Horse racing feed back to Nevada sports books

If you follow horse racing long enough, you know that nothing ever comes easy. This week was a mix of emotions as first there was a blackout of seven racing signals controlled by Monarch Content Management.

Fortunately, the interruption lasted less than two days. By midafternoon Thursday, a temporary agreement between Monarch and the Nevada Pari-Mutuel Association allowed those signals to return.

The two most popular winter signals, Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita Park, will both be available today.

So while that issue is still to be permanently determined, we received the good news that TVG and HRTV will merge. I had suggested this marriage in a column back on Oct. 10, 2008. The reasons I gave back then are even stronger today.

The best comparison for the bundling of the two horse racing networks is ESPN and ESPN2. There now will be unique product on the two networks and no more overlapping of races.

The TVG people believe 5,000 more races can be shown live. And with TVG distributed to nearly twice the number of households as HRTV, you can expect the top-tier racetracks will be moving to TVG.

I can envision a network schedule where TVG will show the three biggest tracks spaced out 10 minutes apart, such as 1:00, 1:10 and 1:20.

Then HRTV could show the next three major tracks also in 10-minute increments such as 1:05, 1:15 and 1:25.

It would behoove the racetracks to cooperate because this will be in their own best interests. Who knows? Maybe a forced cooperation among racetracks will spread to other parts of the industry.

There is no doubt that factionalism is one of the major obstacles to progress. If this first bridge proves the benefit of teamwork, it may lead to bigger and better.

Another issue that needs to be resolved is the lack of product on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays in horse racing. This is bad for business and clearly bad for TVG and HRTV.

There is no reason to have 20 racetracks operating on the weekend and only four or five the early part of the week.

If some smaller tracks would be willing to adjust their racing schedule, TVG and HRTV could guarantee they would be a big fish in an albeit smaller pond on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

An ESPN example would be when they offer smaller football conferences the chance to play in prime time on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. The national exposure pays the conference more money and may even help in its recruiting.

It is exciting to think that this merger could finally lead to fulfilling some of the goals that were originally projected.

TVG is fully HD integrated. To bring the entire sport to this broadcast quality, many tracks will now need to invest in this infrastructure.

There is also the benefit of lowering costs. I suspect the redundancy between the two networks will lead to layoffs. It’s a painful thought as I know many of the TVG and HRTV folks personally. But there is going to be cost-cutting.

The two biggest winners could be Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita Park. Gulfstream picked up four more months of racing from Calder, while Santa Anita gained two more months from the closure of Hollywood Park.

Their handle could show big increases as top-tier tracks on TVG.

Richard Eng’s horse racing column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He can be reached at rich_eng@hotmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @richeng4propick.