Would be an interesting move if Churchill did buy TVG after just having almost killed the place when they pulled their signal and the Derby from them just a couple of years ago.
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20081123/BUSINESS/811230470
HRTV is good but it does not reach enough homes. My cable Comcast does not carry it and I can not have a satelite dish. Racing probably needs two channels and some balance between programming on both. HRTV was a wasteland after SA would close, now TVG is one when everything moves into the winter. Hope they keep the same people on the sets. Would be too bad if they did not.
Also is there any truth to the story that Frank Stronach will be testifying before the Senate asking for a corporate bailout. In the world of racing SA and Gulf are \"too big to fail\" and if Citi, AIG and the Autos can be let off the hook for being stupid and overpaying for assets and overborrowing to buy those assets then why shouldn\'t he.
Frank can supplement his case by telling the Senate the auto industry built a bunch a new cars nobody likes and I built a new race track nobody likes..........
Is Churchill\'s Bob Evans the same guy with all the restaurants throughout the Midwest? Whatever the end result of the sale, it sure would be nice to have a deal in place which would allow TVG and its Comcast watchers like Silver, Richie and myself among many others to have unrestricted viewing and wagering access to Santa Anita and Gulfstream this winter
I have made fewer bets on Churchill Downs racing this year than any other year I can remember.
Not because of a dislike for the product but because there was little if any access to wagering due to signal lockouts or a viable way to comfortably watch the racing.
What these people need to remember is once you lose people sometimes they just move on and never come back unless you do something to accommodate them.
Yeah, I suspect that a lot of the drop in handle nationally is due to access, as opposed to the economy, although I\'m sure that\'s a factor too. A guy wrote a piece about that in the 11/22 Bloodhorse, ending \"It\'s not the economy, stupid\".
TGJB Wrote:
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> Yeah, I suspect that a lot of the drop in handle
> nationally is due to access, as opposed to the
> economy, although I\'m sure that\'s a factor too. A
> guy wrote a piece about that in the 11/22
> Bloodhorse, ending \"It\'s not the economy, stupid\".
I can tell you that my handle has gone way down this year and the chief reason is the synthetic. I just do not feel that i understand it well enough to bet the sums that i bet on dirt or grass. Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way.
When i handicap a race, the first thing i do is determine whether or not the race is bettable. For me, there needs to be some angle where I think i am smarter than (i.e. have an edge against) the crowd. Even in the very best of times, I would say i was lucky to find 3 or 4 bettable races in a 10 race card (that is the high end). Nowadays, i have handicapped full SoCal cards and not found one bettable race. I do not even remember the last time i even bothered to handicap Keeneland.
Maybe I am not a good barometer, but, if there are others like me, I would have to think that the synthetic surfaces are an additional reason for betting declines.
For whatever it\'s worth, Verizon Fios offers both TVG and HRTV. I know Fios isn\'t available in all areas yet but if it is in your areas, it\'s a nice solution to the problems that many of us have faced over the years.
My handle has dropped way off because of synthetic. Brings in too many more variables.
Not only do you need to deal with horses trying synthetic for the first time, you need to deal with the horses who are carrying bad form switching back to dirt. That puts us in a position where we need to guess if X trainer has this horse goin the wrong way, or the animal simply doesnt care for synthetic. For me its an expensive guess, one Im not willing to take. Plus we have a bunch of different synthetics, none of them the same.
Its unfortunate that horseracing usually finds a way to self destruct, this is horseracings Coup De Grace. What was sold as the future of horseracing has been the death of many bigger players
The economy is certainly not great, however the economy has not changed my betting patterns at all. My handle drop is exclusively based on synthetic surfaces.
From the outset, no one panned synths as much as I did. Truthfully I thought the handle would drop MUCH more because of it. I do not believe it really has.
Mike
I\'ve bet considerably less this year, and the spread of synthetic tracks is the main reason.
The synthetics should have been tested at a handful of tracks like Turfway and Woodbine for at least five years before any of our major tracks installed it. It was a terrible knee-jerk reaction.
DRF reports two more horses broke down at Hollywood on Saturday.
miff Wrote:
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> From the outset, no one panned synths as much as I
> did. Truthfully I thought the handle would drop
> MUCH more because of it. I do not believe it
> really has.
>
>
> Mike
Hey Mike
I think it is a very hard thing to measure because there are so many variables and what do you use a reference point? Maybe handle would have gone way up at certain meets if they stayed on dirt because they are marquee, have lower take, etc but only stayed the same because they switched to artificial. How does one measure that? Santa Anita used to be my favorite place to play, and I did not make one bet there during the recently finished Oak Tree meet other than the Breeders Cup (and I wish I hadn\'t even done that). Even if others feel the same way, the handle can come out looking the same but what has been lost is the upward swing that it might have had on dirt. Maybe somebody can look at places like SoCal and Keeneland and compare what the grass handles used to be in relation to the dirt handles and see if the same relation holds up. However, i see problems with that comparison too. I really do not know how one measures. I guess only time will tell.
I hope one day i will feel comfortable enough to bet on synthetic tracks, but i think it is going to take a while. In the meantime, i am saddened to watch the sport i love withering because of the foolishness of the people who run it, but also recognize an opportunity to see other things in life as horseracing loses the hold it has had over me for the last 30+ years.
SCM2
Ill-bred Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I\'ve bet considerably less this year, and the
> spread of synthetic tracks is the main reason.
>
> The synthetics should have been tested at a
> handful of tracks like Turfway and Woodbine for at
> least five years before any of our major tracks
> installed it. It was a terrible knee-jerk
> reaction.
>
> DRF reports two more horses broke down at
> Hollywood on Saturday.
I have a different opinion..If synths are the future, mandate it everywhere..This way every horse is running on a synth surface. It will take a few years for form to work itself out but it will work a lot better than what we have now.
My handle has dropped significantly over the past few months and will probably continue to do so as I can\'t get a feel for things anymore.
I\'ve been doing this since I was 9 years old in the OTB\'s, I\'ve been doing it for 25 years since and at this point I think that 9 yr old would beat the hell out of me in a handicapping contest.
So Cal,
Your point is valid in that it may have been possible for handle to rise at some venues if they had not gone to synth and stayed with dirt.The racetrack management (empty suits) who knee-jerked reacted on the change to synth due to the barking animal loons at al, are very defensive about the change to synths.They never ever cared or considered that you, I and many other regulars want no part synths from a gambling perspective.
Prominent horsemen in Cali who did not champion synths were not in favor with track management when they spoke out against synths.Again, this also comes down to a unified players movement withholding betting at synth tracks. If that were to happen, there would be no more synthetics, period!. Short of that,things will stay as is although the economy will have an adverse affect on handle for at least the next 6 months.
I do believe that synth has lost it\'s momentum in many dirt dirt venues like NY,KY and Florida.I was told that Frank Stronach does not like synths either but deferred to the management of Magna tracks.NYRA, with strong support from the horsemen want no part it for racing.
Mike
Cov,
Does FIOS also get channel 71 NYC OTB? thanks.
Mike
I live in Jersey (no comments from the peanut gallery please) so we sadly don\'t get that NYC OTB Channel on any of our cable systems. It\'s a good channel. I love watching it when I am up in the hotel at Saratoga during the summer.
Thanks Cov,
CH 71, NYC OTB very good feed with NYRA\'s Andy Serling,Jason Blewitt commenting and Jan Ruston providing some nice info from the paddock.Many of my friends get the TVG or HRTV feed and hate the people commenting except for some pretty lady from CALI.
Mike
Lost Cause-
I see your point. If synthetic tracks are the future, and dirt tracks will be phased out completely one day, we may as well make all of them synthetic now. It would at least get us out of the current situation where you have to make wild guesses between surface and form as these horses move from one track to another.
But here\'s the problem -- we don\'t know if synthetics are the future, yet we have installed them at many major tracks!??
How will the synthetics hold up after 5 or 10 years of racing? Are they really better for the horses? Are they cost effective? Do the best horses win? What will they do to the future of the breed? Will synthetic tracks make horse racing a better or worse sport? How will they affect the sport\'s popularity? Mutuel handle?
Shouldn\'t we get some answers before we convert all our tracks to attic insulation?
I don\'t even think it is as simple as synthetic. There are so many different types of synthetic. I don\'t know yet how much of a difference there is between them. Maybe there isn\'t much difference, maybe there is. I do know that I don\'t know yet how or if I need to make an adjustment for a horse coming to/from ProRide vs some other synthetic, so I am not going to commit much on these surfaces. I will stick to the NYRA tracks for now.
Something\'s up with that Hollywood track. Shakis on Friday, two horses on Saturday, and according to TVG another horse broke down after the wire in the nightcap on Sunday.
Rencently, our stable has had two horses with irreversible suspensory damage to their front fetlocks on that same Hollywood surface. They can never race again...one horse the damage is so bad he probably can\'t even be ridden again.
That\'s not my idea of safety. In the same amount of time, how many breakdowns have we had at Churchill? I\'m at the races all the time and have not yet seen one this fall meet.
The pretty lady to which you refer is Christina Olivares and I don\'t want to take this board in the wrong direction but let\'s just say my wife and I have an understanding about that particular situation and I will leave it at that....lol
So sorry about the horses that were injured. Game is so brutally difficult that way.
Almost to a person, every vet/trainer I have spoken with believes that there is just as much injury risk on the poly as there is on a good dirt track like the ones in NY.
Such ashame.
Another negative factor in handicapping synth is pace. You can handicap a race with 3 one dimensional speeds and bet a closer and 2 of the speeds will just surrender and you\'ll lose to the \'loose\' frontrunner. I can\'t seem to \'predict\' the jockey strategy as much on synthetic, which means i don\'t know whether to bet big on speed, stalkers or deep closers.
More than one vet in NY thinks the elimination of any kind of front caulks/bends will help with the breakdown issue. I think that breakdowns are kinda random regardless of surface. Too many ouchy ones are sent to the track and that too contributes.
Mike