Sports Betting's Investment Trajectory (and How it Hasn't Looked Like Racing's)

 Sports Betting's Investment Trajectory (and How it Hasn't Looked Like Racing's):
https://pullthepocket.blogspot.com/2020/12/sports-bettings-investment-trajectory.html

 Legal Sports Report detailed the $3 billion betting month in October, highlighting state by state growth. As more distribution is added - just like a retail chain building new storefronts - handle follows.

Of particular note in the article was the state of Colorado, which began in earnest in October. In its first month of operation, $211M was taken in, with a hold of about 8%. The resulting revenue was eye opening for one big reported reason: the Promo spend.

Colorado is allowed to deduct promotional and marketing spending from revenue, and that promotional spend totaled $7.2M or 41% of total revenue.

So, they added new distribution, and they allowed the businesses who bring the end product to the user to spend (at their discretion) almost half of total revenue to capturing new customers.

As we wrote about recently, this has not and is not the experience with ADW companies, or  the sport of racing itself. In it, the distributors are often asked to pay more to purses, as their margins shrink, and they have been since day one. I won't even mention how with sports betting, increased "stores" as points of sale are welcomed, whereas in horse racing they pretty much aren't.

Sports betting has done quite a bit right since being approved. They've priced the product well, (mostly) avoiding the pitfalls of -130 lines or other such nonsense; they've opened "stores" and governments have allowed the market to thrive through free enterprise; the sports betting entities themselves are sinking as much as half of their revenues back in the business, to attract customers.

Imo, the above article at the Pull The Pocket Blog, is noteworthy because it shows how sports betting is gaining market share by investing in the customer; whereas racing is not.

Have a great Friday everyone,

--Jeff Platt, for HANA.

 

77 Percent Of New York Thoroughbreds From Indicted Trainers Were Positive For Clenbuterol After Arrests

 

by Paulick Report Staff | 11.12.2020 | 5:26pm
Report: 77 Percent Of New York Thoroughbreds From Indicted Trainers Were Positive For Clenbuterol After Arrests:
https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/report-77-percent-of-new-york-thoroughbreds-from-indicted-trainers-were-positive-for-clenbuterol-after-arrests/

At a press conference this week, New York State Gaming Commission equine medical director Dr. Scott Palmer revealed that the majority of New York-based Thoroughbreds with trainers under federal indictment tested positive for clenbuterol in the weeks after the March arrests that rocked the racing world.

Standardbreds and Thoroughbreds that were trained by anyone named in the March indictment of more than two dozen trainers, veterinarians, and drug distributors in an alleged doping scheme were put on the veterinarian's list for 60 days and had biological samples taken for testing. Palmer said this week that the horses were tested at least twice during this period. Of nearly 100 Thoroughbreds based in the New York at the time, Palmer said 77 had levels of clenbuterol in their blood.

Though Palmer is still compiling veterinary records for some of those horses, so far he says none of those records show administration of clenbuterol. That leads him to suspect the drug was not being given as part of a legitimate treatment for a diagnosed condition, but rather for its side effects, which mimic anabolic steroids with repeated usage.

Palmer called the discovery “concrete evidence that clenbuterol was being widely abused in the Thoroughbred horses,” according to the Thoroughbred Daily News.

 

The above article appeared yesterday (Thursday 11-12-2020) on The Paulick Report.

Imo, the above quote from the article confirms what many players have suspected for some time.

Clenbuterol is given for it's anabolic effects, then withdrawn early enough so that horses don't test positive post-race. But the additional muscle mass created by the drug's anabolic effect remains with the horse and improves performance on race-day.

-- Jeff Platt, for HANA