Does a Triple Crown boost horse racing’s future?

A lot of casual sports fans cheered as American Pharoah won the Triple Crown by capturing the Belmont Stakes on Saturday in New York.

But the problem for the future of horse racing is that there is a possibility of a Triple Crown bid only once a year. For many years, the sport has had trouble attracting fans almost every other day of the year.

“The Triple Crown storyline is by far the best thing the sport has going for it (in years that it happens),” NBC analyst Randy Moss said. “It attracts the interest of people who have no interest in following Thoroughbred racing the rest of the year. Having a horse with a chance is what seems to capture the public’s imagination.”

William Reed, a Kansas City physician and horse owner, believes that the sport will benefit from American Pharoah winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont in the same year and becoming the sport’s first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

Reed saw for himself how fans at Belmont Park reacted to a possible Triple Crown in 2002, when War Emblem was trying to become the 12th Triple Crown winner. Reed’s horse in the race, Perfect Drift, finished 10th while Sarava ended up winning as a 70-1 long shot.

“I think it will be good for racing in America and around the world,” Reed said when asked about the Triple Crown before Saturday’s race. “I think it will bring more interest to racing. It will encourage some people to invest in the sport, and it will create new fans.”

An early analysis of wagering data on the Belmont by the TVG Network, which covers horse racing and wagering, showed that the sport could be getting some new young fans. There was a 45 percent increase in wagering on mobile devices from last year’s Belmont, and mobile bettors on average were 11 years younger than those who used a desktop computer.

National Thoroughbred Racing Association president and CEO Alex Waldrop also hopes horse racing will benefit from American Pharoah’s achievement.

“Short-term we will see much greater mainstream media exposure for a superstar horse whose athletic achievement transcends the sport. Long-term it is hard to gauge the impact,” he said. “It will require careful planning and diligent execution for the industry to fully capitalize on a Triple Crown winner.

“Best case, after a winning trip on Saturday, American Pharoah will continue to train and win for months, if not years, which will magnify his impact.”

Others in the industry, however, believe that American Pharoah’s Triple Crown run might not do much for the sport long-term. That includes trainer Nick Zito, whose 2004 Belmont victory with Birdstone ended the Triple Crown hopes of Smarty Jones.

“People ask me, if American Pharoah wins, is it going to give racing a jolt in the arm? I’m not too sure,” Zito told USA Today before Saturday’s race. “I think racing, the game, it’s stable, it’s solid. The sales are up. The business is solid. But racing used to be a fan-based sport. Now, with all the electronics and the gadgets people got today, it takes a Triple Crown for people to come to the track.”

Many tracks might be happy if new fans just wagered on their races at simulcasting outlets or on the Internet, but there is no guarantee that a Triple Crown winner will make that happen.

“People in the industry have long since realized a Triple Crown winner isn’t going to all of sudden turn the sport into something everybody in the country gravitates toward,” said Tim Capps, director of the equine industry program at the University of Louisville. “It’s a positive story and will make people follow him wherever he shows up. He’ll be a celebrity for awhile. He’ll have a following and there will be more attention paid to the sport in general for a period of time, as long as he’s around and probably through the (next) Triple Crown itself, though it gets a fair amount of hype anyway.

“Does it make a real difference moving the sport forward or making it more mainstream? I think most people in the industry realize it’s not going to happen.”

Horse racing certainly has a long way to go to get back to where it was at the start of the 21st century, let alone when it was one of the most popular sports in America in the 1970s. In 1975, tracks attracted roughly 78 million spectators.

Industry groups say the amount of money wagered on races in the United States dropped 26 percent during 2007-13 and attendance dropped 30 percent during 2000-10. The crowds are so small that attendance figures are no longer released.

In a 2014 Harris Poll, only one percent of those who responded and said that they follow at least one sport selected horse racing as their favorite, compared to 32 percent for pro football and 16 percent for baseball.

Secretariat owner Penny Chenery, whose 1973 Triple Crown winner was so popular that he made the cover of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated magazines in the same week, said one reason for the decline is that the sport does a poor job of marketing itself.

“The people who run the tracks don’t seem to be tuned into what works with the public,” Chenery said. “Marketing the sport seems not to be their best skill. I don’t mean to be negative here, but we can do a lot more to make our fans welcome, to intrigue them to come and to treat them well.”

Horse racing’s problems might also have something to do with the desire of many casual sports fans to concentrate on big events. The Kentucky Derby and Preakness drew record crowds this year, and about 90,000 fans watched Saturday’s Belmont Stakes in person. But the crowds will be small next week at most racetracks in the country.

“We live in the age of the Super Bowl, where we focus everything on one big event,” longtime horse-racing writer William Nack said. “It’s become a national habit. We’re great at one big production. Is there other good stuff going on? I think so, but we’re not good at keeping our attention on it.”

Stuart Janney, owner of 2013 Kentucky Derby winner Orb, believes it would be best for the sport to somehow have more events like the Triple Crown throughout the year without diminishing what it means for a 3-year-old to sweep the nation’s three top races. He said it is likely that horse racing will never again have casual fans following it on a daily basis.

“People look at it and say racing was such and such in the 1950s and 1960s, but what were they competing against?” Janney said. “You have to deal with the situation you find yourself in. You can’t be nostalgic about what used to be.”

This story was originally published June 5, 2015 at 12:33 PM with the headline "Does a Triple Crown boost horse racing’s future?."