ADDRESSING THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: HORSE RACING AND ITS WARNING SIGN.

The problem with horse racing- and it has many problems and this has been said many times over- is that it just keeps talking and talking and talking to itself, and is oft times fighting with some half baked enemy within while talking and talking and talking in clichés- horse racing clichés. 

It’s almost always about bringing the conversation back to horse racing and how the rest of the world revolves around it and how it is their bubble and it’s for them to make it snap, crackle and pop.

The rest of us? We’re just, er, poppies?

This is probably why there are so many in horse racing still banging on and on about attracting “younger people”. 

From everything we know, “younger people” loathe the term and being labelled this and that. 

They hear it as ageism from people who don’t understand “them” and need to give them names like all those we have heard over the years- beatniks, hippies, baby boomers, millennials, Gen Y, X, Z, all of which actually create a generation gap and Great Divide between people.

For horse racing, it should be about trying to be seen as a more likeable and WELCOMING pastime and product and communicated to a mainstream audience through, if possible, a mainstream media. 

Why keep talking to a captive and aging audience?

Without depending solely on albatrosses like a mothball racing media, this might actually mean getting well away from the usual servings of the yada yada yadas in that often angry little nesting place known as Mother X.

As Ricky Gervais might have said when hosting one of those Golden Globes awards shows, “Are the horsey people not feeling loved? Awwwww, are they feeling that they’re being beaten up by Los Problemos? 

“Well, then, pack up the circus, send back the clowns, go home and show everyone who wants you out, how much they will bloody miss you including governments, who will miss out on those juicy taxes on betting.

“But before that, you DO realise that you’re not going to attract non believers to the Church of Punting when your advertising comes with a government WARNING sign, right? 

Has anyone, like the often blinkered ARF People, who didn’t even see the end of racing in Singapore coming to make way for the land to be used for public housing, ever fight to have this Warning removed? 

“We’re betting that the answer to that is a blobby No.

“I don’t CARE what you lot think. I really don’t!”

Thanks, Ricky.

One can go on and on about what’s wrong with horse racing, but what about promoting the actual excitement, and create aspirational values into horse racing, and acknowledge the work of those “younger people” like the hard working young strappers and their love of horses?

Talk up the great work being done every day by Living Legends and how Australia’s Lady Gai Gai and her young business partner Adrian Bott have very probably done more for young talent wanting to join the racing world, especially overseas talent, than anyone else.

Another argument that should be put forward by the Defence is that horse racing is a lot safer and far less unhinged than someone like the current Big Orange and his sycophants in the White House- and with far more integrity than any corrupt and hypocritical politician anywhere in the world. 

If so, SAY SO- if and when necessary- and have it said by someone with the street smarts and credibility and not serving another plate of horse racing corporate public relations waffles.

No one believes this rubbish anymore.

Fight fires that exists and new ones that might arise with quality cooking oil, common sense and Cosmo Kramer type illogical and disarming logic.

Do this while realising that it’s only horse racing- and FUN and entertaining through honest to goodness engagement and one-time Happy Wednesday type interactivity.

With the new partnership between the Hong Kong Jockey Club and British entrepreneur Simon Fuller’s X1X Entertainment having recently been brokered, there’s work to be done- very likely from the outside looking in.

Horse racing is not the holy grail, and these are not the seventies and eighties which were a long time ago and when the pastime had legs.

Try and work with good new business partners like X1X with strong global success stories and build up a NEW brand personality- a brand that doesn’t come with a WARNING sign.

What horse racing desperately needs if it is to keep on rolling and not drowning is something it obviously can’t do on its own.

This is to work with those who understand tactical marketing strategies and can produce advertising that doesn’t look like it has been cobbled together by some senior executives from a racing club based on their idea on what they think advertising for horse racing should look like.

Do this and you’re back to the seventies and chirping on and on about attracting those “younger people” by using Old Spice, talcum powder and mothballs….and still weighed down by a Warning sign.