You live, you learn, you change and exchange, you evolve, you juggle more than two balls at a time and, once in a while, you get them whacked. Your gonads, that is.
(Source: Hrbekistan)
And so it is with Fast Track which has weathered different changes in direction, the urge to run before one can walk, tackling petty politics and the ankle biters and have evolved from being a random “lifestyle site” to one that promotes and markets that very under-marketed or ineffectively marketed sport known as horse racing.
(Source: 123 RF)
Horse racing remains a very misunderstood sport with consumers and the non-racing media. But social media, especially, are changing perceptions overnight and the lunatics are taking over the asylum.
What’s never been said is being openly discussed and, as in music, strong fan bases are being formed.
(Source: Risk Reversal)
Great athletes- and jockeys riding thousand pound animals at breathneck speeds are athletes in one of the most competitive sports- are way too easily dismissed by those too ignorant and arrogant to make the time to understand racing. As Dylan sang, “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”
(Source: IZ Quotes)
Racing today is not a mug’s game and not some bittersweet taboo filed under that dirty word called gambling.
Hell, every sport today is about gambling. And life and love are the biggest gambles of them all. So what’s the big deal?
(Source: Who Is The Absurd Man)
With a team comprising those from advertising, the music industry and marketing, Fast Track sees huge worldwide opportunities and changes taking place in horse racing which many highly-paid racing executives are clueless about.
(Source: Photo Shelter)
We like this. It makes it easier for us to bring about change in how the sport is being marketed, and communicated to those who wouldn’t even know how to place a bet.
We have the opportunity to understand better the new and younger generation of race-goers and horse owners and working with the one racing club that understands the need to change and how it’s time to take the blinkers off: The Hong Kong Jockey Club.
(Source: China Mike)
To date, we have helped bring ‘live’ music to those Happy Wednesday Nights and created and produced the reality series called Finding Happy Wednesday.
The hardcore gambler might snort, reef and bellow that this is “nothing to do with racing”- and that’s fine with us. There’s room for everyone and opinions can be taken on board or flushed down the toilet along with those who cannot or refuse to see the forest for the trees.
(Source: Cartoon Stock)
We have brought Welsh singer-songwriter Ben Semmens to Hong Kong and venues like Adrenaline and The Beer Garden plus, with him, wrote and produced the Happy Wednesday Song and accompanying video.
We can see the day horse racing with its “hardware” and attendances and turnover, especially in Hong Kong, will become part of the wider world of overall entertainment.
Just as there is a new and growing generation of younger race-goers, racing is seeing a new generation of jockeys like Tommy Berry, James McDonald, Adam Hyeronimus, pictured below, and others will come to seal endorsement deals, bend it like Beckham and bring style, fashion, glamour, new sponsors and celebrities like Adam Levine, Rihanna, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattison, Katy Perry etc to race tracks.
Recently, YouTube announced that they will become a sports broadcaster and go head to head and toe-to-toe with ESPN and all those cable channels which many subscribe to in order to get their fix of football, baseball, cricket etc.
This announcement has followed the banning of fans uploading TVN-owned racing videos onto YouTube. Why? No one really knows.
At a time when horse racing needs to expand its consumer base, attract new sponsors and keep giving current sponsors added value, the geniuses at TVN and Australia’s racing officials creep into their shells and become arrogant, ignorant out-of-touch elitists who wouldn’t know streaming from downloads and how these are not a chicken and egg situation.
(Source: London’s Times)
Again, this type of blinkered thinking in Australia opens doors to more change including new ways of presenting racing shows, creating apps that make understanding how racing works easy for newbies and not some confusing mind map speaking in different tongues.
(Source: Metrics)
We might not always get it right, but we won’t always get it wrong either. The world is changing, industries have crashed and burnt, others are trying to survive despite being DOA.
Horse racing has reached a point where it has nothing to lose. It cannot continue the way it has because that once captive market barely exists.
Today, it’s all about Change- and not chump change.
We want to fast-track this Change by working with everyone and everything who sees beyond the obvious.
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