http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbMlHGEICuY
Who would have thought that a racing radio station would be playing Start Me Up by the Stones at 10.43am between races?
But that’s exactly what Perth’s Racing Radio did on Monday before heading off to Echuca for the call of a race on a Heavy 9 track.
It shows that the times they are-a-changing and how, either you adapt to changes or be left out like the spy who couldn’t come in from the cold.
(Source: Classic Movie Hub)
As we recently wrote, what many racing clubs are failing to understand is that some of their star attractions- the riders- are young, they have a life other than racing and a lifestyle that includes music, fashion, dating, clubbing, inter-acting via social media etc.
(Source: News.com.au)
(Source: Horse Racing Australia)
(Source: SMH)
They are consumers embracing progress and progress in horse racing cannot be stopped by headmasters in tweed jackets wanting to cane backsides.
(Source: Courie Mail)
This type of control- and control freaks- never worked and sure don’t work today: The constant barking falls on deaf ears, and just to mix metaphors, it gets as meaningless as the boy who cried wolf.
(Source: Know Your Apps)
If racing’s other big attraction- the horses- could speak like the great grand children of Mr Ed, they would probably agree: Clinging to the past is a very tenuous thing to do as you’ll never know who will come over and step on your fingers- and your toes.
Sure, the principles of the sport will never change and should not, but unless how the marketing and promotion of horse racing is enhanced and brought in line with the much bigger world of entertainment, it will become an endangered species- and which it is becoming at many racing clubs in Oz and countries in Europe.
(Source: Exploring Nature)
What needs to be faced- and strategically and from a global point of view- is why horse racing continues to be saddled with that albatross called “gambling”, yet how and why online gaming sidesteps this word as do casinos?
(Source: Tech Digest)
“Gambling” is still a tacky no-no and gets government legislators with nothing better to do a soapbox to spread their bullshit gospel.
(Source: Net Right Daily)
Is this to do with racing doing a piss poor and hackneyed job of changing with the times? Is it the wrong people in the right jobs of changing this perception? Or is it to do with this: What we have here is a failure to communicate what this sport is and can be today by those in what is called the racing media?
(Source: Our Salan)
Has this latter group become corporate mouthpieces and writing for the hard-nosed punter- an aging consumer group that’s shrinking every day? And if so, who and where is racing’s new media?
To borrow a term from the music industry, has racing reached a tipping point where it’s the majors versus the Indies?
(Source: Hypebot)
Yes, it has and the question is how the two can work together. Or, perhaps, they cannot as Indies are exactly what the name suggests- Independents beholden to no one with their own ways of looking at and doing things with the new DYI mediums available?
It’s Celine Dion versus Jessie J.
It’s Las Vegas schtick versus The Hangover.
So, when we hear Start Me Up or Need You Tonight by INXS or something by Prince or the Killers, we see an online racing radio station knowing it has to expand its current audience in order to attract new sponsors.
Perth’s Racing Radio get it. The HKJC with their Happy Wednesday brand and venues attracting different groups of consumers get it. Who else? We’re stumped.
The format for racing shows have not changed in eons. The racing pundits are boring talking head muppets making about as much sense as the Swedish Chef.
(Source: The Muppet Mindset)
There is an over-supply of tipsters with no point of difference, a dwindling audience and each with a sliver of a very small slice of the same pie. It’s all more white noise and clutter.
(Source: Tablets Planet)
This is why we see a great future for Gallop Magazine from Sweden which takes a global perspective on horses and the passion for horse racing. The magazine can become what Rolling Stone once meant to Rock and new politics.
(Source: Gallop Magazine)
This is why we support the HKJC and every one of their efforts to think out of the box and expand its consumer base- and a diverse consumer base including those perhaps lost to the glamor of casinos means an addition to turnover plus new business partners and different sponsors.
(Source: HKJC)
This is why we will support Perth’s Racing Radio and are constantly trying to simplify everything to those who still think that the game of horse racing has “too many numbers” and is “too complicated.”
(Source: Which EB5)
Get this right and what racing will have is one huge new market- for today and all the tomorrows to come.
It’s nothing personal nor is it rocket science. It’s just business with the old blinkers off.
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