Racetrack VIPs miss chance to exchange ideas

In better times, the annual University of Arizona Symposium on Racing & Gaming would attract more than 1,000 industry leaders to Tucson. Mixing business with pleasure made it a must-attend convention. Lately, though, both industries are not doing as well as they did in the 1980s and '90s.

Attendance at the symposium plummeted this year through no fault of the Racetrack Industry Program at Arizona that hosts the event. Companies are struggling and cutting back on travel budgets.

Still, the symposium remains fertile ground for exchanging ideas and establishing contacts. However, one thing obvious to me at this year's symposium was the lack of racetrack executives in attendance. I thought they needed the most help.

Of all the seminar topics, my pet peeve is marketing to newcomers, which continues to go unanswered. I can't recall the year I heard this at a symposium, but a marketing firm presented an outline of a new fan program successfully implemented with a pro sports league. It covered all the bases. Afterward, it was asked how much it would cost to implement the plan. Turns out it was too much. The marketing exec gave a frosty answer like "If you can't afford to invest in your own business, then maybe you should go out of business."

If any of the Arizona students had asked me for career advice, I would have used a Humphrey Bogart line from "Casablanca." That's when Rick tells a young couple looking for exit visas to "Go back to Bulgaria." Getting into racing right now had better be for love and not money.

One company I will be keeping an eye on is Betfair. It meets requirements I think are sorely lacking in the business: great cutting-edge technology, cash on hand to grow and for research and development, plus a betting menu that caters to what the public wants, and not the other way around.

For example, I think we can make inroads by going back to the future: win, place and show wagering. The Betfair exchange model offers these wagers between buyer and seller but at a much lower takeout. That creates enormous betting churn, which is something racing needs.

• HRTV -- CityCenter will offer something most racing fans in Las Vegas cannot get: Horse Racing Television. The Cox Hospitality Network will offer HRTV, among other channels, in more than 6,000 rooms and residences in CityCenter.

Richard Eng's horse racing column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He can be reached at rich_eng@hotmail.com.