Entrepreneur and horse owner Mike Repole said on Thursday he has started a new organization, the National Thoroughbred Alliance, and hired Pat Cummings as its executive director.
Citing what he said was widespread frustration through all levels of the industry, Repole said he wants the new organization to represent owners, breeders, trainers, horseplayers, fans, and racetracks, among others.
“All I want to do is help execute a vision and strategy that everybody wants,” he said during a conference call with several horse racing media members.
Repole provided few details, saying he was self-funding the organization and planned to hire several others in the coming months. Cummings, who has served as executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation since its launch in 2018, will be charged with “laying the foundation” for the Alliance, Repole said.
Repole credited Lexington advertising executive Fred Pope as an inspiration in forming the group and naming it with the same initials as the owner-driven National Thoroughbred Association that Pope founded in 1996. Pope had “amazing vision – what we need today,” Repole said.
The National Thoroughbred Association, which had the backing of more than 100 owners, each of whom put up $50,000 in seed money, failed to accomplish its mission of setting up a horse racing “major league” that would pool simulcasting and television rights of weekend racing at major tracks, create a central office and execute a marketing and branding strategy.
With the encouragement of the late Ogden Mills Phipps, chairman of The Jockey Club, the NTA was folded into an interim organization called the Thoroughbred Industry Alliance that eventually became the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. The Thoroughbred Industry Alliance and the NTRA represented many of the various constituency groups that Repole wants his new organization to include. At the outset, the NTRA was designed as a “league office” but its membership and influence waned over the years and it has settled into a dual role as an advocate for the industry in Washington, D.C., and operator of handicapping tournaments.
Racing currently has no vision and no strategy, Repole said, in part because of the lack of unity to promote a single brand. He said the industry has gone from “growth, to stagnant, to massive decline” in recent decades and that some prominent owners are leaving because “they are just not happy with the game.”
The Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, funded by horse owner Craig Bernick, will not replace Cummings, according to Daily Racing Form. The TIF has been an important advocate for horseplayers through the publication of numerous white papers highlighting problematic issues. Its most successful effort was to bring penny breakage to pari-mutuel wagering in Kentucky.
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