b4breeding

Wow! a breath of fresh air in the debate about how to market harness racing – please check out the article by Dean Towers on page 5 of the 12 April edition of Harness Update newsletter.

It’s called “Tape It, Mic It Up and Package It: A New Way to Show Harness Racing”. Or find it under http://www.harnessracingupdate.com.

I’ve raised some outside the square ideas over the years as well about the need to change the way we present our product for the less obsessed viewer or to attract interest of a younger audience. See my blog of November 2012 “A race – the short form of the game”. 

It is interesting that as a sport we have two tv channels dedicated to racing, one radio station virtually dedicated to it, and race meetings of one sort or another held daily – and yet we cannot seem to expand our audience or our participants. Other sports or entertainment would love to have such incredible opportunities to showcase their product!

For me, the key issue is exactly what the Harness Update article suggests: We cannot grow our audience until we cross over from targeting the participants themselves, to targeting people who are not yet involved – “mainstream”. What makes them excited? What engages them? What entertains them? The answers are more about human nature than about betting products. New Zealand Lotto gets millions of dollars each week spent on hope, human stories and a brief 5 minutes of action – and simplicity. We could learn a lot from that.