Fred Pope took exception to my View From the Eighth Pole last week in which I said the Interstate Horseracing Act (IHA) of 1978 made it difficult for an owner's group he created – the short-lived National Thoroughbred Association – to get off the drawing board and become a reality.
The column was written in the wake of Mike Repole's remarks on a racing telecast that “it's time now that the owners take back this game.”
If only it was that easy.
Pope is the Lexington advertising executive who worked with the late John Gaines to model a “major league” of horse racing after the PGA Tour, an entity run by professional golfers. Pope said he had the support of more than 100 owners who each put up $50,000 in seed money and “controlled more than 6,000 of the best horses in training.” He said NTA had another 25,000 non-paying supporters, many of whom were owners or breeders.
Yet it failed.
“The IHA was never a problem of any kind with implementing the NTA,” Pope wrote in an email after publication of my commentary. “In the same way the IHA was never a problem implementing the Breeders' Cup. You just signed a contract with the host track, which included all the rights and permission of that track. Think about it.”
If only it was that easy.
One racetrack giving up one day of revenue a year when the Breeders' Cup began in 1984 (expanded to two days starting in 2007) is one thing. Multiple tracks leasing their facilities and giving up revenue any number of weekends throughout the year is entirely something else.
The NTA failed, Pope said, because the late Jockey Club chairman Ogden Mills Phipps flipped Tim Smith, who was hired to help launch the NTA but wound up as the commissioner and CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which included racetracks, horsemen's groups, and other racing organizations.
In theory, the NTA was a way to skirt the federal law governing interstate simulcasting, which gave control to the tracks and the horsemen's group that “represents the majority of owners and trainers” racing at the track. But as Mark Twain wrote, “How empty is theory in the presence of fact.”
A Dumb Question, But A Serious One
Repole has not gotten into details for how the new owners (or owners-trainers) organization he wants to create would work, but he isn't the first person to call for change in how racing is run. I'm very interested in how he proposes to pull this off.
All of the major league sports – NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, PGA, etc. – run themselves as owner-driven entities that hire professional staff, led by a commissioner. The leagues set the rules, hire the umpires and game officials, contract with drug-testing and integrity agencies, and negotiate television and licensing deals. They don't just run their sports, they self-regulate them. They are not regulated at the state or federal level.
For nearly a century, horse racing has been regulated at the state level. More recently, the Wire Act, Interstate Horseracing Act, and Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act have brought federal regulations or oversight to the game.
The reason for all this regulation, I've been told by people much smarter than me, is that you can gamble on horse racing. The states felt a need to oversee the integrity and fairness of the participants and racing itself because people were betting real money on the outcome.
Horse racing for many years was the only legal form of gambling outside of the state of Nevada. Five years ago, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for sports betting. As a Kentuckian, I can bet on baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, among other sports, in addition to horse racing.
I'm not aware of state regulatory boards for any of these other sports, even though there is legal gambling on them in a growing number of states. There may be state gambling commissions, but they are regulating the betting companies – not the sports leagues or their games.
Here is the dumb but serious question: Why should racing continue to be saddled with state regulatory oversight?
Racing is not currently in position to self-regulate the way major league sports do. However, if the Repole plan – or someone else's – can fashion a blueprint similar to MLB, NFL et al and create a sustainable league office, there's no reason horse racing should be shackled with government regulation, either at the state or federal level. It should be treated like every other major sport.
If only it was that easy.
That's my view from the eighth pole.
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