Dean over at Pull the Pocket has put together a top ten list of pacers and trotters for the decade. To no surprise, Somebeachsomewhere is ranked number one. Muscle Hill is listed as number five. I may have put Mister Big up one position and put Snow White as number ten, but overall, quite a well thought out list. Make sure you take a look at it and see what you think.
Exciting news in Canadian harness racing. Standardbred Canada is partnering with a private enterprise to create a brand called Canada One Racing. In the long run, Canada One is planning to offer twelve hours of harness racing a day and offer multi-track wagers, lottery type wagers (V75?) and possibly exchange wagering. Initially, it is their goal to get their racing product distributed more widely through out North America (read that the United States). What is interesting is that they are attempting to do this without including WEG (Woodbine and Mohawk as their signal is well distributed already). You can read more about this initiative here.
It will be interesting to see how the Canada One initiative takes off. The problem of course is a successful Canada One initiative has the potential to be detrimental to the American standardbred product. There are a finite number of dollars available for gambling. If American gamblers are playing V75s and other multi-track wagers in Canada, and more Canadian signals are being made available to an American audience, those will be dollars taken away from American race tracks.
It is time for American standardbred tracks to begin working together on a similar project. It always amazes me how our Canadian neighbors seem to be further ahead of us with regards to customer development. First was Xtreme Racing, then Adrenaline Fest and now Canada One Racing. I realize the rules are different in Canada than in the States, but it seems to me we should have been able to make more progress than we have thus far.
1 comment:
I can't tell you how happy I am to see a harness organization thinking outside the box Pacingguy. So what if it puts pressure on the US tracks? They need a fire lite under their behinds so they realize we fans are tired of the same old, same old. It is sad that Canada has to lead the way when it comes to trying something new that makes the headlines.
To answer your question, the time to think about banding together was prior to the racino age. I'm afraid tracks see no need to band together now. As long as the haves are happy, the have not's will suffer. Just the way it works in this dog eat dog world we live in.
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