Stakes Night Saturday Night, Conspiracy Theory, Nashville Star

Stakes Night Saturday Night

What a great night of racing last night. Starting in New Jersey, you had the NJSS finals for 3yo trotters and you had two large stake races for NJ sired 3yo pacers. Across the river, you had stake races for open 3yo pacers. North of the border, Mohawk offered four divisions of the Burlington and finals for the Classic series. Just looking at those races, you had fourteen big races.

Wouldn't it be great if somehow those races could have been packaged as 'Stakes Night Saturday Night" and then marketed to ADWs, such as TVG? Granted TVG favors the runners, but last night in addition to the Meadowlands, they managed to cover the two stake races from Yonkers, so they will cover the big races. TVG doesn't want to dedicate their feed to an evening of live coverage of an all harness racing program? Set up a network of cable channels like Fox Sports Net to cover the program with TVG harness talent handling the broadcast with additional talent and let them mention they can bet through their TVG/ADW accounts.

Can't be done? Why not? If you watch TVG now you see at times that Fox Sports Net in certain areas takes TVG's coverage. I have seen times when big races occurs out of state that the local Fox Sports Net will take the TVG broadcast. It is a win-win situation. A cable channel like Fox gets a large block of live sports programming, TVG (or another ADW) gets basically a free commercial on another channel and is able to take wagering on the event. Harness racing gets exposure for their biggest races.

Yes, I know some people will complain about a large takeout at a specific track. That needs to be worked on, but you also need to have a package that you can show off to a potential group of customers. Hopefully we can get something like this done.


Conspiracy Theory?

Stumbled upon this posting from Mibredclaimer who blogs on the thorougbred racing side of the aisle regarding the situation in Michigan. Can someone explain why the state of Michigan is looking to cut spending on the Office of the Racing Commission (ORC). In 2008, the state of MI took in $8.1 million in revenue from racing and spent $3.2 million on the racing commission. The state makes money on racing. Why would you cut out income if you have a budget crisis?


A Nashville Star

For those of you who have not seen this before, here is a little song which you will be able to related to. Who knows, one day we may lose Steve Warrington to Nashville if we aren't careful.