Wednesday, September 24, 2008

All Things Marketing

Congratulations to the TBA bloggers Green but Game, Handride, Superfecta, The Aspiring Horseplayer and Left at the Gate for their work on the 48 page NTRA Marketing Report. There were other authors involved, whose complete names and Bios can be found at the beginning of the report. So Grab a cup of coffee and read it, it is actually a fast read and chock full of good ideas regarding marketing of this sport to a new generation of fans, particularly online marketing. You can read it here. Also the respective bloggers have great recaps on their own sites.

In other Marketing news, Curlin will be running in the Jockey Gold Cup at Belmont this Saturday and NYRA has gone all out in promoting his appearance, particularly on the NYRA website. Of course, in typical NYRA luck, the weather forecast is for rain on Saturday.

However if you decide to stay home ESPNEWS found on most cable systems will televise the race live. Scheduled post time is 5:52 pm. MSG Plus will also provide coverage from 5:30-6:00 pm.

One of the marketing suggestions in the NTRA report is a "Take Back Saturday" theme where every Saturday from June or July up too the Breeders Cup there is a show featuring live races, race replays, features etc. Have you noticed no racing coverage on national TV outlets since the end of August? Why not? If you get them hooked starting in July, they will want to continue to watch into the fall, even with college football, pro football and pennant race baseball going on. I am a gigantic fan of those sports but I will find the hour on Saturday to watch horse racing if I know I can find it every Saturday on a set time and channel. And don't forget there is a thing now called DVR and TIVO.

1 comment:

Patrick J Patten said...

Thanks man. YOu and I already take back saturday(if we have TVG of course), hopefully others will follow suit. change the image change the game