Money for Nothing - by Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:52:00 GMT

Getting a seat at the grade I Kentucky Derby currently presented by Yum! Brands has always been tough, but getting tickets for the 2012 edition just got tougher, particularly on fans’ wallets.

Churchill Downs introduced a new policy last month requiring everyone applying for tickets online—now the only way to apply—to pay a $100 application fee. The fan then submits up to 10 different preferences for tickets ranging from $230 to $900 per seat, covering both the Kentucky Oaks and Derby days. If the fan gets tickets, then half the application fee is applied to the cost of the tickets and $50 is kept by Churchill Downs as an administrative fee. Here’s the rub: Should the fan not get tickets, Churchill Downs still keeps two Andrew Jacksons and an Alexander Hamilton.

That’s right. Fifty dollars just for the privilege of requesting and being denied Derby tickets.

Surely some other professional sports franchise has levied and justified a similarly excessive fee as a precedent for Churchill Downs’ attempt to sell this change as something besides a blatant money grab, right? Not exactly.

The New York Jets come the closest, having charged a $50 maintenance fee to the NFL franchise’s season ticket holders from 2003 through 2008, according to Jon Greenberg, executive editor of Team Marketing Report, a leading publisher of sports marketing and sponsorship information. However, the Jets have since dropped the tremendously unpopular fee. Other teams, such as the Chicago Cubs, are not charging more but are asking season ticket holders to part with their money sooner. When Cubs season ticket holders notify the team in October they are willing to commit to another year of woe, they used to have until mid-January to pay in full. Now ticket holders have to pay 10% of their ticket packages by Nov. 16.

Sports teams will continue finding new ways to wring money out of fans, but the Jets and Cubs don’t compare with Churchill Downs because their fans got something for their money. This year many Derby fans will get nothing but fleeced.

The track does have some logic behind its onerous fee. The goal is to eliminate the proliferation of tickets winding up in the hands of unscrupulous ticket brokers. In the past, brokers have hired homeless people to stand in line at the Louisville track to secure tickets. Then, when the process went solely online in 2010, many college students were in the brokers’ army, snapping up seats.

“When we went back through the purchases, you would see 15-20 people with tickets all going to the same address,” said Darren Rogers, Churchill Downs senior director of communications. “People need to understand it is a three-month process going through the requests. We have charges associated with every transaction and it is a cumbersome process.”

Besides adding the fee, Rogers said the track will strictly enforce a maximum of six tickets-per-household. So if Joe Smith is working for a broker at 123 Maple Lane, then he’ll get his six tickets and all others who applied using the 123 Maple Lane address will have their names tossed out.

“I think this will put more tickets into the hands of fans,” Rogers said. “We really feel for the customer who in the past has been sold a duplicate ticket that has already been voided when they arrive at the track or a counterfeit ticket.”

There is a group with guaranteed seats for Derby and Oaks days. It includes people who paid $3,000 to $60,000 for a personal seat license at the Louisville racetrack, season box holders, sponsors, certain VIPs, and the horsemen associated with these premier races. After that, the remaining tickets are made available through only two outlets—Churchill Downs or its partner Quint Events, based in North Carolina. As of right now, no tickets are available, Rogers said, and yet several online sites are advertising 2012 Derby tickets. StubHub.com, for example, on Oct. 8 showed available tickets ranging in price from $54 in the grandstand to a seat on Millionaires Row for $125,500.

Churchill Downs deserves credit for improving the process, but it could have done so without the $50 fee, which will hurt more fans than it will discourage inventive brokers. Also, horse racing needs as many fans as possible. Let’s not give people another reason to abandon the sport by taking their money and giving them nothing in return. At least when it happens at the betting windows, fans are being entertained at a live event and at least have an opportunity to make money.

Rogers said the market will ultimately decide the fate of Churchill Downs’ new policy. So racing fans, exercise your right as consumers and speak up.

Protecting the Brand - by Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:14:00 GMT

Perception is reality. Over and over we hear this phrase as it relates to politics, business, and even Thoroughbred racing. These three words are used so often because the concept is real and powerful.

Unfortunately, racing is dealing with its own shady perceptions. At the forefront is a belief that North American horses need race-day medication to compete. Race-day medication means allowing a horse to run on the anti-bleeding drug Salix.

Having horses running on drugs is not sitting well with people in this country; heck, it’s not even sitting well with our fans.

The “Driving sustainable growth for Thoroughbred racing and breeding” study done this year by the international management and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. indicated only 46% of racing fans would recommend horse racing to other people. By comparison, 82% of baseball fans, 81% of football fans, and 55% of poker players are evangelists for their sport of choice. Then when McKinsey asked how many racing fans considered themselves “proud to be a fan,” only 35% said yes compared with 66% for other sports.

Can we blame Salix for the bad perception? We can blame a big part of it. In the same study 78% of horse racing fans said medication was an issue negatively affecting the sport, and 36% said it was among the top-three issues facing the industry.

Part of the perception problem is the general public does not distinguish among Salix or cocaine or anabolic steroids. Drugs are drugs.

Salix does help horses with exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging, known more commonly as bleeding or the rupture of capillaries in the lungs due to the tremendously high level of air pressure while horses race. But not every horse is a bleeder, and not every horse requires Salix on race day. We know this because horses are running without it on race days in every other racing jurisdiction in the world.

So now we are caught in a war of rhetoric. The pro-Salix camp says the North American racing industry will collapse if we don’t keep race-day Salix use—field size will diminish, and owners will abandon the sport. The anti-Salix camp says the breed will weaken and the sport wither because fans old and new will not support horse racing if racing on medication persists.

Fans are racing’s customers. Fans also become bettors and owners. If we don’t deal aggressively with the perception that horses must race on medication, then the reality is we’ll have fewer owners, bettors, and fans.

Dealing in Facts

One of the biggest challenges in the debate on medication use has been squaring comments with facts. We had a question raised about a statement made by trainer Rick Hiles, a member of the Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council, during a KEDRC meeting in May. Hiles relayed a story from an unnamed individual who wanted to know why an unnamed European country had reported no positive test results for phenylbutazone, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called Bute. The reason, the individual told Hiles, was that the country doesn’t test for Bute, and we repeated Hiles’ story in this column (The Blood-Horse of June 4, page 1515). We followed up with Dominique de Wenden, secretary general of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. He said by e-mail: “We are not aware of any Western European country not testing for Bute.” When Hiles was contacted and asked about De Wenden’s comment, Hiles said his source was referring to England and that the source had actually talked with someone in a lab overseas. The reason for no positives, Hiles said, might be because the threshold is high enough that no one crosses it.

The bottom line of this tale is that all Western European countries do test for Bute and the level is far lower than the 2 micrograms/ml allowed in the United States. Dr. Rick Sams, director of the HFL Sports Science testing lab in Lexington, said the level of detection in Europe corresponds to the same level at which Bute can no longer be detected in urine, so any amount detected is considered a positive. We couldn’t find an exact threshold for Bute, but Sams said it is in nanograms/ml. A nanogram is 1/1,000th of a microgram. One reason England does not have any positives is the recommended withdrawal time for oral and intravenous Bute is seven days, according to the European Horserace Scientific Liaison Committee. To be below the 2 microgram/ml threshold in this country, horsemen cannot give 2 grams of Bute within 36 hours of a race.

Navigating the complex world of medication use in racehorses is tricky enough even when all the facts are known. Let’s hope everyone serving on an industry board, council, or committee dealing with medication has a renewed commitment to shining light on the truth rather than clouding the issues with hearsay.

What's Going On Here : fans, wgoh

Money for Nothing - by Eric Mitchell

Protecting the Brand - by Eric Mitchell