The University of Arizona's RTIP Global Racing Symposium demonstrates a marked contrast to data management between horses and humans
There are relatively few events each year where racing folk get together formally to talk shop. Whilst events like Royal Ascot, Cheltenham Festival and the Arc Weekend bring all racing professionals together around the sport, only three events are framed around the business of racing.
The EMHF's General Assembly is, of course, one such event each June. The others are the biennial Asian Racing Conference and the annual Global Racing Symposium, which took place last week. Each offers an opportunity for racing professionals - largely administrators rather than participants - to collaborate, share best practice and brain storm the issues of the day.
The Asian Racing Conference is perhaps the most glamorous of these events, underpinned by the chairmanship of the world's most successful racing jurisdiction, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, and it draws well beyond Asia to Australia & New Zealand, the Middle East & India, even to European jurisdictions.
By contrast, the 50th running of the Global Racing Symposium, hosted by the University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program, tends to be more focused on the Americas, dominated by the sport in the USA. And contrary to public perception of America's Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup, all is not sunshine in US racing.
Ten years ago, the fatality rate in US racing was uncomfortably high, and attracted the scrutiny of the animal welfare lobby. US racing took time to put its house in order, created HISA (Horseracing Integrity & Safety Unit) alongside HIWA (Horseracing & Welfare Unit), the former directed largely toward track safety, the latter toward rule infringements on approved substances. From a high of 1.89 per thousand runners to its present 0.88, HIWA has worked with tracks to improve safety and track maintenance, and reported this at the Symposium through the painstaking interrogation of 4m veterinary records.
Coming from European jurisdictions that are largely turf, not dirt, this might seem somewhat contrary. I mean, how difficult can it be to manage a dirt track? HISA's remit though covers more than mere track management. In tandem with track veterinarians, horses' soundness is verified regularly to ensure no vulnerable horse makes it to the starting gate.
This is a marked difference to European racing, where horses are stabled remotely to the racecourse, and where no such pre-race checks take place. Talking to Warwick Bayley, Professor of Equine Medicine & Exercise Science at Washington State University, it's clear that the academic work underpinning this work is very advanced.
HISA's work has improved the quality of surface, and pulled up short those tracks found wanting.
If the foundation of horse welfare looks on a recognized upward path, based on meticulous interrogation of data, the same is not necessarily so around spectator attendance and betting handle. Track closures have gathered pace these past 12 months, of which the largest is perhaps Golden Gate Fields, where the California Authority of Racing Fairs this week rescinded its planned meet for the first half of 2025. The nature of the racecourse structure in California means that without Golden Gate Fields, other racecourses are vulnerable to not being viable, including Santa Anita, which has staged several Breeders' Cups. In Arizona, host to the Symposium, three tracks have reduced to one, Turf Paradise, in the last 18 months, with no real prospect of the other two re-opening.
Were such a large venue as Golden Gate Fields in Europe to close, there would be uproar, but the nature of State-sponsored racing in the US means a different approach applies.
On the promotion of the sport to spectators, the US lags far behind European racecourses in its use of data. By dint of their flawed business model, British & Irish courses have become proficient at winning admission and ancillary revenue from their fans. This is also reflected in German racing, where media rights and betting revenue revenue is far lower than, for example in France. Yet even there, the value of customer data is belatedly being recognized.
With some notable exceptions, North American racing is unhappily ignorant of their customer base, offering free entry or at rates of $10 or thereabouts - until now, insufficient to merit winning in advance of the event. Given their reliance upon State regulations allowing Off Track Betting terminals (OTBs) and slot machines, this is a vulnerability the sport could well do without.
Future Ticketing, the leading supplier of white label, API-first digital ticketing software to racecourses, has started working to correct this anomaly, partnering several tracks in the States to grow their admission revenue and better engage their on-track audience. Yet in Canadian and South American jurisdictions, this work has yet to begin. Little effort has been made, either on an individual track basis, or from State racing jurisdictions, to identify fans in order simply to foster the ownership experience and grow the customer base of those prepared to invest in a horse.
Of course, American racing faces similar issues in exciting followers to bet too. From a position of dominance of the sports betting market 30 years ago to now appears to be a steady decline in market share, as different sports, and different ways of betting, have come to the fore. This is a familiar story to mature racing jurisdictions, and one where the sport worldwide can unite as one to create and drive interest in new types of bets to engage a younger, mobile-friendly audience which currently sees racing's heritage as an obstacle to progress, not an asset.
For the richest nation on earth, there remains plenty still to be done to secure the sport's future.
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