Racing News

Buy a newspaper, or tune in to TV or radio after the Kentucky Derby, or one of the other Triple Crown races, or after the Breeder’s Cup, and here’s what you will see or hear: The ratings are down again. Nobody’s watching. Same with baseball, the ratings are the worst ever. Horse racing is in almost as bad a shape as boxing. Horse racing needs a savior. Here’s why horse race ratings are low: We’re at the track. Or we’re at the off-track betting halls and simulcast venues and casinos. We’re not filling out a rating diary. We’re there, we’re live on the scene, we’re betting.

The races that are given the most attention in the TV ratings are the races that get the fans out of their homes and away from their television — the Triple Crown races and the Breeder’s Cup. I’ve had a number of TV ratings books before. One of them sends you a crisp greenback dollar bill for your troubles. I put this buck with some others and head for the track and, as a major horse race fan and proponent of the sport, will have a blank space on my Saturday or Sunday afternoon rating diary when a one of those big races is televised. That’s because they don’t count watching the TV screen at a race track or simulcast hall. Being there, supporting your sport, turns out to be to the detriment of your game. It’s as though by going to the track, you’re helping to give horse racing a bad name. But not everybody can or will bet from home.

There are no bleachers at your basic TV sit-com or dramatic series. You have to watch these displays on your home set. I’m not 100 percent sold on the accuracy of ratings in the first place. How could programs like the crime scene bunch, and “The Closer,” be watched by so many people? The woman’s fake southern accent in “The Closer” is the stuff of which sourpusses are made. Many of my friends love this show. I have given it numerous chances, but don’t believe a word of it, y’all are under arrest, murder one. Jack Lord did it better. To rate sporting events under the same system as “Two and a Half Men and a Duck,” or whatever the hit sit-com is called, is completely unfair. Most everybody sitting in a college football stadium should be considered the same as a TV viewer. If they weren’t sitting in the stadium, you think they’d be watching knitting shows?

There are 60-some horse race tracks in this country, and thousands of casinos and off-track and simulcast betting locations. Try to get into one of them on Derby Day or on Breeders’ Cup Day. Saratoga’s opening weekend handle was almost $40 million. Del Mar is packed. These are real numbers, not ghosts on a TV screen. It’s a case of some of the greatest fans in sports getting no credit, again.