HORSE RACING : Gimmicks Are What It’s About

The most dramatic horse race of the year may have been the confrontation between Lite Light and Meadow Star at Belmont Park in July, but this great attraction turned out to be an embarrassment for the track. Despite all the excitement, the publicity and the presence of rap star M.C. Hammer, whose family owned Lite Light, Belmont drew a pitiful crowd of less than 18,000.

The proliferation of off-track betting in New York has inevitably reduced attendance at the track, but the drop has become so severe that even big events have been drained of their vitality. It was this concern that prompted the New York Racing Association to hire Alan Gutterman from the Meadowlands as its new director of marketing.

Gutterman had barely started his new job when he conceived a gimmick to promote the Woodward Stakes -- a great, historic race but one that in 1990 had brought fewer than 14,000 people to Belmont. The promotion attempted to lure people to the track with a free wager, as cynics sneered that nothing could get people to come to the races in New York any more. But the doubters were stunned when they saw a crowded grandstand for In Excess’s Woodward victory; attendance was an amazing 28,842. The success of the day underscored the importance of special promotions to the racing industry.

There was a time, of course, when racetrack operators didn’t need promotions; they only had to open their gates and let action-starved bettors rush in. But as the gambling industry became more competitive, tracks began offering giveaways as enticements to their customers. Nobody used the strategy as aggressively as Frank De Francis, the late president of Laurel and Pimlico. Almost any Maryland racing fan should have a closet full of T-shirts, sweatshirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, sports watches and portable radios.

“You could stock a department store with all the merchandise we gave away,” said Joe De Francis, who succeeded his father to the track’s presidency. “Dad was a pioneer in that area, but I think we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns. You can’t just hand people something when they walk in the door. You need promotions that are tied to our racing product.”

That’s what Gutterman has tried to offer, at the Meadowlands and at Belmont. At the Meadowlands he conceived a promotion where fans would share in the earnings of a pacer -- provided they came to the track whenever he ran. The horse, Symbols Yankatron, got regular coverage in the local media because of his special status, and some 2,000 of his “owners” came out to see all of his races.

The Woodward Stakes promotion was advertised in a direct-mail flyer that went to 93,000 people on NYRA’s mailing list. In it was a parimutuel ticket, which could be redeemed on the day of the Woodward Stakes. It could be worth anything from $2 to $25,000; the amount wouldn’t be revealed until it was inserted into a mutuel machine. The direct mailing drew a phenomenal response -- 17,800 of the 93,000 tickets were redeemed on Woodward day. The track even got lucky, because the one $25,000 ticket in the mailing wound up in somebody’s wastebasket. The extra business generated by the promotion more than paid for its cost.

The possibilities are endless for similarly attractive promotions. Here’s one: a $1,000 bet giveaway. A drawing is held for each race on the card, and the winner gets the chance to make a $1,000 wager. He comes to the winner’s circle, gets interviewed briefly on closed-circuit television and tells the horse he wants to bet. The track immediately puts $1,000 for him into the win pool. This will knock the other horses’ odds out of whack -- and create attractive betting situations for people who like other horses in the race. It would cost the track less than a T-shirt giveaway -- and it would be a lot more entertaining.

To some people, the idea of offering a special promotion to lure people to a major event may smack of desperation -- as if Major League Baseball had to offer a bat day to get people to the World Series. But such promotions reflect the realities of the racing industry today, as off-track betting and intertrack simulcasting become an increasingly important part of the business.