"According to 2007 data, which is the most recent available, live attendance for 2007 at well over 200 thoroughbred, harness, quarter horse and mixed meet racetracks in 38 racing jurisdictions nationwide was approximately 20 million visits. Twenty million annual visits puts horse racing as the #2 spectator sport in America behind only one other U.S. major league sport, MLB, and ahead of the NFL, the NBA, the NHL and NASCAR. And many millions more racing fans visit the nation’s 1,100+ simulcast locations (including OTBs, dog tracks, jai alai frontons, casino race books, racinos and native American reservations) and ADW sites, many of which do not track attendance and which together account for about 90% of all handle. A dying industry we are not."

"Instead, the push continues for more casino-style gambling as a Band-Aid for an industry in crisis, and that will force horses further to the margins, although at Santa Anita, still happily free of the slots, the fans can get a taste of the sport as it was meant to be. There's no better spot than Clocker's Corner on a bright winter morning, with a dusting of snow on the San Gabriels and the horses on the gallop."

"Too bad for us, though. Not since the great reaping of 2007, when the 3-year-olds Street Sense, Hard Spun and Any Given Saturday were hustled off to stud, has the retirement of a young star hit with such impact. If nothing else, it has become clear that the only way to generate any long-term star power in the face of the pressures exerted by the breeding market is to pray -- fervently, loudly, and on your knees -- for nothing but great mares and geldings to lead the sport out of the wilderness."

"Anyway, those alarmed by the way things are going will permit themselves a certain bleak satisfaction should the Dewhurst live up to its billing, because it couldn't happen another time. It may yet be, of course, that some apparent no-hoper barges through and beats them all. And that, if we're not careful, is just the kind of disobliging behaviour that might some day drive these marketing cadets away from thoroughbreds -- and then where would we find the dimensionless froth to tempt all these lovely young ABC1s?"

"They’ll be looking for the same sort of uptick at the gate that tracks saw when 'Seabiscuit' was released in 2003."

"Not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with either football mom Leigh Anne Tuohy or horse breeder Penny Chenery’s stories — anything but. It’s just that the implications for their other subjects are more than a little troublesome. “My meeting with the marketing team to EXPLAIN the problem would start thusly,” tweeted NPR’s Monkey See blog. 'Secretariat … was … a … HORSE.' The mind reels, the skin crawls, etc." See: http://twitter.com/nprmonkeysee/status/25843918258 http://twitter.com/nprmonkeysee/status/25844093216

"That Disney has been marketing its Oct. 8 release 'Secretariat' to horse aficionados and sports enthusiasts is obvious. But unless you're an influential Christian -- preferably one with a popular website -- you probably didn't know that the studio also has been leaning on the strategy employed by 'The Blind Side' by going after what industry insiders like to call the 'faith-based audience.'"

"Win or lose this weekend or next month, Zenyatta already has cemented her place in the Hall of Fame. But a victory Saturday would arguably put us on the brink of the most highly anticipated Breeders' Cup Classic in event's history. And wouldn't that be the perfect time for Oprah to introduce the only four-legged member of her Power List to her worldwide audience of viewers?"

"Despite the present, witless tendency to treat them as characters in search of an author, men such as Frankie Dettori and Henry Cecil could never be adequately prefigured by a script. Marketing men always promise some kind of Holy Grail – for due consideration, of course – but overlook the paradox of every messianic tradition. A saviour is constantly sought, constantly imagined, but seldom arrives in the manner expected. And that will never be as true as when you depend on the random agency of horses."

"The truth of the matter is, despite a racing industry that constantly cries about a lack of mainstream attention, there's an awful lot of horse racing everywhere you look." Secretariat, Luck two big opportunities for the industry.

"SocialSphere, Inc., a data-based strategist employed by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), has its own set of Potemkin numbers. The company contends that 50 million of the proletariat connects with the Sport of Kings in one way or another and that seven million people went to the racetracks and bet during the last 30 days." [Re: marketing, comparison to.]

"The organization is set on determining a long-term schedule despite the uncertainty surrounding the racing industry, both on the national stage, where handle and bloodstock prices have plummeted over the last two years, and on the circuits Breeders' Cup typically targets. As a result, Breeders' Cup has limited options, and none appears ideal."

"The British Horseracing Authority has made tremendous strides with its website, which is now very usable. But it is a long way from being ideal and I would suggest that the BHA's money would be better spent, in the first instance, on improving the service it provides to existing fans of the sport, before it worries about bringing in new people whose attention it will not then be able to keep." Offers five excellent suggestions for improvement, including the addition of a "well-maintained statistics section to rummage through."

"Now the mere fact that an idea is embraced beyond its boundaries does not guarantee the slightest profit to the horseracing parish. But the reception of the story implied that it had been broadcast on a fresh wavelength."

And the answer can be found in Australia. "America's great dailies? They just don't get it." See also: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/is-the-times-ignoring-the-boxing-ring/ (Is the Times ignoring boxing?).

"Horse racing fans age 18 and older are 54 percent female and 46 percent male, according to a TNS study. The study found that 26 percent of horse racing fans reports an annual household income of $70,000 or more."

Alex Waldrop's wrap-up of the Vegas summit.

Preview of fan panel at NTRA summit from Alex Waldrop.