OSGA.com – It’s been almost 2 weeks since the Breeder’s Cup and interest in horse racing has not been affected one bit by the event. In fact the Breeder’s Cup itself was deemed so insignificant that it wasn’t even shown in its entirety on national TV. In prior years the major networks devoted a full afternoon to the Saturday races complete with story lines and interesting factoids and they employed commentators from overseas to weigh in. This year the telecast was aired on NBC Sports (a digital station which most don’t subscribe to) and only brought in to NBC’s prime network for the Breeder’s Cup Classic. The stations aired some story lines for the Classic but the telecast was a shell of its former self. Of course, the lack of network interest in the Breeder’s Cup can be applied to horse racing in general. Attendance continues to decline nationwide, revenues are dropping every year, TV coverage is non-existent, except for the Triple Crown races, and racetracks are threatening to close daily. In fact, the only way many racetracks are able to stay open is by incorporating other forms of gambling like slots, casinos and in the case of Delaware, NFL betting.
There has been a lot of speculation as to why interest in horse racing has declined so rapidly but the industry likes to blame other forms of gambling which cannibalized horse racing revenues and the governments which allowed it. I spoke several years back to someone at the California Horse Racing Board and he was quick to blame the government for promoting Indian casinos, lotteries and poker rooms while giving the horse racing industry no support whatsoever. I heard similar comments from someone at the New York Racing Association and from a prior President at Woodbine Entertainment in Canada. But what the heads of those organizations fail to understand, or do understand but are unwilling to admit, is that the majority of reasons for the decline in horse racing can be directly attributable to the industry itself. The following are what I see as the 5 major flaws in horse racing over the years which led to the state of the sport today:
