Panel sessions from the 2003 Joint Annual
Meeting of HTA, Thoroughbred Racing
Associations and Racetracks of Canada
held in Hollywood, Florida, March 13-14, 2003

Television & Simulcasting:
As viewed by some expert witnesses

Mr. Stan Bergstein: Our first panel this morning is going to be moderated by my counterpart, the distinguished executive vice president of Thoroughbred Racing Associations, Chris Scherf. Chris?

Mr. Chris Scherf: Thank you, Stan. Let me begin by saying that the topic is television and simulcasting as seen by some expert witnesses, and some of them are really expert, they actually put money through the windows. That’s as expert as it gets in this business, and we shouldn’t forget that.

I’ll begin by introducing our group up here; on my far left is Tom Graham. Tom is facilities manager for Noven Pharmaceuticals; he has a BS in engineering from Newark College of Engineering, he has a master’s in mathematics from Rutgers, but he’s been a fan since he was 17. I met Tom at our simulcasting conference last fall, where he gave a fan’s perspective of the type of job we do in giving simulcast fans what they need, and I thought he had unusually perceptive insight into what we should be providing, so when we discussed having this topic, I immediately reached out to see if we could get him back to do it again.

Next to Tom is Maury Wolff, who I think most of you know; he’s a racing economist, he’s a writer, he’s a professional player. And he also is not shy about expressing opinions.

On his right is Bennett Liebman, who’s the coordinator of the racing and wagering law program at the Albany Law School; he also has a jim-dandy Web site that I’m going to give a plug to, you should talk to him about getting his URL address, because if you get there and open it up in the morning, you’ll see a nice little compilation of links to every major racing story in the country that day, I don’t know why he does it, but I love that he does it.

Our final panelist is Chip Tuttle, who’s a partner with Conover Tuttle Advertising and PR; I think Chip’s primary client would be the NTRA, and he’s been working with the NTRA for several years now, and been particularly helpful to us in the wake of the Pick 6 scandal. He also provides input for their television arm, NTRA productions.

For openers, what do you see in either racing or simulcasting coverage that makes you wonder if racetracks care about what the viewer is seeing?

Mr. Graham: The problems that I sometimes have as a fan and active participant at the track are that I think they're aiming too much at a production type of product. If I’m sitting home on a Wednesday night watching West Wing on television, I’m watching television. But when I’m in a simulcast facility at a racetrack, I’m looking at a screen, a bank of nine televisions, I have no volume at all, so anything that is transmitted audibly I cannot hear; I have constant distractions, I have a race going off every three or four minutes, and a production product to me is not important—an information product is. Something that gives me information quickly, concisely, and repeats information that I get, that I need. If I’m sitting at Gulfstream and there’s a late scratch announced in the 7th race before the 5th race, I hear it. If I’m at a racetrack watching a bank of televisions, I want to be able to know that that scratch is available as soon as it’s available, and if it can be given to me visually on the screen, then I can factor that in my handicapping, because when it comes up just before the 7th race, I may be looking at one of the other eight screens and not catch it. So those are the kind of things that are important to me. The term “a production product” to me is somewhat contradictory, because for me it’s an information product, it’s not a production product.

Mr. Scherf: Maury, what do you think about that?

Mr. Maury Wolff: To follow up on what Tom said, I play a lot from home these days, and am amazed at how much more accessible information is to me at home than it is when I go to a racetrack—exactly what Tom says. If I want to check scratches, I can do it in a couple of seconds on the Internet. If I want to see an entire set of exacta prices, I can see that in a couple of seconds on the Internet. Whereas when I go to the racetrack, it takes you 10 minutes from the first scrolling scratches to get across the screen. It may take a couple of minutes for the entire cycle of exacta odds to go over the screen. It is just so much easier to do what I do from home than it is at a racetrack. That’s probably just because when the people who designed the product for in-house use are looking at it as information technology and not as television technology. I notice on CNBC, that if a guy is speaking at the UN, they will give you a three- or four-word summary across the screen of what he’s talking about. Given that 90 percent of your public right now can’t hear what’s being said on the racetrack screen when people are talking, having a visual cue to tell people who might want to know what is being said would be extremely helpful.

Mr. Scherf: So basically I’m hearing both of you say, in terms of the simulcasting environment, if it’s not graphically presented, there’s no message getting across there.
Mr. Tom Graham: Yes. In New York, I’m sure that Jan and John Imbriale are fantastic handicappers; I have no idea what they’re saying. I mean, I see Jan’s face on the screen, I see John’s face on the screen, sometimes they flash up the numbers that are their picks, but if I miss that, I’ve just watched these folks on the screen for two or three minutes, and that’s two or three minutes that to me is wasted, and I don’t even look at it, because, it doesn’t help me, because there’s no information there. So those are the kind of things that I think we agree on. It gives me the information, gives it to me quickly, but repeat it because, you know, at Gulfstream I wrote some post times down from last Sunday when I was there, once the California track started, I had a race going off every 3 ½ minutes, during which time I must make my final decisions, get up and make my wagers, and then come back and turn to the next television. If something important only came up once for a second, I probably missed it. And then I go to bet the next race at Santa Anita, and I’m keying the seven horse, and all of a sudden I look and the seven horse isn’t there, I’m in trouble, and I’m probably not going to bet that race. That’s probably the long and short of what’s going to happen, I’m not going to wager my money on that race, because I’m not prepared to do it.

Mr. Wolff: Actually, this doesn’t pertain to television per se; one thing you can’t help but notice in Australia is they seem to have as many races going off as we do, but they go off every five minutes. There isn’t this sort of, you know, two or three races within a moment of one another. It’s a coordinated effect, and 2nd, if you’re trying to get people to bet on all the races, that kind of coordination would be tremendously helpful. It’s just another natural manifestation of the simulcasting world that doesn’t seem to have happened, because we started out with a live product with people, and people are still presenting their product as if all we were dealing with was a live market, instead of a vast simulcast audience where they can’t respond, they can’t respond to the way the industry presents it.

Mr. Scherf: You have a reaction to that?

Mr. Chip Tuttle: In flying down here, I was reading the New York Times and in the business section, there was a large article on the rivalry between the financial and news networks on TV. The article made two points that I think directly pertains to racing and simulcasting. One, information is king. People want as much information as you can get out there. And two, what’s good for the professional is good for the novice. You should not attempt simulcasting for the lowest common denominator. Go, put out the best quality information possible, and I think that’s what people really want.

Mr. Scherf: In general, is there wide disparity between tracks as you look at the presentation?

Mr. Graham: The one comment I would make on the tracks is, since the folks here are part of track organizations, one of my biggest problems is, why do we have a disparity. I understand the problem that happened with the Pick 6, but why haven’t the tracks as a group made a decision on what they’re going to do with post time? As a bettor, as a player, playing nine tracks, time constraints we’ve talked about, I have to remember that Turfway Park is going to close when the first horse gets to the gate, and Aqueduct’s going to close when the first horse gets in the gate. But Magna is going to let us go until the races start, but now when Calder comes in and Hollywood comes in, oh no, they’re going to shut down at two minutes to post—that’s a lot for me to try to deal with when I’m looking at all these and saying, “Let’s see, got to bet that one now, but I have another minute on that one,” because so many times, we’re betting late and to the fan, I spoke to a lot of fans about this, why can’t you folks make an agreement? And if it’s two minutes to post time, it’s two minutes to post time, we can deal with that. The hardest thing for me to deal with, and a lot of the folks I’ve talked to, is that there is no consistency. It’s like, put it on the table because Churchill Downs said, “We’re going to go at two minutes,” Magna came and said “Oh no, we’re going to wait till post time.” That’s like a political thing between them, but it’s very confusing to the fan. Why does one track shut it down at one minute and the next track lets it go until it starts? I want to sit there and know that I have to bet every track when they get to the gate, or every track at two minutes to post, or every track when the gate opens, and that’s what I would like, and a lot of the people I’ve talked to would like, because it’s just a confusing issue that we don’t need. It’s, for some reason you’re throwing this thing in there that might make sense to the tracks, it makes no sense to the fan at all.

Mr. Scherf: Well, now I know why we invited a PR expert to be part of the panel.

Mr. Tuttle: What we’re hearing up here is, there’s a lot of balance and counter play, and just to get back to what Maury said about playing at home, what we’re seeing, and I think what the industry is trying to figure out, is how you do balance the heavy information needs of the core player versus promoting the product to a wider audience, and how that appears on television. We’re also seeing a, in television and simulcasting, they’re moving closer together. Simulcasting, as HRTV, and TVG proliferate, TVG’s in 14 million homes now, and its two-hour simulcast window on Fox, reaches a lot of people, that’s bringing a more traditional racing presentation into people’s homes. And I’m struck that you feel that you do better with both having the Internet access and television at the same time, because there’s so much information, I think you see more and more people trying to take advantage of that, and the cross-pollination of that is happening all over the country with players everywhere.

Mr. Wolff: I really don’t think it’s possible to play intelligently just relying on television, from your home, relying on television screens for information. TVG, with the model they’ve chosen, would be hard-pressed to do it under just about any conceivable circumstances, just because they have too much product relative to the amount of time and the amount of space on the screen that they have. I read on bulletin boards people complaining about TVG’s information; I think that’s almost beside the point, you can’t expect TVG to be able to provide that kind of information to you. It’s just not feasible in a real-world environment of live television.

Following up on what Tom said, the policy evolved, like a lot of things in racing, the policy seems to have evolved, of post times at random, I play Turfway, and Turfway freezes their bets when the first horse goes into the gate like New York does. The difference is, at Turfway in the winter, the horses come out on the track with four or five minutes to post. When the first horse goes into the gate, perhaps 15 to 20 percent of the money is in the pool; when you actually have to make your decision at one or two minutes to post, perhaps 10 percent of the money is in the pool, and you’re trying to make an informed betting decision with what is essentially no betting information. It’s not just a coordinated policy, but you also need to recognize that at NYRA you can do this a lot more comfortably than you can at a small track where the handle’s going to come in late, especially with late post parades. This, even in the television world, seems still to be the stimulus for people to go to the windows.

Mr. Wolff: Let me take a stab at the overall issue in terms of TVG. New York State in 1995 went to putting the races on TV at four of the six OTB corporations, basically picking up about 80 percent of the population of New York. Now they have televised racing on with wagering. What we’ve seen there, and the production values are none, there’s no information, and what we’ve seen is a ton of money shifted from the parlors to the OTB, to account wagering. What we haven’t seen is a huge increase, or in most, some cases, any increase in wagering at those OTBs. So that, to a certain extent, you just can’t put on the races and expect to see huge increases in handle. You have to put on some sort of entertainment. If you don’t do that, you’ve done nothing. You’ve just shifted where people are going to play from. You need to have an entertaining product. It, just, and you can just see this from the failure of the Racing Network’s, inability to reach a significant audience. You have to have some entertainment value in that production, or it’s just not going to work.

Mr. Wolff: Well, to echo that, you’ve to have some entertainment value in your production if you’re going to get anything close to widespread distribution from cable and satellite operators. They’re not going to put the traditional simulcast product on as it is. They just don’t understand that language, so we’ve got to have a balance and be able to have a production that appeals to a wider audience and promotes the product to a wider audience while at the same times does everything it can to fulfill the needs of the players, and one way to do that is by having people utilize the Internet as well as what they’re watching on TV.

Mr. Scherf: Maury, I think you brought some examples of a couple of things you liked, if you can roll it. Can we have that tape?

Mr. Wolff: With apologies for the quality of the tapes, when you do what I do you tend to use tapes over and over again, and they get pretty degraded over time.

The first is information that’s good for the professional, but as you’re going to see, its information that’s good for everybody. On this first tape, the thing that’s of interest, which will be pretty obvious to you, is the one horse that will be on the outside in this tape.

As you can see, if you bet the one horse, you were probably wondering what in the world happened. John Imbriale told you. If you want to bet that horse next time, you understand why he ran the race that he did. That’s not information you would have unless John went to the trouble to say, “Oh, I see, what happened.” It’s incredibly valuable information, and if you’re an amateur playing races for the first time, it’s interesting to know that something like that can happen. If you’re a pro, obviously it’s extremely valuable to know that the problem was with the jockey and not the horse. Just, again, that’s information you can bet on. Its information you can go to the bank on. And it’s a lot more useful than the kind of information that is typically given out in television shows. The second tape I have—

Mr. Liebman: I’ve got a comment on that, because I was watching that race at home on Capital OTB, and I was watching it trying to figure out what happened. Here’s John Imbriale commenting on this one; the next day in the newspapers, there’s not one word about what happened. The only way you would’ve found out about this is from John’s commentary, and the fact is that John Imbriale and his longtime predecessor Harvey Pack, over the years have done an outstanding job on a replay show. It’s been the one replay show worth watching.

Mr. Wolff: Okay, the second tape is, TVG was kind enough to send this to me. This is from their show, The Works, which in my opinion is by far the best thing TVG does. It’s a workout; it’s a show which deals with the workouts in the mornings before the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup. The Derby just happens to be the better show of the two because all the horses are in Kentucky, whereas in Breeders’ Cup they’re dispersed. We’re going to have a couple of snippets from this tape. The first one is Tom Amos talking about the eventual Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem, and the second one will be Joe Byrne talking about the horse who I believe was the Derby favorite, Harlan’s Holiday. Again, this is information. If you were interested in betting on War Emblem, hearing a guy who watched him train tell you that he was training brilliantly was awfully valuable information. If you wanted a reason to throw out Harlan’s Holiday, the favorite in the Derby, what Byrne said was pretty compelling. That is just great television, it’s giving you information you would not otherwise have; and that’s the kind of thing that, as a pro, I think is fantastic, and I would think that no matter where you are on the, in terms of learning about the game, that’s just incredibly valuable. And that’s the kind of thing I would love to see more of, this information that helps me make a decision. Way too often, with the sort of things, what Tom was talking about, the talking heads are just giving selections, “I like the three, five, seven,” which has got to be about the most useless information you could present to an audience. Most people who go to the racetrack want to make their own decisions, and the ones who don’t want to make their own decisions aren’t likely to become lifelong fans or even interested fans anyway. What is interesting is giving people information to help them make decisions. And I think those are just great examples of giving people the kinds of information that can help them bet and can help them say, “Gee, there are ways you can beat this game.”

Mr. Tuttle: I think there are two different types of television; one is the simulcasts that we have, and that’s the day-to-day audience, then we have the commercial television, and as you’re talking about information, it’s eventually to make this a betting game, and I can tell you, I was talking to John Ertmann from Equibase at dinner the other night. John worked at NBC, and we started talking about Ken Shanzer, who was the legal guru for NBC Sports, and the first time we did a Pick 6 on the Breeders’ Cup, which we figured would be the largest Pick 6 pool ever for a one-day thing. The producer and the director wanted to talk about it during the four hour show, we were going to have this great pool, and it’s this big bet. Shanzer wasn’t going to let them, because it was betting, and I’m going, “You’re doing a four hour show on horse racing and you don’t want to discuss betting?” And it reached a point that I guess the day before, I picked up the phone and finally won the argument, because for the previous three days, Wall Street had been in turmoil over a huge lottery down in Florida. Everybody on Wall Street was buying tickets for the Florida lottery, and I said, “So where is NBC’s concern?” and they said, “Okay, if it’s a record pool, then they can mention it on the show.”

Mr. Liebman: Let me throw that one in, because of my legal area. It’s racing’s old friend, the Wire Act and the information issue. After it was passed, the Federal Communications Commission, throughout the 60s, into the mid 70s, interpreted that law in such a way as to make it illegal to do, to say anything about odds and betting. So if you can look at old broadcasts of racing shows, and if you do get the chance— the Museum of TV and Radio in New York and in Los Angeles have these old shows—they won’t mention it, odds and betting, because the FCC said the Wire Act banned it. So you have very odd, stilted broadcasts, because of the Wire Act. And I think that probably still dominated thinking at the major networks at that time, because the FCC, until the 70s, had said, “You can’t mention odds. You’re going to jail.”

Mr. Scherf: How has it changed?

Mr. Tuttle: Well, it has changed; and it continues to evolve; I think you’re seeing more and more betting-centric contact. I mean, different networks have different philosophies. NBC still, for the Triple Crown, I mean, that’s a different presentation than when we do a show on ESPN on a Saturday, which NTRA Productions is trying to put more live racing into the ESPN shows, show two or three with some betting information. There’s been a talent change this year, Hank Goldberg, who is very much identified as a bettor with NFL telecasts, but it’s funny. I’ll give you an example of where they’re still a little bit in the network world, where there’s a little bit of a dichotomy in what happens. Hank Goldberg does selections on Sundays on one of the ESPN pre-game shows. And his selections are sort of tune-in information for people who watch that show, but he has to do those selections in the show that does not have the NFL branding on it. The show that is NFL Today or whatever they call their NFL show can’t have selections in it, but if he does them as part of SportsCenter, right before that show, it’s okay. For our television, obviously we’re talking more and more about wagering, and we’re using television to promote the wagering aspect a little bit more. The NTRA is for sure, last summer with the CBS series and then this summer again, you saw national Pick 3s around some of those television shows. And that’s an opportunity to promote a national wager to an audience of two million people on a Saturday afternoon, as opposed to an audience of 100,000 people around the country who are watching simulcast.

Mr. Scherf: This goes back to Tom’s question about cutting off the close of betting. There are different audiences out there, and we’re serving a lot of different masters, and Chip and I were both in the conversations after the Pick 6, what do we do? What immediately became evident was, there was as much or more concern about the late change in odds, and we have the problems still that we’re grappling with, if it takes 90 seconds, possibly, to get the final full transmissions in so you can post the late odds. The question became, how do you deal in this environment with the public crisis of confidence that they’re not being past posted? This is why you get different answers from different tracks. Since there is no perfect solution, what is going to be the one that makes the fans happiest? Churchill obviously came down on the side that “They won’t be as mad if we close the thing earlier so we have the final odds by the time the horses go off.” The others said, “If we close them earlier we are going to upset a lot of fans when they get shut out,” Turfway and NYRA went in between, but everybody went into that understanding that we were going to end up with different policies, and that’s not good either, and the hope is that very soon we can finally get the transmission time down so we go back to one time. I know fans think, “Don’t you even think about us?” Everybody thought about you, it’s just that they made different value judgments, but we are trying to serve a lot of masters, different tastes. With television, split-screen versus the pan shot, I’m just curious which one the four panelists like better?

Mr. Graham: I don’t like split screens.

Mr. Scherf: You don’t like split screens?

Mr. Graham: Not at all.

Mr. Wolff: I like split screens as an idea; in reality they couldn’t be worse.

Mr. Scherf: Why?

Mr. Wolff: Because the top half of the screen shows you two horses; in the bottom half they look like dots on a screen, and the only way you can tell which dot is which is if you’ve got a good announcer who’s accurate, is actually telling you which horse it is you’re looking at, because other than that you’ve to sit there with the slow-motion machine and try to ascertain, you know, very carefully watch each horse individually, because you just can’t pick them out, you can’t see the silks, you can’t differentiate them.

Mr. Scherf: Which do you like better?

Mr. Liebman: I like split screen better. As a New York person, with NYRA always against split screen, I always thought they were the right way, but having seen it so often now, it’s almost like I want to see uniformity and I like the split screen more, I feel I see more of the race.

Mr. Graham: I just know when I watch split screen I only watch the top, because I can’t tell. The problem with a lot of it is that, you know, that, what the fan, I think, myself particularly says to the people that are running the show, “Take off your television hat, leave it on the floor, pick up a Racing Form and walk out and sit in a racing carrel. Forget that you’re a television producer, pretend that you’re a racetrack fan, and look at a 19” television and tell me you want to see two screens up there. Tell me in a 19” television you’re going to be able to look at two things that big from the fifth row back. Don’t sit in the first row, sit in the fifth row back, and now tell me you’re going to be able to go back and forth with your eye and pick up the horse,” I can’t do it. I mean, I cannot do it. If I had one picture, one full screen, at least I’m getting a horse, you know, this big instead of this big, and I’ve got a shot at seeing it. So, to me and all the people that I talked to before I came here, I’d walked around the turf club at Calder and I talked to like twenty fairly good-sized players, and I wrote notes down in my book, and I said, “I’m going to talk to these people, give me your ideas. I just don’t want to tell these people my ideas, give me your ideas.” And those were the things that kept coming out, and to me, Hollywood Park and Santa Anita are no different. They’re southern California racetracks. Obviously they’re different to the owners and the managers, but its southern California racing. And on a Sunday afternoon, I’m betting Santa Anita, when I come in on Wednesday, the following Wednesday, and now Hollywood Park is open, it’s still southern California racing. I don’t want everything to be different. All of a sudden I have two minutes to post to bet, where on Sunday I could bet at post time. To me, as a fan, there’s no difference, its southern California racing, it’s the same horses, and it’s the same jockeys. Okay, it’s a different racing surface, but why are all the rules changed from Sunday to Wednesday for me as a bettor? What’s important to me is consistency in the product, because when I’m looking at nine televisions as a player, they’re all the same. You know, the third race at Aqueduct might be a good betting opportunity, the fifth race at Gulfstream might be a good betting opportunity; to me it doesn’t matter that it’s Aqueduct and Gulfstream. It’s a television where there’s a good betting opportunity, and the more consistent it is and the easier it is for me to get locked into a groove is what I’m looking for.

Mr. Scherf: The question that flows from that is if the quality of how they present their simulcasting, and the information, can that influence your play, what tracks you’re going to play?

Mr. Graham: No. I’ll play whatever the track gives me. You know, Gulfstream has nine tracks they’re offering, including Gulfstream, I’ll play all nine. And for my own point of view, there may be a really good play at Philadelphia Park for the way I play. And I have no problem betting a race at Philly the same I bet a race at Gulfstream, if the quality of the play for me is the same. That’s my opinion.

Mr. Wolff: To present a counterpoint, most people follow a circuit, you know, they’re centric to New York or California, or will spread some play around as the situation dictates, but most players follow one or two circuits and they probably aren’t trying to keep track of nine different opportunities at the same time, but God bless you if you’re doing it.

Mr. Scherf: Let me ask a question. Everybody here is a veteran race observer. But at a racetrack, in general, the fans are watching races on TV. How many people do you think can follow a horse race on television? Most, or—

Mr. Graham: Fifty percent, I would say. You know, in south Florida, obviously, we’re blessed with a retirement-type community, where a lot of the folks are up in years, so I’d say 50 percent, but I think in a younger market you would have a higher percentage of people. I have no problem following a race on TV. At Gulfstream, I’ll walk outside to watch the races live, because I enjoy it, I enjoy watching it, but honestly, I can see it easier on the television.

Mr. Scherf: I’ve often wondered, because when I stand under a TV set at the track, the first thing I seem to hear is somebody saying, “Who won?” and I’m going, “Well, if that’s all you’re getting out of watching a race, we are ping-pong balls.”

Mr. Wolff: That does happen all the time at Saratoga. It’s just amazing. The race ends and people are just yelling, “Who got it? Who got it?”

Mr. Scherf: We’re going to wrap up soon, so if you have a question, I’m going to give a minute or two for questions or inputs.

Mr. Tom Aronson: Because my wife’s on the next panel, I’m going to be very quick. I just wanted to say, this panel is a great reflection for all the managements and executives in the room. I’m one of the original builders of the TVG network. This panel is a great example, that if you called a focus group and you were trying to come out of it with a television product, you would see exactly what the problem is. TVG evolved into more of a racing information network from where it started, but it clearly isn’t serving all the needs, and never really thought that it could serve all the needs of people like Maury and Tom. The split screen is another great example. If you want more information, but you don’t like the split screen, then do you go to a security cam kind of flashing all the different tracks and all the different paddocks? Obviously not. So this is a thing that we wrestled with, and I’ll just bring you back the perfect anecdote. When we were starting this network, we were meeting with Tom Meeker of Churchill Downs, and Tom Meeker explicitly said, “If you want Churchill Downs to get out in front with what will be the Television Games Network, if you’re thinking about a simulcast product, forget it. I can guarantee you, 99 percent of track managements will say forget it. If you’re thinking about a television product, we’re with you.” So TVG has spent its entire existence bouncing back and forth between these two realities. This is not me as an apologist particularly, because I’m now leaving my position with TVG; I’m just simply saying it is almost an unanswerable issue. We all thought that we could support TVG with as much online information and other kinds of information that would allow Maury and Tom and other serious players to play at that particular level that they want to, whatever that might be; clearly we didn’t want to create a product that in baseball terms would be like speaking to Little Leaguers when people wanted Major League information, but you had to strike the balance somewhere, and it has been a process, it is a process for every television show, every racing-oriented television show, when they go on the air, how to do it, so I hope if nothing else this panel has given everybody a little bit more appreciation for that balancing act, and if you don’t like it, tune in tomorrow, maybe it’ll be better.

Mr. Scherf: Any other comments the panel wanted to make before—

Mr. Liebman: I’d just like to make an overall one. People tend to think that horse racing, Thoroughbred racing, harness racing, are these moribund sports that really haven’t changed in hundreds of years. The fact is that horse racing is totally technology driven. Everything that’s worked well, anything that’s significantly helped racing, has been technology driven. You start in the 19th century. Horse racing in the late 19th century started to succeed because there were railroads that were able to bring horses to racetracks. Look at earlier in the 20th century. What moved harness racing forward? The mobile starting gate. Night racing. The ability—half-mile tracks where people could see the races. Thoroughbred racing was helped by the starting gate, pari-mutuels. In the last decade, with simulcasting and the commingling of wagers, we’ve seen things get better. Televising of racing on a network, with TVG, with money going towards fair compensation to the tracks and horsemen, my God, if this works well, there’s nothing that could be better for racing, and I think it’s in everybody’s interest to recognize that we’ve to try to make this work. This is where the future is.

Mr. Scherf: I think Bennett should give a plug for his website. Go ahead, give everyone the URL.

Mr. Liebman: It’s http://www.als.edu/centers/editor.cfm?ID=585. Thank you.