Can American Pharoah Save His Troubled Sport?

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Patuxet
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Can American Pharoah Save His Troubled Sport?

Postby Patuxet » Tue Jun 09, 2015 8:42 am

[i]"A lot has changed since the last Triple Crown, from Affirmed, in 1978. In the seventies, horse racing revolved around the track: gamblers could bet on races only by being there, and not many races were televised. Naturally, attendance at race tracks was high. But once technology allowed fans to watch and wager from home, they stopped showing up. At the same time, the N.B.A. and the N.F.L. were developing into the juggernauts they are today, growing by leaps and bounds during the eighties and nineties, especially among young people. Even the gamblers have more options now, thanks to the growth of legal casinos and the rise of flashier, online options such as poker and fantasy sports. In this changing landscape, horse racing missed out on recruiting the next generation of fans: according to a McKinsey report commissioned by The Jockey Club, the governing body of horse racing, over half of all racing fans started following the sport before 1990, and the number of new fans it gains each year appears to be outpaced by the number of those who die."[/i]

For the full story: http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting- ... MTQ4NDgwS0
"He is pure air and fire and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him; he is indeed a horse ..." Wm. Shakespeare - Henry V

Aug27
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Re: Can American Pharoah Save His Troubled Sport?

Postby Aug27 » Tue Jun 09, 2015 6:06 pm

To answer the question posed in the thread topic: in a word, No.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to note the extreme irony in him finally winning a triple crown in a race sponsored by DraftKings.
On-line betting (on fantasy sports) is legal in many jurisdictions where it is still illegal to wager on pari-mutuel events like horse racing. Until that changes, this Sport Of Kings will continue to decline, in my opinion. It's very sad ...

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Mahubah
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Re: Can American Pharoah Save His Troubled Sport?

Postby Mahubah » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:07 pm

I had put up a blog on this titled "The Monday After" in "Hoofprints" (http://www.americanclassicpedigrees.com/hoofprints).
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher...You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse." C. S. Lewis

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TJ
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Re: Can American Pharoah Save His Troubled Sport?

Postby TJ » Sat Jun 13, 2015 8:31 am

In my opinion, racing will never return to days gone by. In the 70's when we had 3 TC winners racing was all ready falling by the wayside. Not because of drugs or cheating....but because of greed. The States who sanctioned the gambling wanted more revenue. So they approved off track wagering facilities in 1970. This in turn began a drop in attendance at the tracks. NYS alone had 100+ betting parlors. All the city dwellers came to Aqueduct via the subway and we would have no less then 50,000 people at Aqueduct on a Monday afternoon. Once they stayed in their own boroughs and gambled at one of the 100 parlors available the attendance dropped considerably. All who came to the track were those on LI...but soon Nassau County and Suffolk County also had off track betting (1980's) effectively eliminating the large crowds that used to frequent the track. There was no reason to drive to the tracks. The state didn't care, they were raking in their share of all the gambling...but the sport of horse racing and the racetracks putting on the show lost their customers and in turn lost any possibility of drawing in new fans and possible new owners. Add to this step number two....as the state realized they were losing revenue to short fields and understood much of that was due to horses bleeding and needing more time between starts....that's when NY State legalized Lasix, so the fields would be larger and horses could run back sooner to fill carded races. A fact that is seldom brought up by the Jockey Club chair....Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps who recently stepped down, though not in favor of lasix, did allow its passage when it went legal in NY in 1995. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/26/sport ... e-day.html
So you can see the loss of horse racing fans had nothing to do with the disappearance of TC winners, drugs, cheaters or anything else. We still had a large number of horses trying to win the TC, 13 since 1979 who tried and failed...bringing large crowds to Belmont Park, but that is another story. They simply came to these big events to say they were there, most never returning to the races again till the next racing event.
Yes, racing has a bad name due to the cheaters and the "drugging" which is misunderstood by the general public and sensationalized by the media. Yet that has been racing's rap since the beginning of time. BUT, even if we eliminate the use of all drugs in the US tomorrow and take the license away from every trainer in America who ever received so much as a minor drug offence....we still won't get the crowds we used to get prior to OTB. Add to the OTB's, smart phone apps for gambling or staying home and betting on your computer and you tell me...will racing ever get a tenth of the fan base it did in the 70's? So the answer to the question posed in this thread is simple...American Pharoah won't save this troubled sport because he won the TC, that's not his job. Running and winning is his job and he does that uncommonly well. TJ

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Patuxet
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Re: Can American Pharoah Save His Troubled Sport?

Postby Patuxet » Sun Jun 14, 2015 9:23 pm

Reasons For The Decline Of Horse Racing. This assessment puts it into context with other sports.

http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0 ... se-racing/
"He is pure air and fire and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him; he is indeed a horse ..." Wm. Shakespeare - Henry V