Trey’s Two Cents Worth: Less downtime and more action!

While taking a break from watching all the great harness racing action, I was glued to the NFL Draft last week. This is where the brightest and most talented college football players are given a chance at a professional career.

The draft kicked off Thursday (Apr 27) evening with the first round of selections. The 32 franchises have had months to search and scout the top young football talent in the world. Instead, 31 young men’s lives were changed by having their names called during the first night of picks. It would generally be 32, but the Miami Dolphins forfeit their pick for breaking league rules.

Once the draft begins, each team is given up to 15 minutes to make a selection. This event has not been flashy in past years and has been hard to watch. However, the NFL has become a spectacle that 11.5 million people watch, even with an interval between each draft pick. The NFL and its broadcasting partners could create a total production without downtime, eventually building to the following selection.

We should incorporate this model into the harness racing world better. We, too, have 15-20 minutes between each race, and it is often full of silence. Yes, some tracks have been doing a fine job adding commentary between the races, but it still could have more.

There is only a limited amount of time that an individual has to give to watching something. There are countless amounts of streaming services, movies, sports and video games that constantly grab our attention. The younger generation has been gradually perfecting the ability to manage several of these simultaneously, but it must be worth our time.

I can personally speak about this, as I constantly have HPIBet.com open while I also have the hockey playoffs or UFC card on another screen. At the same time, I will flip through Twitter and Facebook on my phone while maintaining my stable of the mobile game, Off and Pacing. When no race is on, I will turn on the Blue Jays game, and sometimes the action is more exciting than the actual race. It’s easy for me to watch the replay after, but that’s where you might lose the casual fan. I know I will always go back to racing at some point, but that is not as easy for others who are newer to the sport.

I draw back on something Century Down’s on-air personality James Jungquist said to me during an interview.

He said “we need to make going to the track an event out more than just gambling for a few hours.”

James is absolutely correct!

Why is the Kentucky Derby the spectacle that it is? It’s because NBC and Churchill Downs have turned into an event more significant than just some horse race. All kinds of celebrities are seen with funky outfits and dazzling hats, but once the Kentucky dust settles, they are gone until next year.

We must strive to make the weekly night of racing our version of that to get new fans to check out the action. However, there is more to it than just getting people to the physical track. We must provide a high level of broadcasting to steal the attention of those who wish to remain at home.

With the ability to wager on everything from presidential elections to the gender of the next Kardashian child, we need to have more than just the stream available. So why should the younger generation watch and wager on harness racing? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is getting harder and harder for me. The takeout rates are incredibly high at most tracks, and horse racing betting is more complex to explain to casual fans.

It would help if you had that hook to draw people in and keep them locked to the screen. The simplest way to do that is to provide consistent entertainment for three straight hours. We must find ways of filling up that dry space between races because that is where we lose fans, just like the entertainment that the NFL provided in between the picks during the draft.

It does not need to be that grand regularly, but something enough that makes people want to watch. We have people already embedded in the industry with remarkable talent and personality.

The Inside, The NBA on TNT, is one of the most incredible sports shows. Kenny Smith, Charles Barkey and Shaquille O’Neal join Ernie Johnson to discuss all the events in the NBA. If you have never seen this, I suggest you type it into YouTube and check it out. The shenanigans between Barkley and O’Neal are impossible to replicate, but having something close to that nature in harness racing would be amazing. I am not the biggest basketball fan but watch clips nonstop when bored.

That is the benchmark we need to aim for. We need to find our spot back in pop culture where people find themselves watching but can’t explain why. I think we can do it!

by Trey Colbeck, for Harnesslink