Posts Tagged ‘World Series’

By Ray Paulick
I’m not sure how I learned this little trick, but during my high school years in the late 1960s I had a transistor radio that fit perfectly into the cutout pages of a hard-cover book that I would dutifully carry into all of my classes each autumn afternoon when Major League’s Baseball’s World Series was under way. I’d plug an earpiece into the radio and run the wire up my shirtsleeve and into my ear, surreptitiously listening to the play-by-play accounts of the games as my teachers droned on about Herodotus or Themistocles.

That sneaky little maneuver ended in 1971. That was the year I graduated from high school, but it also marked the first time a World Series game was held at night, under lights. I didn’t understand then why the men who ran our national pastime were intent on ruining the game. Baseball was meant to be played in natural light, wasn’t it? Certainly, they would see the error of their ways.

I was overruled on that decision. In fact, as the years went on, more and more playoff and World Series games were played at night, and in fact the last day game for a World Series was more than 20 years ago. The reasoning was quite simple: more people watch television at night than during the daytime, even on weekends. Larger television audiences meant bigger rights fee for Major League Baseball.

So it goes with just about every other major sporting event, except perhaps tennis and golf (and the television networks have experimented with hosting golf tournaments under temporary lights). Nearly every major sporting event–from college football’s BCS Championship game and the NFL’s Super Bowl in January to the NCAA’s Final Four in March to the NBA Finals and World Series—have one thing in common: they are held at night to capture the largest possible television audience during what is known as “prime time.”

It’s about time horse racing started thinking like those other sports.

“Oh, but we’re different,” racing traditionalists will almost certainly say in protest to a transition to nighttime. “We can’t have the Kentucky Derby or Preakness or Belmont Stakes or Breeders’ Cup at night. We’ve never done that before.”

Well, guess what? That’s the way we’re heading with at least one of those events, and it’s the biggest one of all: the Kentucky Derby.

With Monday’s announcement that Churchill Downs is planning to install permanent lights, there is no question that a plan will soon be in place to hold the Kentucky Derby at night. And just like baseball’s World Series, years from now a few old-timers like me will rue about the good old days when the big race was held in the bright sunshine of afternoon.

Moving a race like the Derby from day to night isn’t quite as simple as shifting a baseball or football game, however. There is the not-so-small matter of wagering to consider. Horseplayers bet more than $150 million on the Kentucky Derby day card from Churchill Downs (more than two-thirds of that amount on the Derby itself), and they make the majority of those bets at other tracks around the country or at off-track betting facilities. What impact would moving the Derby to a nine or 10 p.m. starting time have on handle?

The ace up the sleeve to help Churchill Downs’ chief executive officer Bob Evans answer that question is account wagering. As more and more horseplayers wager legally by telephone or computer, it will be that much easier to envision a night-time Derby. In fact, how better to get new people to sign up for account wagering than to dangle that very proposition in front of them—many who might learn about it for the first time—during a prime-time telecast of racing’s marquee event?

Make no mistake about it, night racing is not a new thing. Harness racing programs have been held at night for as long as I can remember, and tracks like the Meadowlands in New Jersey have night-time Thoroughbred cards. Churchill Downs may have added some bells and whistles to its Friday night experiments last summer, but Hollywood Park and other tracks have been doing that for years.

The only thing missing from racing’s night-time schedule is a truly major event on prime-time television. And that could be just around the corner.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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By Bradford Cummings
Oftentimes, the racing industry loses sight of what is important when trying to market its product. Talk of increased handle, while necessary for the bottom line of racetracks, does not change the public perception and momentum of a sport that has continued a slow and steady slide over the last 20 years. In order to grow this sport, racing needs new fans, not old fans making more bets.
 
So when the ratings came out for the Kentucky Derby and most recently the Preakness Stakes, it was a breath of fresh air and a much-needed shot in the arm for the psyche of racing. The first two legs of the Triple Crown brought in an average of 13.4 million viewers, the most since 1989 when Sunday Silence won both Classics over Easy Goer in a spirited East vs. West rivalry.
 
Individually, the Kentucky Derby brought in 16.3 million viewers with a 9.8 rating and 23 share, up 2.1 million viewers from last year. The Preakness came in at a strong 10.9 million viewers, pulling a 6.8 rating and 16 share. This number was up 3 million viewers from last year’s version with Big Brown easily pulling away from the field.
 
For those not familiar with the television ratings system, the Derby’s 9.8 rating means that 9.8% of all households with televisions were tuned into NBC’s telecast on the first Saturday of May while the 23 share means 23% of all televisions in use watched Mine That Bird pull an unprecedented upset. That means nearly a quarter of all Americans watching television showed an interest in racing’s biggest event.
 
Perhaps most significant was the true lack of a compelling storyline going into the race. Most of the favorites had been sidelined before the Derby, and morning line favorite I Want Revenge was scratched the morning of the race with an injury, leaving what has been proved to be an overrated colt from the Louisiana circuit in Friesan Fire as the betting choice. And while other sports have the ability to build audience throughout the course of a 3 hour game, the fact that a 50-1 shot won the race would have had virtually no effect on the ratings because of how quickly the telecast ends.
 
Much credit must go to NBC, which did an admirable job selling the event throughout the week prior with promos on mainstream mainstays like the Today Show and investing in a solid marketing campaign. The fact a long shot won only added to the mystique of the Derby they so effectively sold.
 
That momentum allowed for the male vs. female storyline to be created with Rachel Alexandra and the unintended positive consequences of media coverage from Mark Allen and Ahmed Zayat’s conspiring to keep her on the sidelines. Proving the old adage there’s no such thing as bad press, the Preakness well out performed every other running this decade except for Smarty Jones in 2004, which brought a 7.7 rating and 23 share.
 
Of course, all of these numbers are irrelevant without some perspective and comparison to other top events in high profile professional U.S. sports. While the Kentucky Derby will not be in the same league as the Super Bowl anytime soon with its 42 rating, racing’s biggest day in 2009 stands incredibly strong with other major championship equivalents.
 
The final game of the NBA Championship from last year, in a matchup of the two most storied franchises in the league, drew only 12.6 million viewers.  The Stanley Cup Playoffs featuring the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins never saw more than 6.8 million folks tune in to a game. The Daytona 500, the most prestigious race in NASCAR, was down this year to a modest 15.95 million television fans. Even America’s Pastime peaked with just 15.49 million at home spectators during last year’s final World Series game.

Something the ratings do not take into account is the large number of racing fans who watch and wager on events like the Triple Crown races and Breeders’ Cup at a local track or simulcast site. Kentucky Derby Day is the biggest day of the year at some tracks, and those in attendance are not counted as television viewers.

This ranks the Kentucky Derby as the second most watched professional sporting championship of the last year, a fact few in the industry would have assumed. And the news is actually better than it looks. Wedged in at around 6 p.m. EST and potentially distracted by the dinner bell or an eventful Saturday, a viewer more likely schedules their day around the Derby coverage whereas a typical championship game appears during the primetime hours of 8-11 pm. That coupled with the lack of build up for the average racing fan as evidenced by the paltry ratings of preps like the Florida Derby, Wood Memorial and Santa Anita Derby, means racing has a legitimate opportunity to capture the imagination of the public if marketed correctly.
 
With drug issues and safety concerns being taken seriously, there will be an opening for racing to breeze through. Will we take the opening and shoot through like Mine That Bird’s last to first rally on May 2nd? Will we look at what we have and figure out how to sell this beautiful sport to the masses beyond the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes? Can we turn the Breeders’ Cup into a legitimate championship that builds from January on?
 
The good news is we can.

Liberation Farm celebrates the many horsemen and horsewomen who strive each day to make things better for horses and those who work with them.  To learn more about Liberation Farm, click here.

Previous Good News Friday subjects: Father Chris Clay, The Race for Education, Military Appreciation Day at Keeneland, Kentucky Oaks Pink Out for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Mary Lee-Butte and the Blue Grass Farms Chaplaincy, Mary Jo Pons and the Radio Reading Network

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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