Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem for April 3, 2025

A good Thursday morning to you all! Already been a crazy Keeneland meet and we haven’t even had a race run. Seriously hope everyone up near Lexington is safe this weekend and things can commence either Sunday or Monday.

I said on my show the other day I think it would be kind of fun to have a big day on a Tuesday, well we’re going to get to play that out. I know we’ve run the Virginia Derby a few times on a Tuesday and I’m sure Santa Anita’s big opening day card has been on a Tuesday at some point in the recent past, but I’d say in general it’s usually the quietest day of racing. Saturday’s are always the biggest handle day of the week so I’m curious to see how Keeneland does with very little competition, but certainly less eyeballs than a big Saturday would yield.

Seems we had two big news drops on Wednesday with Keeneland postponing the opening weekend and Netflix announcing they have a new horse racing series coming out. The reactions to the trailer were pretty predictable with most industry folks lauding it and most horseplayers seeming uninterested. At least that’s what was on my timeline. I still think so often our biggest miss in racing is we don’t cater to what most interests our regular customers, which is betting. But I also understand that a show like this isn’t for our regular everyday fans, it’s to try and draw in new people and there has to be storylines for them to follow. And the races are chock full of storylines.

I got drawn into following NHL hockey because of a show similar to this. It was called NHL 24/7 and it followed a couple of teams leading up to the winter classic game. I was hooked because of this show and to this day I consume lots of NHL content and usually go to a handful of games every year. It worked, I was hooked because of a show like this. Fast forward to last year and Amazon did a hockey series very similar to what this horse racing one looks like. And to be honest, I watched it and found it very boring. Because I already knew all the storylines, all the results, and all the personalities. I’m a super fan at this point of hockey so there just wasn’t really anything there for me.

I honestly don’t think I’ll even watch much of this new Netflix series just because of that reason. I know how it all played out and most of the folks they showed in the preview aren’t people I find particularly interesting or would want to hear more from. Or haven’t heard lots from them over the years. But that doesn’t mean non-racing fans won’t.

Whenever someone talks about marketing and promotion, they so often only look at it from their lens, which is different than most other people. If something is not meant for me, of course I’m not really going to be interested in it and I get the impulse to think it won’t be effective. But it could be very effective with other people. Those Netflix series on other sports have been extremely successful shows, so hopefully lots of new people tune in and then watch the Kentucky Derby (G1) or come out to their local track.

I always used to say that the easy part was getting people into the door. Getting them to come back a second or third or three-hundredth time was the tough part. If this show does indeed bring people out to the game of horse racing, what are we going to do to make them want to come back and hopefully become regular participants? That to me is the question.

Everyone have a good week!