in a competitive market, where contributions to the pool (i.e. bets) are derived from different sources and territories, each source or operator should be looking to establish a customer base of informed bettors.
This is what drives turnover, which ultimately benefits all contributors. While I have no empirical evidence to back up my statement, I think it would be fair to say that
By giving your customer the chance to have an opinion, irrespective of the correctness of that opinion, turnover from that customer will increase.
Put another way, if I allow my customer to form an opinion on the outcome of a race, no matter the basis on which that opinion is formed, they will engage more with the pool. This will increase handle in the pool, and provide greater liquidity for all. In doing so we create opportunity for those with different opinion to also benefit and play more. It is a virtuous circle so to speak.
Where is the US going wrong?
I make no apologies for stating my belief that the current model for the distribution of racing data in north america is both antiquated, and more importantly damaging to the sport of racing. The balance must be struck between the costs of collecting the data and the availability of data to the general public.
If you compare the UK to the US the differences are stark. While there is no doubt that the model for the funding of racing in the UK presents a unique set of challenges, and needs considerable reworking, the facts with regards to turnover on UK racing versus US racing are clear. Based on my research, the per capita spend on race betting in the UK is €178.57 vs. €32.66 for the US for the period 2009 - 2010.
Put another way, for every $1 bet by a US citizen in that period, $5.36 was bet in the UK. I believe a significant contributing factor to this is the accessibility of racing to the population. While the UK can do more to make racing accessible to a new audience, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the US in terms of the basic distribution of data, and how this is made publicly available. The concept of charging a fee for the downloading of a PDF, or just the fact that I have to download a PDF at all flies directly in the face of what I believe to be the proper mechanism for the distribution of data, on which opinions can be built.
We live in a world where data is available by numerous channels, all the time. In almost any industry there has been a distinct move away from paper based products (which PDFs are still part of, irrespective of the fact that I can get them electronically) to online views of the same information.
If you want to find examples of this in action, take a look at Racing UK's excellent iCard product, or the Racing Post's racecards. Both of these show the way to where the industry must move. It simply is no longer acceptable for a wider audience to expect that our customers need to invest in buying the data before they are able to buy a bet.
To put it simply, would you be willing to pay to read reviews of a product on Amazon before you bought the product from Amazon? No, of course you wouldn't. While specialist review sites exist, and some are pay to use, these exist in parallel to those that are free. There is no doubt that a market for pay-to-use data exists, this market should be supplemental to the basic proposition that users are able to access a wide range of comprehensive data products via online sites without the need to pay for this service.
ADWs and other operators are more than willing to invest in developing these services, but they need to be provided the basic tools to work with. This means a radical overhaul to the way in which data is compiled, distributed and propagated in the US market. I advocate therefore:
- The continuation of compilation of the base race data by Equibase
- The complete Equibase 'database' to be made available to any company willing to contribute fairly and proportionately to the cost of compilation.
- The relaxation of restrictive licensing arrangements from Equibase, which at present deter the creation of derivative informational products from the base data.
Only when the form and workout data compiled by Equibase becomes available on a royalty free, unrestricted license we will see genuine outside investment into the creation of derivative data products, free to the end user, and only when this occurs will the industry be able to achieve significant leaps forward in our ability to give our users and opinion on which they can bet.
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