Friday, September 17, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RICHARD ENG: Dispute puts bettors in crossfire

When there's a squabble among members of the horse racing industry, they have a funny way of settling it. They take a baseball bat and hit you, the horse player, over the head with it.

I don't mean that literally, of course. For example, there's a brouhaha going on between the New York Racing Association (Aqueduct, Belmont Park, Saratoga), the Television Games Network (TVG), and a consortium of racetracks grouped under the name Mid-Atlantic Cooperative (MAC).

In brief, the MAC is cutting off the Belmont signal because of a new agreement between the NYRA and TVG. A clause within the agreement restricts Pennsylvania from showing NYRA races on local cable systems, and two states, New Hampshire and Virginia, are prohibited from accepting NYRA wagers.

I really don't care who's right or wrong in this. I care because any punishment is being meted out on the horse players served by the MAC. NYRA has the best racing and lowest takeout in the United States, and MAC horse players are being banned from it.

The dispute points out a bigger problem for horse racing. Why these groups show no mercy to one another is because they're fighting like piranhas over a finite number of betting dollars and horse racing fans. It would be different if the parimutuel pie was growing and more racing fans were being nurtured.

But that would take hard work, more marketing dollars, and creativity.

TVG deserves credit for gaining entree this week into 13 new markets through Comcast Cable. It's a fact that the more your product is on TV, the more people will watch it, and just maybe it will track on their radar screen.

• SIMULCAST SWITCHED OFF -- This week's knucklehead award goes to the bosses at New York City OTB.

In the summer on dark days at NYRA, Monmouth Park is NYCOTB's most popular simulcast. A week ago the switch was being made from Saratoga to Belmont. But NYCOTB, on a Belmont dark day, didn't air the Monmouth simulcast, and it heard about it from its customers.

Turns out the vice president of marketing thought heavy rain the day before would force Monmouth to cancel live racing. Of course, Monmouth did race and it was a beautiful sunny day in Oceanport, N.J.

Richard Eng's horse racing column is published Friday. He can be contacted via e-mail at rich_eng@hotmail.com.