Horse Racing Looking to Fantasy Sports?

BloodHorse magazine in their July 24, 2010 issue had an opinion piece titled "Fantasy Sports: An Opportunity - and a Competitor." The article described the size and growth of the fantasy sports market, the typical demographic, a warning about the potential threat and the potential opportunity. I think the author pointing towards fantasy sports isn't that bad, but his findings are off.

The quote from the article takes recent information from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association's research. There are approximately 27 million Americans and approximately 3 million Canadians that play fantasy sports. That's a pretty good size group of people. With regard to the American player, he is male, 37, college-educated, and has a household income of $94,000 - a great demographic that the horse racing industry would love. As is well known by the typical horseplayer demographic, you would think you need an AARP card in order to place a bet.

Here's where the author is off the mark. The author lays out a decent overview of TVG's Fantasy Horseracing product, which allows players to create a league of horses, trainers and jockeys. He thinks that horse racing would be a great fantasy sports vehicle, which would attract fantasy sports players, who may then become horseplayers to some extent. Wrong, wrong, wrong. No chance.

Why? Super simple.

As anyone who knows fantasy sports (i.e. me) can tell you, fantasy enthusiasts are primarily FANS OF THE SPORT. If you are a fantasy baseball player, odds are you are a baseball fan, then you got into fantasy baseball. The same is true for football, basketball, NASCAR, etc., etc. Fantasy sports players play fantasy sports to get more out of the sport they enjoy. Only the most geeky would have statistics be an attractant. For those, baseball is king...and in my opinion cricket probably isn't far behind - but cricket isn't as popular in the US.

What will not happen is horse racing fantasy being a big draw and sucking in new fans like Washington DC sucking in your tax dollars. Nope. Fantasy horse racing players are horse racing fans who got into fantasy horse racing. If you're not into horse racing, you're not going to play fantasy horse racing. This is where the author is way off.

The author is correct that the demographic would be very attractive to horse racing. They are younger, affluent and intelligent - exactly the kind of new handicappers the industry needs. I've got an idea of how you get these folks, but it's not this way. More on that in a future post.