ARCI Conference: Social Media, Grass Roots May Be Best Way to Attract New Fans

(ARCI Thoroughbred racing roundtable from left: moderator Dan Metzger, Tina Bond, Mike Ziegler and Terry Finley)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After years of horse-racing participants lamenting the lack of a national marketing program, the better solution might be found in new grassroots ventures.

That conclusion evolved during a pair of Thursday afternoon panels at the Association of Racing Commissioners International’s annual Animal Welfare and Integrity Conference. Speakers in the sessions staged at Churchill Downs didn’t sugarcoat major issues facing racing: declining foal crop, short fields, the need to create new bettors, horse owners and breeders. But panelists also expressed optimism for racing’s future, even if unsure what that might look like.

The concept of Gen Z influencers as a powerful marketing tool was highlighted with racing’s exposure from 26-year-old Griffin Johnson to his millions of social media followers. Johnson early on became a 2.5-percent owner in Kentucky Derby contender Sandman through West Point Thoroughbreds and The Jockey Club-funded America’s Best Racing’s “A Stake in Stardom” initiative.

“His demographic is probably 16 to 28,” said West Point president Terry Finley. “I’d say they responded to his messages and his posts incredibly: 10 X above what we thought would be a good outcome. But I also heard the 16- and 18-year-olds sat down with their parents and watched the Derby together for the first time…. We can’t be sure where we’re able to make a good impression on a potential fan, potential bettor or owner. But it’s out there. And it’s online. People talk about billboards, about advertising in the periodicals and other places. It’s online. The videos that (Johnson) put up garnered tens of millions of views that were more than three seconds.”

Finley was part of the conference’s thoroughbred racing roundtable, along with Churchill Downs Race Track vice president/general manager Mike Ziegler and Tina Bond, an owner-breeder who is president of both the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and the national THA.

“The social media impact of this past Derby was exponentially bigger than Derby 150,” Ziegler said. “Now, whether that has to do with Griffin Johnson and the other influencers here for Derby, but that’s really impactful. That’s what we have to give credit to, to increase television viewership. People are getting notifications about horse racing and the Kentucky Derby who otherwise wouldn’t be paying attention.”

As far as needing a national horse-racing marketing campaign, Bond said “absolutely… .I don’t think we’ve ever done a good job of it, and I’ve been in this business 45 years.”

By contrast, Finley said his opinion changed over the weekend, seeing first-hand the impact of online influencers.

“We have a path now where we don’t have to guess,” he said of a marketing strategy. “… Think about the difference in giving a 25-year-old a chance to hit a button to come to TwinSpires to sign up with a coupon code, as opposed to seeing a TV ad and then having to go to a website, and if they haven’t been exposed to our industry, to learn a little bit about it…. I don’t see a path forward for a national marketing program. But I see a lot of opportunities for the racetracks overall to be very surgical in their investment in their areas to get people to be made aware of what’s going on at the racetrack and what you can do to be part of the races by betting on that race.”

Another panel highlighted the efforts of Light Up Racing, patterned after an Australian grass-roots program created after some high-profile horse injuries and deaths. The mission is to provide transparency, real-time updates and accurate information about increased efforts to keep horses safe while also dispelling misinformation by engaging teams of volunteers to post responses setting the record straight.

Price Bell, one of Light Up Racing’s founders, used the example of social-media posts accusing 2-year-old racing of being bad for horses. Light Up Racing’s ambassadors point out that studies have established that 2-year-old racing actually benefits bone development.

The session titled “Marketing Racing in Today’s Competitive World” also featured The Heart of Horse Racing, an enterprise created by Bond in partnership with award-winning branding videographer Jimmy Chaffin of Integrated Marketing, which specializes in creative strategy and visual storytelling.

The presentation included video interviews of trainers, jockeys and fans at Saratoga that could be multi-purposed into long-form storytelling, short-story telling, and 30-second clips. The concept is to share horse racing’s heart-tugging stories and passion for the horses, using targeted technology to get those stories beyond people already interested in racing.

Bell applauded Bond and Chaffin’s venture, saying, “I don’t know if we can continue to look at industry organizations to tell our story. We’ve done that forever, and I think we have to look at ourselves to tell the message.”

Added Bond: “I think there’s a place for all of us. We just need to coordinate it. You’re 100 percent right; we need to do it. The people of the industry need to get behind our efforts, because you can’t wait for the big organizations to get behind our efforts and do it.”

Dan Metzger, president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders’ Association, moderated the Thoroughbred Round Table and asked tough questions to panelists Bond, Finley and Ziegler. Here are a few:

Is racing’s current business model sustainable for tracks, owners and breeders?

Ziegler: “Look what happened this past weekend, where Derby 151 — a year after the historic record-setting Derby — we continue to grow. Racing is not dead, everybody….  We were up 6 percent (in betting) Derby Week. The bigger key performance stat we’re looking at is the television ratings –  the highest since 1989. When you’re growing terrestrial TV, there’s a pretty good story to tell.”

Finley: “I’d say it depends on the day of the week and the track that you’re at. But there are challenges. Friday and Saturday (Oaks and Derby) I wasn’t thinking like that, because there’s such a great vibe, electricity and the great fields, all the color and pageantry of the Derby. But we have to balance that out with the Wednesday and Thursday at Aqueduct or Parx or any of the other tracks. It’s an ecosystem that is very complex and tenuous in some places. But I do know that very few people are in the business who don’t have an incredible amount of passion. Of all the friction we have in the business, I really don’t see that many situations where people have mal intent. When you have that, I think you have a future.”

Bond: “It’s not a sustainable business model. Very few of the horses make a profit. It’s very costly to do business in New York… It’s wonderful on the big days, but there are all of the little owners and little trainers that feed this wonderful sport, that helped get us to this point and to grow the sport. I think that’s why partnerships have become so popular; they can defray the cost of training and owning a racehorse. I think people are maneuvering in the industry. We’re all in it because we love it, not because we make a fortune.”

Can our sport prosper on the shoulders of Kentucky, New York, Arkansas and maybe a few others?

Finley: “I hope we never get to the point where we have to answer that question. It would be tough…. We have great challenges ahead of us, but we also have great opportunities. I think it’s safe to say that in five years our industry will be significantly different than it is today. We’re headed into a period of great change. But our industry is made up of two things: our horses and our people. Our horses are here, and we’re taking better care of them. Our industry, on the whole, is safer than it was four or five years ago. We’ve had some new players on the owner side of things. I know betting is certainly a key aspect of the ecosystem, and I’d say we have some upside there. We have to keep attracting people who are going to get interested and intrigued and excited about betting horses…. I heard through the grapevine that (Churchill’s TwinSpires betting platform) new sign-ups were through the roof over the weekend.

“It’s not going to be easy. I roll my eyes when I hear people advocate that it’s a simple solution, and they have the solution…. (But) it’s an industry that you have to keep your hope and optimism open and alive every single day.”

Ziegler: “It’s a challenge everywhere else. Look at the Fair Grounds (in New Orleans). It’s tough to fill those fields that time of the year. That’s a big problem the industry really needs to get together and wrap our arms around. It’s sustainable right now, but for how long? Purses are great in Kentucky, New York, Arkansas. But outside of that, it’s hard for people to break even…. I do think the foal crop is catching up to us.”

Bond cautioned that while internet wagering continues to offer growth possibilities, the on-track experience is what reliably hooks new fans. “Not only do we need owners and foals, but we need bettors,” she said. “You have to have the experience to want to be part of this. If you don’t see it live, it’s different. You can flip that channel really quick on your TV.”

How do you see the future of racing in California and Florida?

Ziegler: “People who own horses like to watch them race. The opportunities that could be lost by the wealth in both those jurisdictions is mind-boggling. If they can’t watch their horses race, we lose those potential owners. That’s an incredible challenge for the industry.… We can’t afford to have the investment leave the industry as a whole from those two states.”

Author’s tough love for racing says cultural changes “must infuse every decision from the size of the stallion’s book to the writing of the condition book.”

Katie Bo Lillis’ video keynote address

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The topic was “Tough Love for the Sport and Horses I Love” as Katie Bo Lillis delivered Thursday’s keynote address at the Association of Rcing Commissioners International conference staged at Churchill Downs and the downtown Seelbach Hilton.

Lillis, who grew up in thoroughbred racing, addressed the regulators via video after her job as a CNN senior reporter covering intelligence and national security intervened with her scheduled in-person appearance. In the works for two years, her book “Death of a Racehorse: An American Story” was released on Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.

Lillis’ message: Thoroughbred racing’s long-term future hinges on every participant — backside, frontside, the farm, sales — finding the small ways to improve horses’ welfare from foaling through retirement. That includes challenging time-honored practices to question whether the motivation is the horse’s health, or rather to improve its ability to perform.

“Perhaps perform more safely and more comfortably, of course,” Lillis said in her video presentation shown at Churchill Downs. “But the goal is still performance. Performance is how you earn money. Performance is getting to the racetrack. Otherwise the horse would stay in his stall and he’d eat carrots.”

Among her examples: “the decision to try just one more shot of vitamins to get a tired and sore stallion to breed. The decision to put screws in a yearling’s knees so he’s more salable at auction. To squeeze in that joint injection as close as you can to a race because you genuinely believe less inflation in the joint during a race is better for the animal.”

Lillis was immersed in the thoroughbred world before switching her career to journalism. Her mom, Robin Williams, was herself an award-winning journalist and horsewoman who was chair of the Virginia racing commission when Colonial Downs opened. Lillis progressed from hotwalker to working at Gainesway Farm to graduating from the Darley Flying Start program in 2011. She wrote a college thesis on the regulation of horse racing, telling the regulators on hand, “I’m a nerd for racing commissions and the very important work you have done for this industry.” In the video, she talks about her affection for racetrackers.

She said she did not write about the individual horsemen she interviewed who do everything they can to put the horse first.

Instead, she said, “I wrote about the regulatory, social and economic system that they exist in and the little, almost invisible ways that can harm the animal, the system that can lead the even the best horsemen to make small decisions for individual animals that might not live up to the highest ideal of care…. That’s because, in many cases, the purpose of the care the animal is receiving is not its health. It’s to enable it to perform.”

However, Lillis said she’s as optimistic about the industry’s future as she has been in a long time. She noted that the rates of catastrophic injuries have been steadily decreasing. She said it was encouraging to hear, as she reported the book, “the little ways in which horsemen themselves and their colleagues had been more conservative. This can only be a good thing for the animals, for the sport, for the industry.”

Lillis said she had one simple message for the industry:

“You cannot treat breakdowns or drug positives as a PR problem,” she said. “The solution is not more positive stories about racing in national media. Those are great, sure. I loved (Netflix’s) Race for the Crown. But if racing doesn’t bring its fundamental approach in line with society’s broader expectations for care, you could write a thousand fun stories about all the great parts of racing, and it isn’t going to help get an increasingly socially conscious public on board and back to the betting window.

“The industry has to find a way as a whole – and I mean every state where racing is conducted – to better shield its core commodity from the basic and brute force of the marketplace. This is almost certainly a matter of writing good regulation uniformly imposed, however that is done.… Moreover, regulation has to reach beyond the backstretch and the starting gate to cover the entirety of the animal’s life.

“But the basic prescription that I’m offering isn’t technocratic or regulatory. You all will have to argue out the finer points of that yourselves. I’m not here to litigate HISA (the Horseracing Integrity & Safety Authority). The prescription I’m offering is cultural. It’s a modesty of ambition, and it must infuse every decision from the size of the stallion’s book to the writing of the condition book.”

Lillis compared the situation facing racing to the great Kentucky author and farmer Wendall Berry’s writing about soil loss.

“‘It is lost a little at a time over millions of acres by the careless acts of millions of people,’” she read. “‘It cannot be saved by heroic acts of gigantic technology, but only by millions of small acts and restraints, conditioned by small fidelities, skills and desires. Soil loss is ultimately a cultural problem. It will be corrected only by cultural solutions.’”

Other roundtable discussions Thursday centered on racing integrity investigations, standardbred racing, quarter-horse racing, along with sessions on accrediting officials, a legal discussion on updates to HISA and HIWU (Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit),

ARCI awards: The Indiana Horse Racing Commission’s Deena Pitman was selected recipient of the peer-selected Len Foote Award, presented each year to an executive director in recognition of exemplary service and contribution to racing integrity. The William May Award, in recognition of an individual or entity that has had a profound positive effect on professional racing, was given to the Race Track Chaplaincy of America, with executive director Dan Waits accepting the award.

ARCI President Ed Martin also paid tribute to ARCI stalwarts who passed within the previous year: well-known steward and Delaware harness-racing executive director Hugh Gallagher and horse owner Ken Lowe, chairman of the West Virginia racing commission.