I really wanted to be done with this TDN Racing’s Biggest Problem campaign.
The question was not, “What makes you optimistic about racing?” It was, “What is racing’s biggest problem?” Those are fundamentally different questions. One invites a list of accomplishments. The other demands an honest diagnosis.
When Thoroughbred Daily News began asking people what racing’s biggest problem is and what the solution should be, I answered twice. The first time because I believed the question mattered. The second time because I believed the answers mattered even more.
After Lisa Lazarus offered her perspective, I honestly thought I was done with the series. I had said my piece. Readers knew where I stood. She made sense and got it.
Then Tom Ryan answered.
Tom is someone I like and respect. He is intelligent, accomplished, and has done a great deal for this sport. Nothing I write here should be mistaken for a personal criticism because it is not. Quite the opposite. I think enough of Tom that I believe he deserves another perspective. Maybe one he has not considered. Maybe one that only comes from looking at this sport from a different seat.
And I would be lying if I said his answer was the exception in this series rather than the rule. Bandoroff talked about regulatory vet scratches. Ingordo talked about the workforce pipeline. West talked about a national racing calendar. Lacy talked about industry fragmentation. Now Tom talks about noise. Five installments in a series titled Racing’s Biggest Problem, five answers from five accomplished people, and not one of them has come from outside the bloodstock sales and track ownership axis. Not one has named handle decline, CAW, aftercare funding, or governance as the biggest problem. That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern. And patterns tell you more than any single answer ever could.
Tom says one of racing’s biggest problems is that we spend too much time arguing about what racing’s biggest problems are. He refers to the noise. He believes the noise often drowns out the progress.
I could not disagree more.
The noise is not the problem.
The silence is.
Meaningful reform grows from what Tom calls noise. Medication reform did not come from silence. Integrity initiatives did not come from silence. Greater transparency did not come from silence. Conversations about computer assisted wagering certainly did not come from silence. Neither did aftercare.
The progress Tom celebrates exists because people refused to stop talking about the problems. That is not noise. That is accountability.
Tom points to the Kentucky Derby’s twenty four million viewers as proof horse racing is far healthier than many critics suggest. I look at those same twenty four million viewers and arrive at exactly the opposite conclusion. The Kentucky Derby is the greatest annual advertisement horse racing has ever had. The question is not how many people watched. The question is how many became horseplayers. How many came back the following Saturday. How many opened wagering accounts. How many became owners. How many became lifelong fans. Horse racing survives on horseplayers, not hat contests, mint juleps, celebrity sightings, fashion shows, and social media posts. Those things are wonderful for one afternoon. They are not a business model.
If twenty four million people watch your biggest event every year and almost none become regular customers, that is not evidence of success. It is evidence of a conversion problem the industry has failed to solve for decades. It is the same reason the Breeders Cup cannot draw a fraction of that number after four decades and a nine figure war chest. The audience that shows up once a year for the hats and the mint juleps was never going to show up again in October. That is not a knock on the fans. That is simply who they are and why they were there.
Tom points to more accessible ownership through syndicates and fractional ownership. Again, I think he is measuring the wrong thing. Fractional ownership has absolutely created more experiences. It has not necessarily created more owners. There is a difference. Most fractional owners do not select trainers. They do not make meaningful decisions. They do not receive the phone calls that come with real ownership. They buy a badge, a day at the races, and the excitement of saying they own a piece of a horse. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Many enjoy and benefit from it. But let us stop pretending it answers racing’s ownership problem. The real question is how many people who buy fractional interests eventually become independent owners. That is the number I want to see. Because if the answer is very few, then fractional ownership is an experience, not a pipeline.
Tom also points to the enormous investments at Churchill Downs, Keeneland, and Belmont as evidence people are building for the future. Perhaps. Or perhaps capital is simply flowing toward the strongest monopoly assets. Churchill Downs is investing heavily where it prints money during Derby week. Belmont is being rebuilt while Aqueduct effectively fades into history. Keeneland is a Breeders’ Cup host, at the hub of racing, and has a lucrative sales company.
That is not necessarily evidence of a thriving national industry. It may simply be evidence that the strongest properties continue getting stronger while everyone else struggles to survive. Those are two very different things. When your entire economic model runs through two days a year, your incentive is to protect those two days. It is not to grow the sport on a Tuesday afternoon in March. That is not a criticism of the people running those businesses. It is simply what the numbers tell you if you are willing to look.
Tom points to advances in equine safety, including MRI, CT scans, PET imaging, and modern diagnostics. He is right that horses are safer today than they were years ago. But let us also be honest. Those breakthroughs came from advances in veterinary medicine. Medicine advanced. Technology advanced. Science advanced. Horse racing benefits from those advances, just as every other equine discipline benefits from them. That does not mean the industry deserves credit for inventing them, nor does it mean we have done everything possible to protect horses. We have not. There is still far more that can and should be done.
Then we arrive at aftercare.
This is where I believe Tom completely misses the spirit of the question he was asked.
Nobody who has stood in a kill pen. Nobody who has watched a Thoroughbred loaded onto a truck bound for slaughter. Nobody who has spoken with a rescue wondering whether it should buy hay or pay the electric bill this month. Nobody living that reality would answer the question, what is racing’s biggest problem, by talking about how much aftercare has improved.
The people running aftercare organizations are heroes. They deserve every dollar they receive and then some. But the fact that aftercare has become more organized does not mean racing’s biggest problems have been solved. Aftercare exists because horses still need aftercare. That should never be forgotten. And the numbers deserve a closer look before anyone calls this progress. The Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance has distributed roughly forty million dollars over thirteen years. That works out to close to three million dollars a year. A meaningful share of that figure is not new money from industry leadership. It is generated through breeder paid registry transaction fees that The Jockey Club collects and then presents publicly as its own contribution. Meanwhile The Jockey Club, Breeders Cup, and Keeneland collectively hold reserves approaching two hundred million dollars. That is not a resource problem. That is a governance choice.
Tom also touches on computer assisted wagering, acknowledging that CAWs are part of today’s ecosystem and simply need to be managed in a way that keeps retail horseplayers confident the game is fair. I agree with the first sentence. I have been saying exactly that for years. CAWs are not going away. Nor should they. The question has never been whether they belong. They’re here. The question has always been whether they should continue operating under rules and pricing structures unavailable to everyone else. Simply saying they need to be managed is not a solution. How. Equal pricing. Parallel pools. Real betting cutoffs. Transparency. I’ve addressed ali of this.
Those are solutions. Those are conversations. Those are reforms. Without them, manage them better is not a plan. It is a slogan.
This is not theoretical anymore. There is a federal lawsuit alleging that CAW rebate structures amount to no risk, no loss wagering opportunities on close to four billion dollars in annual wagering. And we already have proof of what real reform looks like. When NYRA restricted CAW play at Belmont and Saratoga this year, CAW volume fell by roughly half at those tracks. Retail handle did not collapse. It held. In some pools it grew. Tom asked what managing CAWs actually looks like. NYRA already showed him a glimpse, and NYRA’s restrictions were not nearly complete.
Perhaps what struck me most about Tom’s response was not what he said. It was what he did not say. The question was not, what has racing done well. The question was, what is racing’s biggest problem. Those are not the same conversation.
I read Tom’s answer and saw optimism. I looked around the sport and saw everyday horseplayers fighting an increasingly difficult game. Independent owners leaving. Rescues struggling. Tracks disappearing.
Handle that remains over eleven billion dollars but sits about twenty seven percent below its 2003 peak in nominal terms, and well over fifty percent below it once you adjust for inflation. That is not a low point in a cycle. That is a business that has lost half its real economic footing while some of the institutions at the top of it continue building reserves instead of building the sport.
I saw tremendous individual successes inside an industry still searching for sustainable growth. Tom and I simply see the sport through different lenses. He sees progress. I ask whether that progress is producing the outcomes we need. That is not negativity. That is accountability.
If asking uncomfortable questions makes noise, then so be it. Because every improvement Tom proudly points to began when somebody was willing to make enough noise that the people in charge could no longer ignore it. The noise did not create racing’s problems. It exposed them.
And until we stop confusing successful events with a successful industry, optimism with outcomes, and activity with progress, we will continue celebrating victories while missing the race that matters most.
Tom is a friend, and a smart one. But even smart men can watch the same race everyone else is watching and describe a different finish. Somebody has to tell him what the film shows when he plays it back.
Related Coverage: Ideas Are Better Than Silence: Tom Ryan Weighs In On Aftercare – TDN, Please Stop. Or At Least Change The Name. – Racing’s Real Problem Isn’t The Pipeline
