Update on my voyage back to TVG. Last week I put in a wager on the all-turf pick 3 at Santa Anita. The minimum bet is $3, so my pick 3 cost was $12. The first race in the sequence went off at 4:11 PM. I was watching it on Fanduel TV without any commentators. I was expecting at least a skeleton crew to still be covering Santa Anita on a Saturday. Anyway, the race looked like a dead heat, but they quickly cut away to another track and never bothered to show who won the race. I didn’t stick around to watch the next two races. I ended up winning the first and losing the next two.
The next day, I withdrew my funds from my TVG account. Watching races on Fanduel TV is not an enjoyable experience at all anymore. What makes it worse is that alternative viewing options are limited. Which lead me to ask, “Is horse racing dying?” Or maybe it has been that way for a while and I just haven’t noticed. Major races still seem to be drawing large crowds. But for experienced horse players, who wager every week, the sport seems to be on life support. I think a lot of blame can be placed on prediction markets and event contract exchanges.
Horse racing is thought to be old-fashioned by the younger generation. They would much rather place a wager on the outcome of an event than try to figure out which horse is going to win a race. I’m sure there will always be die-hard horse players, but the number of tracks will continue to shrink. For me, there are always casinos close by, if I ever feel the need to gamble. Horse racing as a gambling product hasn’t changed too much in the last 100 years. But today, there are just too many more competing ways to gamble your money away.