Published:
November 8, 2010 04:29 pm EST
Sports broadcaster ESPN announced today that the final hour of its Breeders' Cup coverage on Saturday, November 6 was almost three times higher than
last year.
The last hour of the broadcast, which ran from 6:15 - 7:15 p.m. (ET), brought in a preliminary rating of 3.1 -- an increase of 182 per cent over the same time slot last year (1.1).
The spike was spearheaded by the then-undefeated Zenyatta, who was looking to extend her career unbeaten streak to 20 in the Breeders' Cup Classic. The six-year-old mare would see her undefeated string snapped by the aptly-named Blame.
Related Story
Tags
When a super-star like
When a super-star like Zenyatta comes along and grabs the attention of the media, people come out of their caves. Most days, there is nothing at all in the media about horse racing that catches people's attenion.
Promoting a race like this
Promoting a race like this is not difficult but how often are we going to have a situation like this, an unbeaten mare racing against the boys in her final race where thev purse is 5 million and it is carried on national television. This type of situation comes along once every 20 or 30 years. How do you promote the regular overnight card of racing which makes up about 99.9 per cent of the cards. It is a whole different ballgame.
The race game can use all kinds of gimmicks and attract all kinds of people who are not gamblers and never will be or they can put the focus on attracting gamblers. How do they do that, by getting competitive with poker and sports and other forms of gambling that is taking away there customer base and keeping generation next all to themselves. People like me who have walked away from the race game are not there to be entertained, we were there because we wanted to gamble it's just that simple. What we want is a fair game not the New York city Rockettes entertaining us. In other words promotion only works if you attract gamblers and what gamblers want is a fair shake.
And there is no interest in
And there is no interest in Horse racing??
Market it and you create interest!!