countries represent 36% of the world’s prize money, 32% of the international foal crops and 47% of global wagering on pari-mutuel racing. Europeans and Americans are welcome to attend the conference, though only a handful of them do. Only five Americans are scheduled to be here, two of whom are journalists.

Among those I ran into at the track was Michael Dickinson and his partner, Joan Wakefield, who  are here as exhibitors for Tapeta Footings, the synthetic surface developed by Dickinson that has been used so successfully at, among other places, Golden Gate Fields, Presque Isle Downs and the Fair Hill Training Center in the U.S., and as a training track in Dubai. Dickinson, of course, is hoping to find new clients among the Asian Racing Federation’s membership.

It was the couple’s first visit to Japan, and as someone who’s been to Tokyo a number of times for the Japan Cup and other major races, I gave them a walking tour of the massive, yet elegant new building. They were amazed at the cleanliness and bright, friendly design, the variety of comfort levels, and the size and length of the nine-story main structure, which is nearly a quarter-mile long.

In the bowels of the grandstand, there is a maze of tunnels for horses to use as they leave the paddock, go onto one of the three tracks, or return to the stable area. We took one tunnel up to the winner’s circle, where Dickinson gazed wistfully out onto the main turf course and dirt track, desperately wanting to walk the courses to get a feel for them. The former trainer is a man long obsessed with the conditions and safety of racing surfaces, and his new calling as a proponent of synthetic tracks comes to him naturally.

“Do you think it would be okay for me to walk out there, after all the races have run, just to see what the dirt and grass tracks are like?” Dickinson asked. And he wasn’t kidding.

I’ll try to find out tomorrow whether the man known as the “mad genius” found his way out there to sample the footing of the Tokyo turf and dirt. I’ll be reporting from inside the meeting and presentation rooms of the conference, and working the unofficial meetings and break rooms for the latest news and gossip throughout the racing world.

I’ve come here in search of some optimism for our sport, to learn more about how other countries have achieved their success. I’ll be disappointed if I return home empty handed.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

Support the Paulick Report. Make a donation today.

Visit the Paulick Report for all the latest news throughout the racing world. 

Sign up for our Email Flashes to get the latest news, analysis and commentary from Ray Paulick