Crist You Know It Aint Easy

Steven Crist's latest attempt to empathize with Horseplayers (Bettors Deserve More After Takeout Hike) falls very short in both understanding, and when it comes to offering solutions.

He starts off comparing the demise of the NY OTB's versus the takeout raise in California, stating that is could be deemed very surprising that the NY OTB story has virtually disappeared, while the California takeout hike story just seems to be getting stronger.

The NY OTB's were in the business of really giving it to the Horseplayer with a 5% surcharge. They killed churn and the OTBs managed to lose money themselves. They will hardly be missed by any self respecting Horseplayer, and in a very short period of time, NY tracks will be much better off. Now, Horseplayers who switched over to ADWs are now getting rewards instead of surcharges. It will eventually become very lucrative for New York racing.

Where does Crist get it wrong or not so right?

....the California takeout increase continues to agitate some vocal fans and horseplayer groups, who claim to be laying off playing Santa Anita as a protest against the hikes.
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Horseplayers groups? Why is the DRF the only horse racing site that has not named HANA (Horseplayers Association of North America) by name? As far as I know, they are the only group that has come out in support of the boycott through the site they sponsor (Playersboycott.org). In fact, they are the only Horseplayers group that I know of. Fan groups are not Horseplayer groups though they include many Horseplayers.


...They have claimed victory, pointing to lower handle at Santa Anita.
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Who are they, or you mean HANA? And where have "they" declared a victory? A victory would mean that California tracks have rescinded their takeout hike at the very least.


Track officials and state regulators dispute the size of the declines and their impact, saying that their lucrative ontrack business has been relatively stable and arguing that the Hollywood Park fall meeting was showing similar declines before the takeout increase took effect.
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The ontrack business will slide over time as Horseplayers have less to churn. Many will quit or go less. The players least likely to boycott are the homers, and that is completely understandable. But ontrack betting is still down a bit at this time. It will only get worse.
Many boycotters I know stopped betting the day Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill, therefore Hollywood's meet was most likely affected by the boycott as well.
Meanwhile, many tracks that have been giving early reports like Gulfstream and Fair Grounds are up in handle so far. And Tampa Bay seems to be doing quite well too.
Equibase numbers for corresponding days in the week from one year to another show declines almost every day at Santa Anita of over 10%. Especially, with a reduction in race days, even with a boycott going, it should be expected that they should be up a little. Not the case. Someone isn't betting the product that used to before.


...It also didn’t help that the two ranking commissioners on the California Horse Racing Board called the old rates “underpriced” and claimed that racing needs to compete with the Lakers and Dodgers, not alternative forms of gambling with lower takeouts.
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This is not such a big deal. They had to find a way to rationalize this to the public. There really is no rationale for any business to raise prices because it losing business to competition. What the California powers did is pretend they are not in the gambling business but entertainment business solely. Laughable yes, but
they aren't a very bright or savvy bunch there. Calling any takeout over 14% underpriced is just an attempt to give a reason. The reason comes from people who just don't understand their business.
Oh, and if you want to compare the Lakers to horse racing. The takeout on a Lakers game is 4.6%.

No one from the tracks or the board has explained the rationale for the nature of the increases or adopted a tone of regret about the supposed necessity of them.
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This is just badly written. What Crist meant, I believe, is that there was no empirical evidence to suggest that raising takeout would be good for business, and the California boards did not make their decision based on evidence, but gut feelings instead. Their guts were wrong.


Officials also could have leavened the increase by at least experimentally lowering takeout on some pools or on new bets. Santa Anita’s sister track in Florida, Gulfstream Park, quietly raised its exotics takeout from 25 percent to 26 percent this year, the same as New York’s and 2.32 higher than the new California rate. But it also put in new low-minimum pick-five and pick-six bets, at respective 15 percent and 20 percent takeouts, and have gotten 10 times as much positive reaction for the latter as complaints about the former.
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Gulfstream did raise takeout last year on triactors by one point, and on supers this year by one point as well. They almost got away with it without anyone noticing. However, it appears they may have lowered their blended takeout hike overall by introducing the new 15% Pick 5. What California did was increase blended takeout by about 9% (Based on every $100,000 bet last year on California product Horseplayers stands to lose around $20,000 this year as opposed to just over $18,000 last year).
It wasn't Santa Anita's mandate to keep the blended rate the same, which is what Gulfsteam's mandate seemingly was.
Throwing bettors a bone of a bet type with a lower takeout while blended rate goes up is totally unacceptable, and Crist should know it, and not encourage it.


The fan groups have their heart in the right place and are correct in arguing that takeout increases are always counterproductive because they provide at best a short-term bump before the inevitable plunge due to lower churn and customer dissatisfaction.
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Fan groups? Huh? Again, Crist didn't write this very well (he might have a career in blogging though). What he meant was HANA has their heart in the right place. And when he talks short term bump, he means that tracks have historically seen a slight bump in revenue (profits for tracks and horsemen to split) before takeout increases cause revenue to slide.


Still, their efforts to make a statement have been blurred by a haphazard call to action: It’s unclear when they wanted people to send a message about the issue, what pools they were targeting, and what specific countermeasures they would like the tracks and state to consider.

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Did Crist even attempt to contact HANA? Did he read the specific solutions that are on the Playersboycott site? So is Crist really saying that HANA has done a terrible job at pointing Horseplayers and the industry to the Playersboycott.org site? Because the answers to all his blurriness can be found there.


It does little good to keep lecturing people about how the optimal takeout rate is somewhere between 8 percent and 12 percent. There is zero chance that any track in California – especially in the absence of any hope for racetrack slots, which are going to begin in New York later this year and will probably come to Kentucky eventually – will reduce its takeout revenues by 50 percent in the hope that handle will double.
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These lectures are an attempt to educate racing execs and horsemen groups about their product (betting). Hialeah recently dropped all wagers to 12%. Unfortunately, the largest ADW, Twinspires, refuses to put them on their betting menu, probably in hopes that the takeout increase will show mixed results at best.
It is the hopes of those lecture about optimal takeout (which includes me), that the horse racing industry will edge towards them like Tampa Bay has, and not away from them like California has.
Calling this educational process to be of little value is really mind numbing coming from Crist who professes to be a bettor's friend.


What the tracks can do, however, is better explain their plight, rejigger the rates, and give something back to the players in the form of new and cheaper bets. It would at least be a start to telling those customers that they are heard and they are valued.
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Tracks have done a great job explaining their plight. It is just the solutions they pick to try to fix their plight are just plain dead wrong. New bets aren't important, but cheaper bets are (and I don't mean the price of the ticket but what the takeout rate is).


I still recommend Crist's book Exotic Betting. It is very helpful to bettors. His latest article however was not.

I don't know what is going on with Horse Racing journalism these days. Yes, I understand that advertising dollars are hard to come by, and these publications don't want to upset the breeders, tracks, etc. that advertise, but it seems like responsible journalism can be found more on blogs these days.

First, you have Ray Paulick buying into nonsense that the perpetrators and supporters of the takeout hike want him to believe. At least he does some interviewing. Then you have Crist who did what appears to be very little interviewing or investigating before writing about the motives of the boycotters. At least Paulick allows commenting, and it enables the truth to eventually win out, and he also has no problem printing that four letter word, HANA.